The Dom Unites Wolf and Panther [Unchained Love 5] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (13 page)

“Hey there, Curtis, come on in,” called Larry before Lucy could speak. She just smiled and waved at Larry’s office door.

“I’m here, too,” said Nicholas as they entered Larry’s office.

“Coffee please, Lucy,” called Larry as he pushed a pile of papers to the side of his desk and leaned back in his chair.

“I hope we’re not interrupting anything important,” said Curtis, looking at the paperwork Larry should obviously be working on.

“Nah, that’s fine. I hear Autumn caught that escaped rogue panther and gave him another headache with that enormous purse of hers.”

“Stabbed him in the cheek with a knitting needle, too,” said Curtis proudly before the craziness of the last few sentences hit him and he had to stifle a laugh.

Larry snorted then they all laughed. “You’ve gotten yourself a feisty woman there all right.”

Lucy appeared with a coffeepot and a tray of mugs. She set it on the table then handed them each a blueberry muffin. “Courtesy of Jubilee,” she explained as she exited the room then shut the door behind her.

Curtis wondered if Larry’s cheeks pinkened slightly at the mention of Jubilee, who he was mated to, but he wasn’t here to talk about anyone’s romance except his own.

Once they each had a mug of coffee in their hands, Larry asked, “Now, what can I do for you folks today?”

Curtis was almost certain Larry knew exactly what they wanted. Curtis hoped this meant he wasn’t as opposed to the idea as he’d seemed to be the last time they’d met. Larry was leaving it up to them to lead the conversation.
Right. Where to begin? Always lead with an unexpected line.

“The county officials are very positive about selling off that unused road and land reservation beside your property. If we don’t hurry up and offer for it, who knows who they may sell it to. It could be anyone at all.”

Larry nodded but said, “Or we could buy it ourselves and leave it vacant.”

“That might be expensive if you ended up in a bidding war with someone. We have the best chance of getting it because we brought it to their attention.”

“You’ve made your point, but you haven’t convinced me. Keep talking.”

Curtis took a deep breath.
Hit him with a one, two.
“We’ll enclose our land with a high fence to discourage unexpected visitors and we’ll have a manned gate to check photo ID before anyone can enter our property. As well as that, we’ll install cameras on the fence between our properties. We’ll run the cable through the fence itself to make it more discreet.”

Larry looked thoughtful and nodded. Curtis glanced at Nicholas and he took over the conversation. “Our aim would be to use as many people from Carnal Connections as possible when we need extra actors or helpers on the set. We have our own regulars and specialists who we know and trust. But instead of simply hiring thirty or forty extras for a crowd scene, people about whom we know nothing, we’d ask your folks if they’d come work for us for the day, that way keeping down the chances of undesirables getting on our property, far less on yours. Not that we’ve had much trouble along those lines, but it’s an added precaution and your people may enjoy the work, too.”

Larry sat forward in his chair and Curtis knew that at least he was starting to get interested in the project. “So how do you plan to do this? Move an entire movie studio ten miles?”

“Almost everything we have is designed to be dismantled and stored when it’s not in use. It’s built to come apart and fold up flat,” Curtis replied.

“I understand that, but you also have two actual buildings there.”

“They’re clapboard. They’ll come apart. We’ll draw designs so we can put them back together again with minimal trouble. Some things we can’t move like the concrete floors and wall tiling, but most equipment, even the bathroom fittings, we can pull apart if we want to,” added Nicholas.

“Transportation won’t be that big a deal as we’ll have the access road. We’ll leave that exactly as it is until everything building-wise is finished, water, power installed and so on, then we’ll likely just cover it with a ton of dirt that we can sweep off again if we ever need a road for a scene.”

Larry nodded again. “Autumn told me you’re masters at making things appear more solid and larger than they really are. Let me see if JB’s available to join us. He’ll have a better understanding of these things than I do.”

Larry pulled his cell phone out of his pants pocket and hit a number. “Hey, JB, can you drop by my office for a little while? Uh-huh. Okay. He’ll be here in ten.”

Larry asked them a range of questions about their regular staff. Not just Raegan, who he’d met so briefly, but also Zara, their wardrobe mistress, Peyton, who was their chief makeup artist, and their props and stunt people as well.

A sharp rap on the door indicated JB had arrived. Curtis knew his real name was Javier Basil, but he also knew Ramona was pretty much the only person who ever called him Javier. Curtis could understand why. It was a bit of a mouthful of a name. Although Curtis wasn’t exactly a top-ten name, either.

“Hey, JB, pull up a chair. Curtis, how about you explain the whole dismantle-then-set-up plan to JB and let him judge how long it’ll take? That’s assuming he reckons it’s possible at all,” said Larry.

Curtis ran through the story again, and JB pulled a notepad out of a pocket as he did so, grunting from time to time and taking a few notes.

“JB?” asked Larry.

“It’s definitely doable. Not much different from those traveling circuses and so on. Instead of having a bunch of small sheds like they do now, I’d advocate storing as much as possible of the things they will still be needing in one of their buildings and dismantling the sheds first. Transport them here and set them up—you’d need to have poured the concrete pad to rest them on first and let it set—and have one large storage shed. Then they could bring over their equipment and put it in the shed before dismantling the buildings and transporting them here. It’d be a bit of work scheduling the logistics to make sure everything was ready, allowing for bad weather and such, but doable. Quite definitely doable,” concluded JB.

Curtis leaned back in his chair with a sigh. It was such a relief the builder had agreed with him. It’d seemed to work to him and Nicholas, and Raegan had been in on the discussions, too, but hearing it from JB made it all seem so much more likely to happen.

“I assume you will be including Autumn in these plans,” said Larry.

“We will be mating with her when we’re all set up here and have a home to bring her to,” said Curtis.

“Where are you going to make your home? On the set somewhere or on your new land?” asked JB.

Nicholas jumped straight in. “We wondered if we could have a small apartment like yours, Larry, in the main building. Just a large bedroom we can also use as a sitting room and a private bathroom. The set will have a lunchroom and enough space if we want to eat there or entertain there, and Autumn has her own favorite places to work here with her friends, so it’s all we need.”

“You owe me ten dollars,” said JB to Larry.

“What?” Curtis looked at Nicholas, who shrugged his shoulders.

Larry opened his wallet and handed a ten-dollar bill to JB then said, “Weeks ago JB decided to renovate the entire top floor of this building into apartments for mated families.”

“I said one was sure to be requested before Thanksgiving, and it’s only October now,” said JB, pocketing the money.

“You guessed about us before we knew ourselves?” asked Curtis.

“You, Serena, or Verity, even Diane. I figured they’d be needed.”

“Well, let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. Nothing is decided yet. If you are to live here there are exams to pass to ensure you’ll fit in with the community. As well as that you still have to sell your other property and buy the land you want. But at this stage I’ll say I’m happy for you to proceed to the next step. But understand you have not been approved and accepted to live here as yet.”

“I understand,” said Curtis, but nevertheless he was convinced everything would be all right. The county officials were positive, the developers were positive, now he had the community’s agreement. What could possibly go wrong now?

* * * *

Autumn spent a very long time thinking about what she wanted. And what she wanted, what she really, truly wanted, was Curtis and Nicholas. Not a short-term relationship but an ongoing one. A true mating. Marriage, as the human side of her would call it.

Could a werewolf and a half-panther live together though? That was the main question. A quick look around her at the community demonstrated that panthers and humans could be happy and werewolves and humans could be happy. But could a three-species union work? Well, the sex sure works just fine,
she reminded herself with a giggle.
Yeah, but life together is going to be more than sex.

Finally, she decided to phone Gaynor and Ramona to talk in depth about living with mixed-species matings. These two women knew Curtis and Nicholas the best out of all her friends and had been mated the longest. Hopefully, they could offer her the advice she needed. One part of her wanted to go ahead and take these two men as her partners. The other part of her was sure such a decision could only lead to heartbreak.
There’s no divorce in shape-shifter matings. If I make a mistake, I’m stuck with it. I can’t afford to get it wrong.

“Come to my house. We can use the den, and if JB or Omar come home, they’ll still have the great room to hang out in,” said Ramona.

“Thank you. I’ll tell Gaynor,” said Autumn. She hadn’t really thought about it before, but with Omar as Alpha of the pack, likely he’d quite often need a private place to hold a small meeting or when people needed to talk to him in confidence. But Ramona and JB wouldn’t want to have to leave the house every time that happened or sit in the bedroom. That wouldn’t be an issue for her, as Curtis and Nicholas each had an office at the movie studio. Plus several of the sets would be vacant and they could use one of them if they needed more space.

Ramona opened the door to Autumn and took her through the house to a small but cozy room with a television, a computer, and two big, comfortable-looking couches. Gaynor was already sitting on one of the sofas. “Once you sit down you’ll never get up again. This so nice,” she said.

“This fabric’s so soft. It would be a dream to sew,” Autumn said, rubbing her hand over the covering on the arm of the couch.

Both the women looked at her questioningly. Autumn sighed. She’d asked for this time with them, but now she didn’t really know where to start. Finally, she blurted out, “Nicholas and Curtis want me to mate with them, and I love them, I really do, but can a cat, a dog, and a human hope for happiness together? It just seems too illogical for words.”

“Why?” asked Gaynor.

“What?”

“Why is it illogical? Why shouldn’t you be happy if you love them and they love you?”

“Because I’m half-human and half-panther. Curtis is human, but Nicholas is a wolf.”

“So what?”

Ramona took charge. “Why do you love Curtis? What is it that attracts you to him?”

“Curtis is a Dom, but he doesn’t rule over people. He lets people do their own thing while he sees them going the right way. He only intervenes when he sees a problem about to happen. He lets me live my life my way but still watches over me to make sure everything is all right. I like that he directs rather than controls. Except in the dungeon,” she replied.

“Now Nicholas. What do you love about him?” asked Ramona.

“He knows what he wants and has the personality to engage other people. He makes them want to join with him. I think that’s why the two men work together so well. They complement each other. Nicholas has people happily following him and Curtis is there to get them back on track if something isn’t going well,” Autumn said, remembering her previous thoughts about the men as she spoke.

“So it’s nothing at all about whether they’re human, or panther, or wolf, or puma. It’s all about them as people,” said Gaynor.

“Yes.”

“So why do you think your different species will be an issue?”

“There wouldn’t be a saying ‘fight like cats and dogs’ if there wasn’t a reason for it. Dogs do chase and kill cats. But it’s not just about me. Even if Nicholas and I never really argue, what if the men argue about me and end up fighting between themselves and lose their business as well as their best friend? It would be all my fault. This is a three-species mating. So far we’ve only seen two species mating together. It’s just another dimension that may go horribly wrong.”

“Do you fight with them?” asked Ramona.

“Actually, no. Occasionally, they’ve been a little bit controlling, but we’ve always worked out a good compromise.” Autumn decided not to mention that the compromise had been cutting off her panties instead of her precious shirt that time at the movie studio.

“Have you ever heard Nicholas and Curtis arguing, really arguing I mean? I haven’t,” said Gaynor.

“No. But what if they do?”

“Why would they suddenly start arguing now? You’ve been together for a while now and there’s no precedent for it,” concluded Gaynor.

“Why do you think a three-species mating will be any different from a two-species mating? All people have their own personalities and quirks, don’t they?” added Ramona.