Arielle and the Three Wolves (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (13 page)

When she turned to go back inside and get ready for work, Jason was behind her. He had come up on her quietly. He took her possessively in his arms and gave her a rough hug and passionate good-morning kiss on the lips. His hands were already under her robe.

“I may not let you go to work,” he teased her.

“Didn’t you get enough of my body last night?”

“I’ll never get enough of your body.” His fingers were torturing her flesh beneath the bathrobe. All he had to do was give the command and she would miss a day of work for him. “I need your Suburban today,” he said.

“How will I get to work?”

“I’ll drive you in and pick you up when the clinic closes.”

“Why is it so hard to say no to you and so easy to give you everything you want?”

“Because you don’t want to say no.”

She laughed as she rested her head against his naked chest and smelled the clean air of the mountains mix with his scent fresh from the shower. Back in the forest the first birds of the morning began to chirp.

“Is your ranch this nice?” she asked him.

“Much better,” he said with pride. “Speaking of my ranch, when was the last time you had a vacation from the animal clinic?”

“Never,” she told him honestly. “The clinic doesn’t make enough for me to hire another person. I could never afford to hire another full-time vet. I’m sorry I can’t take any time off to be with you, darling.”

“You’re taking the time off,” he said, and his voice would brook no argument.

“There are animals in the kennels that need to be fed every day and their cages cleaned.” She attempted a weak protest, but knew in the end he would get his way.

“Leave all of that to me,” he said. “I’m going to take care of everything. This is your last week to work for a while. You’re taking the next two weeks off and spending them up at my ranch. We leave this Sunday.”

“Okay,” she said. “But you better not let any of my animals starve when I’m gone.”

“Do you trust me, baby?” he asked her. He asked her this all the time now.

This time she did not hesitate. She gave a firm nod of her head and held onto him all the tighter. “I trust you.”

“That’s the answer I want to hear. Now go get ready and I’ll drive you into the clinic.”

She ran. She knew he would swat her on her butt again if she was too slow. It still burned from the spanking he had given her the night before. He laughed at her playful stride across her patio and back inside her house.

She was worried that he would not be able to drive well with his broken leg, but he handled the Suburban just as well as she could and got her to work on time. He pulled her against him for a last kiss before he let her out in front of the clinic. He drove away into downtown Wolf Creek without an explanation as to why he needed the car.

She was amazed that the rest of her day progressed just like any other. Things seemed comfortable at the clinic. She felt good about the decision she had made the night before and more confident than she had ever felt in her life. Some of Jason’s alpha assertiveness must have rubbed off on her.

“Dr. Adams never used that eyedrop on Tinkerbell before,” Mrs. Evans told Arielle after she brought her Persian cat in for a checkup. Mrs. Evans always complained and acted as if the former owner of the clinic was far superior to Arielle.

In the past this would have bothered Arielle and she would have apologized to the old lady with the cat. Today she only gave her a polite smile. “Well, Mrs. Evans, your other cat went blind before you had to have it put to sleep. Tinkerbell still has perfect vision. Just try and think about that, dear.”

Mrs. Evans gave Arielle a quizzical look, but Arielle knew she had put her in her place.

The day progressed with small victories like that all day long, and Arielle started to like the new version of herself that Jason and his brothers had unleashed in her.

Right at 6:00 p.m. Jason was in front of the clinic to pick Arielle up just as he said he would be. She climbed in the passenger seat. It still felt odd to get in on this side of her vehicle. She hadn’t been inside for half a second before he had her in his arms.

“How was your day?” he asked her, and she realized she never got tired of that question.

“My day was fine, but are you going to tell me what you did today and why you needed to borrow my car?”

He nodded into the back. “I went by the store and picked us up some things for dinner. I thought about taking us out to eat tonight, but then you’re such a good cook I decided I wanted to take you back to your place. I want you to fix us some more steaks.”

“You got it,” she assured him. “But that isn’t why you needed to borrow my car, is it?”

“No, it wasn’t. I went by to see an old friend who lives outside Wolf Creek today.”

“Anyone I know?”

“You know him well. Dr. Adams, the old vet you bought the clinic from. My brothers and I have known him for years. He knows about us being shifters.”

Arielle smiled. She was fond of old Dr. Adams. “How is Doc Adams?” she asked.

“He’s fine. He misses running things at the clinic. He misses them so much that he agreed to take the place over for two weeks starting next Monday.”

She gave him another hug. “That’s fantastic, darling.”

“Now you won’t have any worries when I take you up to Shifter Valley. I called Kyle and Luke. They’re going to have the place immaculately clean for you by the time we get there on Sunday.”

She laughed when she thought about the two big men and housework. It also gave her a strange shiver in her tummy when she thought of them now. They did that work for her. She wanted to ask some questions about them, but bit her tongue. It was better if she just went with the flow from this point on. If she asked too many questions, she would only succeed to make herself scared again.

Apparently Jason saw through her brave façade. That night after dinner when they were in the backyard and the sun had just started to set behind the mountains, he became serious with her.

“Are you afraid, Arielle?” he asked her.

He seemed to be able to see right through her so she didn’t even try a lie with him. She nodded her head meekly. “I think of that ranch I’ve never seen up in the valley. I think of all three of you, and I’m terrified,” she admitted in a small but determined voice.

He put his arm around her. He didn’t say anything, and he didn’t have to. The fact that he was concerned made Arielle feel better. Of course there was no way to completely alleviate the trepidation she felt every time she thought about the relationship she was about to enter with the three men.

“What will it be like on your ranch, darling?” she asked as they watched the sun go down.

“Just like the love we’ve had right here in your home,” he told her confidently. “But multiply that times three.”

She started to blush and covered her face in her hands. “I’m so afraid something is going to go wrong. I’m so afraid I’m going to do something wrong. I worry you’ll end up hating me and that your brothers really don’t like me.”

“I will never hate you.”

“What if your brothers don’t want me? I mean, they’re both a little younger than me, especially Luke. He must be six or seven years younger than I am. And both of them are so…” She struggled for the right words. “Well, big and good-looking. I’ve always been a skinny runt. Maybe they were just being polite when they said they liked me. Maybe they only like me as a friend and not as a…”

He stopped her with a kiss. “You don’t know my brothers very well yet.”

“That’s the problem. I don’t know them at all.”

“Neither of them is polite,” Jason said and laughed. “When it comes to women, they’re downright draconian. If they didn’t like you, believe me, you’d already know. When it comes to something as important as the rest of our lives, no one in my family is going to be very polite. You’ll never get anything but the unabridged truth from all of us.”

“I don’t know what to do with three men,” she told him.

“That’s okay, because we know what to do with a woman.”

She looked up at his handsome face in the last rays of the day’s sunlight. “I must be crazy to love you, Jason Wildback,” she told him.

“Don’t talk like that, Dr. Banks,” he said, and a wicked smile passed his face.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re going to get a spanking.”

She moaned with desire and moved her crotch against him. Her pussy lips rubbed against his leg through her jeans. “Take me to bed, darling,” she told him. Then she held him back and laughed as she placed her hands on the seat of her jeans. “Only don’t spank me tonight. My butt is still too sore from last night. A girl can only take so much, you know.”

He placed his arm around her and took her to bed. Their lovemaking was gentle and controlled. It was the best yet. Arielle had never felt as close to another human being.

The rest of the week passed in a blur, and Sunday morning and the trip to Shifter Valley finally arrived.

* * * *

Kyle Wildback had just finished scrubbing the kitchen floor. He looked into the formal dining room of their house. He hoped to see Luke at work in there, but his younger brother was nowhere to be seen.

“Where did you go, Luke?” Kyle called through their large turn-of-the-century mansion. Luke came down the winding stairway in the entrance hall at a run.

“I was upstairs putting on some of that new cologne I bought,” Luke said to Kyle as he joined him in the formal dining room. “You know, I think this was a bad idea to do all this work ourselves. We should have hired some cleaning people. The house is just too big. I don’t know how our parents ever kept it all straight.”

“Never mind that, Luke,” Kyle said. He felt nervous. It was Sunday morning. Their mate would arrive soon with Jason. This was the biggest day of his entire life. He wanted everything to be perfect. They would get two weeks to convince her to stay with them. He knew things weren’t set in stone with her yet. This was the time to make a good impression. “I wanted us to do all the work ourselves. It seems more personal somehow. What if she asks us about it? Are we just going to say we let other people work on our house for us and let Arielle think we just sit around on our rear ends all day and do nothing?”

“But we have the ranch to work,” Luke protested. He still didn’t see why they had to spend all of this time when they had the money to pay other people to do the work for them.

“The place needed a good cleaning, and it’s about time we learned how to do more than just be cowboys.” Kyle checked around the formal dining room and examined for dust bunnies in the corners of the large room. “Did you use the minivac in here like I told you to?”

Luke sighed. “You know I did. I went over everything twice.” Luke patted his brother on the back. “I’ve never seen you so wound up before.”

Kyle nodded that it was true. “This is the big day,” he said.

“Yeah, I couldn’t sleep a wink. I was awake thinking about it all night. That’s when I decided to come downstairs and vacuum again.”

“Good man,” Kyle said and gave him a smile.

“What if she doesn’t like us?”

“Don’t be stupid. She’s our mate. Of course she’s going to like us.” Kyle gave his brother a sly grin of encouragement, but he spoke in a tone of bravado that he really didn’t feel. “She’s going to do a lot more than like us after a while.”

“But she’s not a shifter,” Luke reminded him. “We’re probably going to seem awfully strange to her at first.”

“That’s why Jason told us it’s going to take some time. Besides, Jason seems to be doing pretty well with her so far from what I hear. He got her to agree to come out here and give it a try. We didn’t even know if she’d do that at first.” Kyle tried hard to instill some confidence into his younger brother. He thought he did a pretty good job, too, since he didn’t feel all that confident about it himself.

“I haven’t known a woman yet that didn’t like Jason. You and I aren’t exactly alphas like he is.”

“Hey, you and I do all right with women, too.”

“Those are ordinary women,” Luke said and looked down at the calamander wood floor of the dining room. “Arielle is special.”

“Stop whining like that or she’ll think you’re a baby,” Kyle told Luke.

“Thanks for bringing that up,” Luke said and looked more dejected than ever. “She’s six years older than me. She might think I’m a kid. She might not take me seriously.”

“She’s a year older than me. So what?”

Luke sat down in one of the chairs surrounding the formal dining set. There were twelve chairs around the long table. Their voices echoed in the big room. Kyle sat down next to Luke. “I feel like I do when I go to the dentist,” Luke said and moaned.

“Don’t you want us all to have a mate?”

“Yeah, I do. But I just didn’t know it would be this hard. I thought we’d meet her and start making love and live happily ever after.”

Kyle was about to say something. Then the sunshine on a vehicle outside the twelve-foot window caught his eye. The Suburban had just turned onto the circle drive in front of their house. Kyle reached across the table and tapped Luke on the arm.