Mated to the Jaguars - Paranormal M/F/M Menage (8 page)
They’d been apart far too long.
Please let there be a way for this to all work out.
She lowered her head beside him and went to sleep.
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When her eyes opened next there was one thing she was sure of:
this wasn’t the spirit world.
She was in her human form—something that had never happened before outside the mortal realm.
Her wrists and ankles were bound by iron loops that connected diagonally to two posts flanking each side of her.
She gaped down at herself to see that she was only wearing a tiny jaguar patterned bikini.
What the fuck is going on?
She was on a desolate plain, hard packed gravel beneath her and a black starless sky above her.
There was a whispery howl coming from all around her.
Like gusting wind, except there was no wind.
She realized it was the sound of demon voices.
Michelle tested the restraints.
They had no give.
What if she transformed?
Would she tear herself apart?
That would be fine if this was the spirit world.
She’d merely wake up.
She had no idea what the Hell this place was.
“Sorry for the intrusion,” a male voice came from behind her.
Michelle craned her head to look.
She recognized the tall pale-skinned man with long black hair as none other than Caquix.
Instead of a suit he was wearing some black leather body-suit and a cape made of black feathers.
For a moment her terror was overcome by a sense of awe.
“And sorry for binding you.”
He came around to stand in front of her.
“I wasn’t sure how you’d react, so I had to take measures to protect myself.
Especially after Maximon tried to kill me at the café.”
She was suspended with her body prone to him.
Her breaths grew more rapid.
The figure before her was as fearsome as a fireball.
She feared his touch as much as she would a hot poker.
“I had to interfere with your little excursion with Votan.
Do you realize what he was about to do?”
She shook her head a millimeter in each opposing direction.
“He was going to hold you down in your stream until your goddess essence consumed you.”
The words were gibberish strung together to her ears.
She had to reach through her fear to comprehend them.
“What?”
“You wished to understand why Ixchel bonded with two mates.
The only way to do that is to become Ixchel.
He was going to force you.
Michelle was going to be destroyed and only Ixchel would remain for this lifetime.”
Her gaze lowered.
It was true.
That’s how she would learn all her goddess motives.
Votan was going to meet her in her stream.
All he had to do was push her into it and hold her down.
He was stronger than her in all realms.
She wouldn’t have been able to escape the stream no matter how much it overwhelmed her.
“Oh my God.”
“I know, my dear.
It’s terrible.
He’s done it to you before.
That’s how I knew he planned to do it again.”
She eyed him.
“You were watching us?”
“Yes.
I was concerned for you.”
He turned his face away.
“I care a great deal for you, Ixchel.
I may not be one of the B’alam, but you’ve favored me more than once in the past.
I’ve treasured those lifetimes.”
He faced her once again.
Now his chin tipped down and his gaze became meek.
“I’ve missed you.”
The words weren’t resonating with her.
She sensed darkness from him.
It was as if his aura was choking her in black smoke.
“Votan hasn’t learned his lesson.
He still treats you as his property.
He’s a brute.
He’s always been.
Then there’s Maximon.
He was very serious with another woman before you arrived.
Jerrica.
He was going to ask her to marry him.
Your goddess self disrupted this as a matter of whim.
It wasn’t fair to him, or that poor girl.”
“It wasn’t whim.”
He tilted his head sideways and spoke gently.
“I’m sorry to say it was.
You’ve been alternating between Votan and Maximon for the last ten lifetimes.
This time you couldn’t decide, so you bonded with them both.
You’d been thinking about doing that for several lifetimes now.
You finally took the plunge.”
Her face twisted in disgust.
Was that really it?
Was she really that petty game player Votan had described?
“It hasn’t worked out.
You’ve alienated them both.
The right thing to do is to break your bond with both of them.”
“Both of them?”
“Votan wants his goddess.
He’ll force you to become her regardless of what you want.
Maximon deserves to return to bliss he had before you disrupted his life.”
He reached for her with a black gloved hand.
Michelle cringed as his fingers connected to her cheek.
“Bond with me.
I’m here, without your mark on my spirit, and yet still—painfully—in love with you.
I can help you break your bond with both of them.”
His voice grew lilting.
“We can have a beautiful life in my
Manhattan
condo.
I’m just as wealthy as the two of them.
And I have work for you.
It’s a marketing degree, right?
I can put you in the top advertising company in
New York
.”
Michelle strained her neck to try to get his hand off her face.
“We could have a beautiful life together.
You wouldn’t have the strife of trying to reconcile two men who hate each other—who will resent you for forcing them into that situation.
Votan already does.
Maximon will too once he realizes you’re responsible for it all.
Come away with me instead, Ixchel.
I’ll treat you as my equal.
We’ll thrive together.”
“This is how you treat an equal?
Chaining them up?”
The corner of his red eye twitched.
“I explained that.”
“I’m not going to attack you.
Let me loose.”
Now his brows lowered by a tiny margin.
It was enough for her to notice the cruelty in his eyes.
“Tell me your thoughts first.
I’ve laid my heart bare to you.
I’m aching to know your answer.”
Her gut was wrenched with her fear, but anger gave her the strength to challenge him.
“Not.
Interested.”
His voice dropped an octave.
“Why not?”
“Who do you think you’re kidding?
You and I were never lovers.
I can’t stand to be near you.”
He spun away from her to pace a short distance.
“You prefer your harem?
It shouldn’t surprise me.
You always were a whore.”
Oh, fuck.
She tried to squeeze her hands through the metal loops.
“You don’t think my dick is as good as theirs?”
He strode back and yanked her top off.
“Don’t touch me!”
Her naked breasts made her face and chest redden.
She struggled with every ounce of her strength.
Caquix shoved his hand into her bikini bottom.
Michelle screamed.
He rubbed against the hood of her sex.
“I bet I could make you come.
From what I’ve seen, you’re a nymphomaniac.”
“I’ll kill you, you fucking creep!”
She couldn’t bear more than a few seconds of violation.
She shifted to her jaguar form.
Then it was as if she fell through the restraints and the gravel beneath her.
She landed on all fours on top of her stream.
Shifting to her true form had restored her power.
She stood panting and feeling sick inside.
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Votan stared at Ixchel’s sleeping jaguar form through human eyes.
She hadn’t met him in her stream as they planned.
The only other place she could be is Maximon’s stream.
The thought put a knot in his stomach.
When she took her jaguar form she must have gotten an instinctive memory of what he’d done to her in the past.
She wasn’t going to have it during this lifetime.
He should have known—forcing her to accept her goddess essence was the crime that had made her leave him before.
Here he was, committing the same stupid mistakes.
Votan rubbed a hand over his face.
He loved this damned cat with the whole of his heart, and yet he was too stupid to know how to keep her.
He was so disgusted with her games that he was going to commit the same crime once again.
He should have been focused on keeping her.
Instead he was focused on ‘winning.’
This was the attitude that kept causing him to be alone.
He told himself in jungle, when he was at his darkest moment, when he thought it was better to end this life than to continue without her:
if you get her again, cherish her.
Because what else does the mortal world have for him?
Once he accepted his god essence the mortal world became pointless.
He’d lived too many lifetimes to take joy in anything.
Food was sustenance.
Beautiful sights had been seen too many times for him to appreciate their majesty.
Every shade of mortal life was burned in his retinas.
The new thing this lifetime was the technology, but that just angered him.
He didn’t want to speak to people with tiny characters on tiny phone screens.
In previous lives he had only to watch out for pickpockets in
Italy
.
Now the Internet brought thieves into his email and through viruses into his computer.
There was no pleasurable novelty here for him to savor.
Just annoyance.
There were far too many people in the world.
He’d never seen things this crowded, the roads this congested.
How is it that every seat in every plane was always full?
Ixchel never got as jaded as him.
It was part of the reason he needed her.
She always preferred to remain as the human she was born.
She’d see the world through a fresh set of eyes and allow him to once again take some joy from it.
Hadn’t she done that already with the dinner?
It made him warm inside to think of experiencing this rest of this lifetime beside her.
And he’d almost ruined it.
Wake up, Votan.
He wished he could trust himself.
Ixchel always made him crazy.
That was the problem, wasn’t it?
He didn’t think straight when his beloved was back in his arms.
Now he had to find a way to keep her there.
***
Max opened his front door slowly, like a cautious cat fearful of the family dog.
He paused to listen.
There was only quiet.
He stepped in and took a few soft steps towards the bedrooms.
When he saw they were both empty he finally spoke up.
“Anyone here?”
Had they gone out to dinner?
It was past
.
A sickening thought struck him.
What if Votan had kidnapped her?
“Damn it.”
He strode back toward the kitchen to finish his search.
That’s when he found the note.
Votan refuses to talk here.
Going to his hotel.
Back as soon as I can.
My Cell:
XXX-XXX-XXXX
Max took a deep breath.
Well, now he didn’t have the luxury of panicking.
He knew where she was and how to reach her.
He had to wait.
The guest bed was in disarray.
They’d had sex there.
Votan had probably been as desperate as he was when he first saw her.
At least with the act done he could talk with her sensibly.
If she denied herself then the tension would never abate.
There could be no reasoning with him.
Something struck him.
He wasn’t jealous.
Why wasn’t he jealous?
He tried to picture Votan mounting his beloved to stir up some anger.
He thought of him thrusting vigorously on top of her.
His cock got hard.
Max took a steadying breath.
Was it that he didn’t really love her?
No.
He’d been thinking about her during every spare moment he had during the day.
Her sweet smile.
Her frank innocence.
He thought about going to her hometown to get married.
That way he could see where she came from.
It was important for him to befriend her parents.
He wanted them to trust him.
He’d been planning their whole lives together.
He never did that with any of his girlfriends.
Michelle was real.
His final girlfriend.
His wife.
Max dropped onto his couch.
His erection subsided, but the longing inside him remained strong.
He wanted her to be here now, even if it meant putting up with Votan.
He wanted to gaze into her beautiful goddess eyes.
And no.
It seemed he didn’t care if she had sex with Votan.
As strange as it was it felt like a familiar situation.
Votan somehow had more of a claim on her than he did.
He first felt this disconnect when he was in his jaguar form with Michelle.
There were memories of her inside his muscles, but even more memories of being without her.
Her presence was a gift that he could only occasionally cherish.
It was strange how dealing with his own kind transcended what he’d accomplished in his mortal life.
He was the millionaire and Votan was the lowly jungle cat.
Yet, there were godly dynamics at play that he could only sense the extent of.
What he expected to feel was tempered by what his god essence knew.
Maybe it could work out, this threesome.
He had more hope for it now than when he’d left that morning.
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