Stanley, Gale - Hellfire [Southwest Shifters 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (4 page)

Tanner started at the shoulders, applying gentle pressure in circular movements. Gage arched his throat, obviously enjoying the attention. Running his hands slowly down Gage’s back, fingers charting a smooth course over well-defined muscles, Tanner worked his way down in slow, fluid motions. He paused at his lover’s hips and pulled Gage toward him, wanting desperately to feel that fine ass pressed against his aching shaft.

Gage gave up control, letting Tanner do what he wanted. What he wanted was to make Gage crazy. Wanting to build tension and excitement, he slid his hands around to his lover’s lower belly, forming a circle with his fingers, purposely not touching his erection. Gage wiggled his hips back, and Tanner’s cock slid up the crack of his ass. A strangled cry escaped his partner’s throat, and Tanner licked a sensitive spot behind his ear. “Want something, baby?”

Gage let out a soft groan. “Touch me.”

“My pleasure.” As the water flowed over them, Tanner used his soap-slick palm to torment Gage’s cock with slow friction, moving the foreskin back and forth over the swollen cockhead.

“Fuck. Are you trying to make me crazy?” Gage spun around and ground his mouth against Tanner’s in a smoking-hot kiss. Tanner gasped when Gage started massaging his ass cheeks then rimmed his hole with a finger.

“Now who’s the tease?” Tanner murmured against his mouth. In response, the soap-slick finger pushed inside. “Oh hell.” Frustration won out, and Tanner reached down to fist both of their cocks in his big, soapy hands.

Gage closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against Tanner’s. “More.”

Tanner
positioned their cockheads together and rolled his stretchy foreskin over the head of his lover’s penis. Docked together like two spaceships, the delicious intimacy had Gage moaning. “Do you like this, baby?”

“God yes,” Gage hissed, rubbing and grinding against him.

Tanner started a rhythmic stroking, loving the feel and the friction of their shafts joined together like this. At his partner’s coaxing, he pumped harder and faster. Gage tensed, and Tanner could feel how close he was. A deep, animal groan rumbled up from Tanner’s chest, and his toes curled in pleasure as his own climax approached the point of no return. He thrust savagely and let out a roar as he exploded. Through heavy-lidded eyes, he watched his lover’s face contort in an expression of lust-filled bliss as he growled out his release. Continuing to hold each other, they relaxed and let their orgasms play out.

Tanner nuzzled and nipped at Gage’s neck. “Who needs a foursome?”

Chapter Four

Shiloh
rolled over, and in a few minutes, Kate heard his soft snores and knew he’d fallen asleep. Sleep didn’t come that easy for Kate. She lay awake for hours, staring up at the ceiling and hoping the
rhythmic
whump
of the
fan
overhead would lull her to sleep. It didn’t. It didn’t do much to cool off the room either. Naked and d
renched with sweat, she panted like a bitch in heat, trying to breathe in the heavy air. Finally, afraid she would wake
Shiloh
, she decided to let him have the bed to himself.

She sat up and brushed aside the long hair plastered to her face and neck. Freeing the tangled sheets from around her feet, she
slipped out of bed and crept noiselessly through the house. The air, thick with moisture, wasn’t any better in the living room. She went into the kitchen and opened the freezer, grabbed a few ice cubes, and held them against her heated neck, then down her chest. The cold made her nipples pebble, and once again her thoughts turned to the Lycans.

Her mind whirled in mass confusion, her thoughts returning to the two men again and again. She had a million questions, starting with where had they come from and ending with why were they here. If they were from her pack, then they’d been born in the
Pine Barrens
, halfway across the country.

She had taken that journey herself in a roundabout way, hitching and hiking. She’d be traveling still if she hadn’t met
Shiloh
.
New Mexico
was not a place she would have chosen to settle otherwise. In all the states she’d been through, she had never come across anyone like herself. Even so, she never assumed she was the only Lycan left. But it surprised the hell out of her when the two wolf-shifters showed up.

She knew from personal experience just how hard it was to keep a wolf bottled up, and she assumed if there were others, they probably shifted, if not frequently, at least from time to
time, yet wolf sightings were few and far between here in New Mexico.

So if they weren’t living here as humans or living wild, then where? Had she brought them here? Had her sex pheromones sent out an invitation to mate? She had no idea how far her scent could travel. She knew so little about her own people.

When her family was killed in the great fire, she’d been a child of six. She survived only because she hadn’t been home when the fire started. Her father had taken her and Casey hunting. Her older brother didn’t think she should come, and her father agreed with him, but she begged and pleaded, and finally he relented. To this day, she regretted not staying with her mother. She might have comforted her at the end, and she would have died with her gladly.

They had been quite a distance away when her father smelled smoke. He told her and Casey to stay put, warned them not to move until he came back for them. Then he left. Casey, at twelve, thought he was a man and should be helping to put out the fire, not hiding in the woods. He left a crying Kate squatting among the brambles at the edge of a glade. She never saw him again.

Afraid to move, she stayed put until two days had gone by. By the time she returned home, everyone was dead or gone. A hunter, maybe the very one who had set the fire, found her sitting by her dead parents, crying. He took her home, and so her new life began, with a human hunter and his wife.

She had a very lonely and
secluded
childhood. Homeschooled, she had no friends. She might as well have been a prisoner. Kate never spoke to her foster family about her biological family. She hardly spoke at all. She buried her past. It was too painful. Puberty came and went, yet she never shifted. Her wolf remained confined, just like her human self.

Then one day she overheard a conversation between her stepparents.

The woman’s voice sounded shrill, and the man kept shushing her. “I don’t think she’s going to shift. Maybe she can’t.”

“She can, all right,” he told her. “They all can. Or could. But it doesn’t matter. We don’t have to prove she’s functional. They want her, and they’ll pay for her. That’s all I care about.”

“Why do they want her?” the woman asked.

“Who cares? You know I never planned to keep her.” There was no mistaking the hard disgust and dislike in the man’s voice.

Although she had never revealed her identity, they had known all along she was Lycan. Just as she suspected, the man had been one of those who burned down her village. Now he intended to sell her. Kate had no idea who
they
were, and she had no intention of sticking around to find out. A day came when the man and woman locked her in her bedroom and went out of the house. Kate packed a small bag that she could carry in her jaws. Then she broke the window in her bedroom.

She had never shifted before. The change always came with sexual maturity, but there had been no one to guide her through it, just as there was no one to guide her now. She was scared to death, not even sure she knew how to transform her body. But the broken window was her incentive. The man and woman would find the shattered glass, and she would never get another chance.

Suddenly visions of her childhood had resurfaced, and her eyes brimmed with tears. She could almost hear Casey’s taunts. In typical big-brother fashion, he would never tolerate her crying.
“Stop whining,”
he’d tell her.
“You’re a wolf. Remember, Kweo has placed some of his own heart and spirit inside you. Find it and you will find your inner wolf.”

Change begins in the mind.

The body serves the mind.

We are shaped by the mind.

She had concentrated and repeated Casey’s mantra over and over, and it had taken her to a place of spiritual transformation that called to her wolf.

Instinctively her body had dropped to a crouch and bent forward, twisting in painful contortions. God, how it hurt. Her bones pushed and pinched, threatening to pierce her skin. Black fur had raced over her limbs, and her face elongated into a snout. At last the agony ended with the eruption of a tail wagging furiously. The black wolf was glad to be out. It took her bag in its jaws, leaped through the second-floor window, and discovered it had the righting reflexes of a cat. It ran and never looked back.

* * * *

“The unseasonably early drought, which could go down as one of the nation’s worst, has spread across twelve states. Severe water restrictions are being enforced as record temperatures are broken.
A massive wildfire in
Arizona
that has already burned hundreds of square miles of forest and forced thousands of people to evacuate is now poised to move into
New Mexico
.
F
ire crews are cutting down trees and burning fuels
to try to stop its advance.”

Gage shut off the radio and turned a worried face to Tanner.

“What? We knew it was coming. The drought left the state ripe for wildfire.” He put his arms around Gage. “I don’t like fire any more than you do. If it gets close, Alex will probably want to evacuate. We can’t do anything about it. If you want to worry about something, focus on this header so I don’t get a concussion every time I walk in the front door.”

“Yes, sir.”

Gage and Tanner stayed inside and worked on their house all day, thankful they didn’t see Alex. Neither man wanted to lie to their Alpha, but they weren’t ready to come clean yet either. Whether or not they confided in him depended on tonight’s meeting.

At seven they showered and dressed in black jeans. Tanner wore a white shirt. Gage put on a black shirt and tied his long hair back with a leather band. He looked to Tanner for approval.

“Very sexy. Irresistible, in fact.” Tanner planted a kiss on his lips. “If we don’t leave now, I might change my mind and drag you back into bed.” He grabbed the keys from the dresser. “Come on, I’ll drive.”

Shiloh had suggested a place near Deming, about an hour from
Silver
City
. It was a midsize hotel with a restaurant and a bar that looked like a set from a John Wayne movie, with wagon wheels, wood floorboards, and whiskey barrel tables. It was definitely not a locals’ bar. The customers were all tourists, cowboy—and girl—wannabes wearing all the proper gear: jeans, boots, and wide-brimmed hats.

“Fuck!” Gage growled under his breath when they walked in and saw
Shiloh
alone at the bar.

“Maybe she’s in the bathroom.”

“She’s not here.”

“Okay, calm down. She might be meeting us.”

Tanner took the empty stool on
Shiloh
’s right. Gage took the one on the left.

The cowboy looked from one to the other, settling his focus on Tanner. “I’m glad you both came.”

“Glad we did—”

“So how come you didn’t, both come, that is?” Gage broke in abruptly.

Shiloh
’s head swiveled around. “Uh, excuse me?”

Gage forced a smile. “The invite was for two.”

Uncertainty crept over
Shiloh
’s face. “Is that a problem? Kate doesn’t go out much. She already told me she wouldn’t be at the rodeo tomorrow.”

Shiloh
waved the bartender over. “Draft?”

“Sounds good,” Gage answered for both of them. “So do you go out without her often? Leave her home alone?”

“That’s none of your business.
”
The cowboy flushed red. “What’s all this interest in my girlfriend?”