Seducing Their Wayfaring Souls [3xtasy Lake 7] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (9 page)

Zack blossomed under Lars’s attention. He grinned up at her and lifted his hands to show her and Cris the X-shaped design the string made around his fingers. “Look what I can do!” The pride in his tone filled her heart with joy. This was the kind of life she wanted for her son. Finding joy in the simplest of tasks. She never thought of playing string games with Zack to help his dexterity, but she would remember this moment.

“Great job, Zack!” Cris clapped. “I’m impressed.”

“Here, I’ll show you the next step. Now, watch carefully what I do with my fingers.” As soon as Lars spoke, Zack looked up at him like some sort of superhero.

He does look a bit like Thor.
She’d always been partial to the Norse god in comic books.

“Have you had a chance to talk to Luc and Georges about your car?” Cris asked her. He’d kept a bit of distance between them and she missed the heat that radiated off him.

“No, I called there this morning, but there wasn’t any answer.”

“They are usually in the shop by noon. You can give them a try again later on.”

Tara sighed. She couldn’t put off the truth any longer. Although in the short time she’d been in this town, it’d grown on her. “I can plan better if I know what I have to deal with.”

“Catherine can help.” He glanced down into her cup. “She reads tea leaves. Want to see if she can predict your future?”

“Really, she can do that?”

“She’s scary accurate, too.” Cris grinned and picked up her teacup. “Hold your cup by the handle.” When she grasped the small loop, he wrapped his fingers around her hand. “Now move the cup in a circle clockwise.”

He led her hand in swirling the minute amount of tea in her cup. “And then slowly turn your cup upside down.” She carefully flipped her cup over on the saucer and then let it sit there.

Tara glanced over at Catherine, who was talking with a group of people.

“She’ll come over and read them when it’s ready.” Cris winked at her.

“This is silly.” Tara reached for her cup, but Cris caught her hand before she could reach it. “You can’t predict the future.”

“What about Fate or destiny?” Cris asked as he held her hand but stroked the back of it with his other hand. “Don’t you believe some things are written in the stars and meant to be?”

“That’s very romantic, but it’s not reality.” Tara wanted to go along with his game, but dreams didn’t come true and life wasn’t meant to be kind.

“I owe you so much more than a simple apology.” He lifted her hand and pressed another kiss to the back of it. He brushed against her skin with the lightest of touches, but his eyes never left hers.

“You don’t owe me anything, Cris.”

“I wish I had never left you for even a moment.”

She felt the heat creep up into her cheeks at his words and glanced around to see if anyone heard them. Even though Lars was playing a game with Zack, he had to have heard. She didn’t want to know what he thought of her now. “It wouldn’t have changed anything. We would’ve had an uncomfortable morning not knowing what to say and then we would’ve parted ways. Nothing would be different.” She doubted either of them would be interested in her. Cris might be because of Zack, but Lars must’ve heard the truth of the situation by now.

Cris knew Tara didn’t understand what he meant. She was his Mate and if she’d been raised a shifter then their lives would’ve turned out completely differently. That night had changed his entire existence. He’d lost her once, and he wasn’t going to let it happen again. He glanced down at her teacup.

“But, Fate brought you to me…to us yesterday.” It dawned on him then. If he hadn’t lost her that night, he never would’ve found his way here to Ecstasy Lake. Glancing up at Lars, he wondered what would’ve happened to his friend then. Would they have met under different circumstances? Would they have had the opportunity of building a family, the four of them, or would Lars have been left to wander the world?

There would be a time to contemplate all the lives that had to cross for them to finally reach this point. That was something best saved for one night this winter when they were snowed in and could sit in front of a roaring fire and contemplate. Better yet, they could be in bed with Tara snuggled between them, lazy from lovemaking, then think about it.

“It wasn’t Fate, Cris. It was a drunk driver who smashed into the back of my car for whatever reason he gave the police. By coincidence it happened outside of the town you live in.”

“Moments before Lars and I came down the road?” It was a good thing he hadn’t known Tara and his son were in that car. He would’ve ripped the drunk to shreds for almost killing his Mate and child. The coywolf inside of him threatened to spring forward even thinking about it. Thankfully the police had arrested the man and he had been taken out of Cris’s reach before he could go back and seek revenge. The hunger to hurt him still glittered at the edges of his conscious thought.

Tara peeked past him to where Lars and Zack continued to play the string game. Jelani had told him about Zack’s developmental delay. He couldn’t blame the doctor who diagnosed Zack so incorrectly. He blamed himself. But he was blessed with a Mate who didn’t turn away from a surprise pregnancy, nor was she disappointed when her child wasn’t perfect.

“Zack’s lucky to have you for a mom. He’s a great kid and that has to be your influence.”

Tara looked down and played with the edge of the napkin next to her saucer. “He’s an amazing kid.”

“You said you had a hard time after he was born. You know a lot of people would’ve given up. I’m sorry your family didn’t see what a gift he is.”

“I’ve asked myself a hundred times over the years if I made the right decision. Maybe he would be better off with a real family who loved him and could give him more. I felt so selfish for keeping him myself.”

“Tara, I can’t tell you how glad I am, but I would’ve understood if you’d made a different decision.” He covered her hand with his own because what he really wanted to do was pull her into his lap and he knew she would fight him. “My family…we don’t have a lot of kids. It’s a genetic thing so I never imagined you would get pregnant that night.”

Of course he’d planned on keeping her forever so an unplanned pregnancy had never occurred to him. Even when he lost her, it never dawned on him that she’d been carrying his child.

“What was your childhood like?”

Cris debated on what he should tell her and what would lead to more discussions and information she might not be ready for. “I was an unplanned child, too, only my mom wasn’t as wonderful. Not only was she unhappy about being pregnant, but she didn’t want to have a mixed breed for a child.”

Tara gasped. “Your mother carried a prejudice against your father’s race?”

That’s one way of putting it.
Cris nodded. “I guess she had sex with him as a lark, never expecting any consequences.”

His mother had slept with the coyote for shits and giggles. In her mind, his father was nothing more than a servant she was allowing to touch her. When she had realized they were Mates and he’d gotten her pregnant, her brothers had hunted him down and drove him off. Cris didn’t doubt she’d tried her best to get rid of him before he was born. Once in this world he’d been passed from servant to servant, never to be seen or acknowledged. Desperate to get out from under her thumb, he’d started looking for his father and discovered he’d joined the military but died in the first Gulf War crisis.

Most shifters didn’t care about cross breeding, but there were still sections of Guardians that wanted to do tests on them. He’d overheard his mother planning on giving him to them. There wasn’t a good use for a coywolf except for genetic testing. He had left that night and never looked back.

“I’m sorry, Cris, but that’s disgusting. How could a mother turn her back on their child?”

“Because not all women are such wonderful mothers as you.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“True, but I’ve learned a lot of things by watching you.” He nodded toward Zack. “You’ve been checking on him as we talk. I can tell when your attention drifts to Lars.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“That’s too bad.” He grinned and moved his hand so it rested at the base of her spine. “This is a very liberal town, Tara. You won’t get judged here.”

Her arousal spiked, a soft caress of musk and her own unique scent. His inner animal rolled on its back with its tongue out, playing with the scent. It was good to know Tara was open to the kind of relationship they wanted to have with her.

Catherine came over at that moment, breaking the tension that flowered between them again. His primal side wasn’t impressed, but Cris figured Catherine wouldn’t be too happy if he lifted Tara up on the counter and buried his face between her legs.

She lifted the cup and turned it slightly to the left and right. Lars continued to play the game with Zack, but Cris knew he was paying attention to Catherine as well.

“What do you see?” Tara asked quietly.

“An onion before a ladder.” Catherine frowned and turned the cup slightly again and tilted it to the side. “The onion’s a sign of secrets that will be discovered and the ladder’s a journey that will be taken because of what you discover.”

“That sounds fascinating, like if we found a map and had to look for treasure.” Tara grinned at Zack. “Do you like the sound of that, Zack?”

“Cool!” He held up his thumb and dropped his string.

Cris and Lars looked at each other over Tara’s head as she helped her son pick it up. There were plenty of secrets in this town, and what if they drove her away?

“There’s a razor, too, which means separation from those you love or family. But, there’s flowers lying over it. The flowers are a sign of happiness, family, and love. I think you’ll have a choice of paths to follow and will determine your future. There are too many paths to be certain of the outcome right now.”

“That’s sounds interesting. How do you know all this stuff? Can you show Zack and I?”

Catherine pointed out all the symbols in Tara’s cup, to her delight. Cris knew as well as Lars there was more to this than simply a treasure hunt. They could lose her if they weren’t careful. Fate had taken a hand in his life too much for him to discount Catherine’s reading. Lars smacked Cris on the shoulder and nodded. Cris took that to mean they’d do whatever they had to, to make certain Tara and Zack stayed in Ecstasy Lake.

If that meant he was going to have to get the entire town in on this, then he would. He had the ability to get things out over the air and he was going to do it, too. First thing was he was going to tell the Benoit brothers to take a fishing trip for a few days and buy them a bit more time.

* * * *

Tara stood in the shower that evening trying to plan out her next step. She’d hoped that she wouldn’t be here tonight and would already be back on the road, but after multiple phone calls and messages at the auto shop, she didn’t know any more than she had that morning. According to the message on the machine that afternoon Georges and Luc Benoit had gone fishing. Fishing!

Didn’t they realize that she had limited funds to work with? The only reason she had some money tucked away was by strictly budgeting everything in her life. Now she was stuck in that hotel room and she wasn’t entirely certain what it was going to cost her. Every time she mentioned cost to Albert he started talking about
Coronation Street
or told her not to worry, they’d work it out later.
Later.
Everything was later.

She turned and dropped her head under the pulsing water. It felt so good massaging her head, she moved and let the thumping water pound away on her shoulders and the back of her neck. River had called before she got in the shower and asked her how she felt. She said if Tara wanted she could come by the clinic tomorrow and River would give her another treatment. Tara considered it because River told her that since she was still a student, she couldn’t charge Tara for the treatment. At least that was saving her some and she did feel much better after River had worked on her last night.

She grabbed the tiny shampoo on the shelf and poured a bit on her palm. The scent of bergamot and orange tickled her senses. It was fresh and lively. Tara soaped up her hair and then grabbed the bottle of shower gel, thrilled it was the same scent. She poured a tiny amount in her bath puff and lathered it to wash herself.
If I’m careful I can make this last a while.
She was so used to buying the cheapest soap available when she went shopping, this felt like five-star luxury.

Her hands slipped along her wet skin and her thoughts drifted to Cris
and Lars
. A giggle threatened to escape her lips at the decadent idea she never would’ve considered before stopping in this little town. There were so many polyrelationships living there it almost felt normal. She’d watched the way they interacted with each other at Jessica’s the night before. The one thing she had noticed was that all the men did everything they could to make their wives happy. She hadn’t seen a single moment of jealousy or bad feelings. River had sat in Hugh’s lap for most of the night, but Boyd and Gavin had been content to hold her hand, or she would have her feet resting on one of their legs.