* * * *
Shilo realized even before she opened eyes that the hand gliding over her back didn't belong to Dante. He'd roused her earlier when he'd kissed her and climbed out of the bed.
Her belly quivered. Liquid heat filled her channel as Maurice cupped and massaged her buttocks and then slipped his hand along her cleft and pushed a finger inside of her. She heard his breath grow more ragged as he realized she was wet for him already. He shifted over her abruptly, pushing her legs wide. The head of his cock replaced the finger he withdrew. The weight of his chest pressed against her back as he settled lower, propping himself on his elbows.
He dipped his head and bit down on her shoulder just hard enough to arouse a flock of goose bumps as he curled his hips and probed deeper.
Shilo let out the breath she hadn't even realized she was holding and then sucked another in sharply as he shoved a hand beneath her belly and lifted her hips upward so that his next thrust seated his turgid length fully inside of her. A gasp of pleasure left her as he withdrew slightly. She pulled her knees up, arching her back to lift her hips upward for his next thrust. He drove into her again, grinding his pelvis against her buttocks, making her whimper with the exquisite pleasure of feeling him so deeply.
A shudder went through him. He reared upward abruptly, caught her hips and lifted them higher, spread his legs to push hers wider. He drove into her again, hard and fast, holding her hips. Dropping forward again, he caught himself on one arm and slipped his other hand from her hip to her belly. Finding her clit with one finger, he teased it as he slipped slowly in and out, driving her toward her peak within moments. She released a sobbing breath and groaned as her body quaked with release.
He drew it out, stroking her channel, teasing her clit until her cries of repletion sharpened. When he'd wrung the last shudders of pleasure from her, he withdrew and rolled her onto her back. She opened her eyes to look up at Maurice as he pressed his still turgid member into the mouth of her sex again. Catching her ankles, he drew her legs straight up until her calves were resting against his shoulders and leaned into her as he slowly regained possession of her channel. She curled her fingers into the bedding as he set a pounding pace that built the heat again, caught her body on its downward spiral and lifted her right back up to another sharper, higher peak.
She uttered a choked cry as bliss exploded through her again. He growled low his chest, drove deeply, straining against her as if he wanted to crawl inside of her as his cock jerked and bathed her womb with his seed.
Instead of withdrawing when the shudders finally ceased to wrack him, he lowered her legs to either side of him and settled over her. He kissed her then, covered her mouth and thrust his tongue inside to explore her with a fervor that belied his satisfaction of moments before. As weak as she was with repletion, she responded with all of the enthusiasm she could muster. He pressed his head against the bed beside her when he broke the kiss, still breathing raggedly. “I want to stay here forever,” he muttered.
Shilo twisted her head to look at his face. He chuckled huskily, heaved himself off of her and then rolled onto his back and dragged her on top of his chest. She dropped her cheek to his hard shoulder when they settled, too weak to move.
"Next time I'll make you come three times,” he murmured in satisfaction.
"Oh god,” she groaned. “I don't know if I can handle that."
* * * *
Dante frowned at the display on his cell, searching for a strong signal, and finally flipped it open, found the number he wanted, and pressed the dial button, holding it to his ear while he waited for the pick up at the other end.
"Dante?"
"Tell the others its time and then bring them to me."
He flipped the phone closed and thrust it into his pocket, glancing around at the grim faces of the other men. “They're on their way."
Maurice frowned. “You sure of this?"
Dante's expression tightened. After a moment, however, he tamped his anger at being questioned. “I'm sure.” He narrowed his eyes, studying Shilo as she puttered in her garden, pulling weeds. Finally, he dragged his attention from her and surveyed the clearing.
"Shilo's going to be ... distressed."
Dante glanced at Jessie. “There's no alternative,” he responded grimly. “I won't allow them to continue as a threat to Shilo and I'm honor bound to protect the pack. There'll be considerably less collateral damage if we meet them here. And when they disappear, they won't be anywhere around our people."
"It'll be dark before they get here,” Kane said, studying the sky.
"Yes. Better for us. And I won't have to worry about a ruse to get Shilo inside. Once she goes in to cook, I want the three of you to secure her beasts in that copse of trees over there, well out of the range of fire.” His face lightened, a faint smile curling his lips. “Be careful with Shilo's pregnant cow."
Jessie chuckled, but shook his head. “You know, of course, there'll be no separating her from that damned cow?"
Relaxing fractionally, Dante grinned. “I know. We'll have to build a barnyard. I've been thinking we could move to that tract I bought on the edge of town, build a new place there. It'll be a better place to rear our pups anyway."
"I'd feel a hell of lot better if Shilo was there now,” Maurice said grimly.
"Me, too,” Dante retorted, “but you know what happened the last time I left someone else to watch her."
Maurice made a sound of impatience. “They're going to start blasting the minute we shift."
"Which is why we're going to make damned sure we draw the fire away from the house."
"I'd rather hogtie her and put her out in the woods with those fucking beasts of hers, Dante,” Kane said angrily. “What if they flank us and start firing into the house?"
Dante paled slightly. “They'll think they have her,” he ground out impatiently. “They'll want to surround the place when they come in. I don't like it any fucking more than any of you do, but it's what we've got to work with. A confrontation is inevitable. I'd rather it was on my terms, under my control. She'll be on the floor and surrounded by the best shield we can devise. We'll draw them away from the house. Just watch them. If anyone even looks like he's thinking about firing toward the house, take them out."
* * * *
Shilo had sought peace in working in her garden, but she realized fairly quickly she wasn't going to find it. The moment she settled to plucking at the weeds, she went into zen meditation phase and her mind went right back to her dilemma.
As much as she was enjoying having Dante and his pack staying with her, she had never been more thoroughly confused in her life.
When Dante had taken her as his lover, she'd been certain she understood the situation. He was horny. She was needy, and they were just satisfying those urges they both felt. Although she'd been afraid, even then, she was going to live to regret it, she'd told herself that she was just going seize the day, enjoy what she could while she could because she got damned little opportunity to enjoy life.
She hadn't expected to find herself on an emotional rollercoaster, though.
She didn't know what to think of herself anymore, and it was for damned sure she didn't know what to think about the men. They desired her. She could see that in the way they looked at her, they way they behaved toward her. She felt
more
than that, though. There was almost a sense of ... possessiveness in the way they behaved toward her, all of them, as if she belonged to them, and yet she couldn't tell that they were jealous toward one another, which seemed to belie that it was even possible that they felt possessive toward her.
Of course, everything she'd learned about lycans pointed to a ‘pack’ mentality, a brotherhood where there was a very clear pecking order within the group, but they still lived, worked, played, and fought together as a group.
She wasn't entirely certain of where she fit in to the group, but she had the sense, somehow, that she'd become a part of it, that they looked upon her as one of their own. That was the only thing that made sense given the possessiveness and the lack of jealousy among them over the prospect of sharing her—unless they just didn't care anything at all about her, and she could be completely wrong, but they seemed to be fond of her.
She had mixed feeling about her suspicion that she'd somehow been ‘absorbed’ into the pack. On the one hand, she couldn't help but enjoy feeling as if she was actually a ‘part’ of something even vaguely family-like. She'd never consciously acknowledged that it was something she wanted, yearned for, because she'd never expected to have it, but that need was there all the same and they fed it, filled a hunger she hadn't even realized was there before they'd come along.
On the other hand, she distrusted the feelings for the simple reason that she wasn't lycan and knew she couldn't belong even if she wanted to.
And beyond that, she didn't trust the feeling on the grounds that she couldn't think of anything they'd said or done to make her think that way, implied by word or deed, that this was anything even close to a permanent situation.
The only thing she could think of that would be worse than never having a ‘family’ at all was having one briefly, just long enough to feel as if she belonged, and then being abandoned when they all cleared out and went back to their lives.
She didn't really understand the way things seemed to be going insofar as the sharing went either. They'd been with her a little over a week. Half that time, she'd been exclusively Dante's lover and just when she'd decided she must have misunderstood what Maurice seemed to be implying, Dante had yielded his place and Maurice had become her lover.
It hadn't particularly bothered her at the time that Maurice had suggested that was the way things stood. They were all handsome and desirable. Any red blooded female would have lust in her heart around men like them. She knew very well that there were plenty of people who considered that sort of thing completely immoral, but she didn't see it that way. She was an adult. They were adults. If they wanted to have sex, they were well within their rights to, without anyone praying over them or moralizing over it. The only time it became wrong, as far as she could see, was when it hurt someone.
That wasn't to say she hadn't felt some guilt. She had.
She'd still been struggling to go with the flow, though. As disappointed as she was that Dante didn't seem to care enough about her not to pass her on to Maurice, she'd reminded herself that it was just sex. It had never been intended to be anything else.
And Maurice had certainly not disappointed her in any way.
She'd actually been rather stunned about that.
She hadn't been exaggerating when she'd told Julie she'd never had great sex, or even really good sex. She hadn't lied to Dante when she'd told him she'd never had a climax before. She'd thought she had, but he'd certainly disproved that theory.
And then Maurice had promptly blown the next theory out of the water, that she'd found ‘the right man', because sex with Maurice was great sex, too.
Maybe it was her? Maybe
she
had changed?
Or maybe it was just being with lycans? Maybe, just as they said that she had some sort of special effect on them, the same was true of their effect on her?
Maybe. She wasn't certain she believed that. The truth was, she'd found them all wildly attractive from the start, but she'd been around other lycans and she didn't feel that way—far from it.
So was it them? Or her? And was she going to feel the same way when Maurice expected her to go to Kane or Jessie? Or Kane
and
Jessie?
Because she'd become certain she hadn't misunderstood that part. She felt that she could sense the anticipation in both Kane and Jessie, could tell by the way they'd begun to behave a little more familiarly with her, tease her and flirt with her, that they were ‘courting’ her.
It wasn't that she didn't find them appealing. Unfortunately, she did, and she was looking forward to it, but what happened next? She played musical beds until she got to the end and they packed up and left?
It she was honest with herself, that was exactly what she'd thought would happen from the start. She was pretty sure she was right, too.
The problem was, and this was where the real turmoil came in, she didn't want that to be the end. She was still inclined to seize the day, and at the same time she couldn't bear to think she wasn't ever going to have Dante as a lover again. Or Maurice.
She was afraid that it was more than that, though—a lot more than that.
There was something, beyond lust, that had appealed to her about Dante almost from the very first—him more than the others. Despite all the things he'd done, even though she had doubted her sanity when she'd wanted to trust him, she had, because he'd gained her trust when he'd rescued her and taken her into his home to protect her. He'd wanted her then. She'd seen that he was fighting the urges prompted by her psychic abilities, but he had resisted because he had integrity. He'd felt it was his place to protect her, and he'd protected her from himself, as well. That trust had made her feel more secure with him, safer, than she'd ever felt before in her life, and she was very much afraid it had inspired other feelings for him, too.
In fact, she knew it had. She wasn't just unhappy because she wanted him for her lover and he seemed content to share her. She was unhappy because she cared about him, a lot.
And she was thoroughly confused because she also had feelings for Maurice.
She was fond of Kane and Jesse, too.
She didn't feel the least damned bit ‘sisterly’ toward any of the four. She liked them. She desired them, and she knew she was going to miss them all terribly when they left.
She was so screwed, she thought miserably! She didn't just like them. She loved them, needed them, wanted them in her life.
How had something so simple as what had seemed no more than healthy, natural animal lust become so terribly complicated?
What had happened between ‘seize the day’ and ‘my world's going to collapse when they leave'?
There was nothing she could do about it, not now. It would've been bad enough if she'd just had herself a thoroughly rousing good time of an orgy. Famine after that kind of feast to the senses would've been hell. And not only would it have been hard to get used to not having
them
—she knew, she'd sensed from the first, that it was them—she wasn't going to feel any of the things they made her feel, ever, again, because no one else, ever, had been able to make her feel those things before.
The realization that she wished it was more than that, though, meant that she was forewarned that she was going to have a lot more to deal with than just lack of sex, or lack of great sex.
She pushed the thoughts away after a while, understanding, and realizing at the same time that understanding wasn't going to solve the dilemma.
After a time, when she'd finally managed to beat those disturbing thoughts and emotions into abeyance, a different sort of discomfort finally managed to wind its way through her psyche—uneasiness.
She couldn't entirely pinpoint what it was that made her uneasy, but something just seemed ‘off'. Pausing from time to time, she looked around, wondering what had brought on the sense of ‘wrongness'. She couldn't tell that anything seemed out of place, though. Dante and the others had gone out to ‘reconnoiter', but they had done that several times a day ever since they'd arrived just over a week earlier.
Shaking off the uneasiness after a while, she left her garden and went inside to bathe before she put supper on. To her surprise, Maurice was standing in the doorway of her bedroom as she came out. Throwing him a questioning look, she moved to her bureau and took out clean clothes, more than half expecting him to try to coax her into the bed before she could get her clothes on.
Instead, he waited until she'd dressed and moved up behind her, settling his hands on her shoulders. She lifted her head, smiling at his reflection when he wrapped his arms around her. He dipped his head, nuzzling her neck. “You know I'm mad about you, don't you, Hummingbird?” he murmured.
Shilo's heart skipped a beat. She tried to turn to look at him, but he caught her wrists as she moved, pulling her arms behind her. She was still trying to figure out what was going on when a sharp tearing sound caught her attention. She glanced toward it instinctively and saw Dante was striding toward her and Maurice with the roll of duct tape from under her sink, his expression grim.
Taking the strip he'd torn from the roll, he wound it around her wrists. She uttered a disbelieving laugh, staring down at him in stunned surprise as he knelt and bound her ankles as he had her wrists. “Dante! What are you doing?” she asked, trying to convince herself they were teasing her, that it was some sort of game, and completely unable to do so. She looked at him with wide, frightened eyes when he straightened. “You're scaring me."
He settled his hand along her cheek. “I'm sorry as hell, baby. Nobody's going to hurt you. I promise."
Maurice scooped her up into his arms when Dante moved away.
She saw when they turned that Jessie and Kane were carrying her couch through the door of her bedroom. They stood holding it while Dante shoved her bed out of the way and then set it on the floor and tipped it on the front edge.
"What are you doing? What's happening?” she asked fearfully as Maurice crossed the room and settled her on her feet on the bedding Dante had carefully folded on the floor. “I don't understand,” she whispered hoarsely, her chin wobbling as Maurice straightened away from her.
His face was taut. “We're only trying to protect you, Hummingbird,” he said gruffly.
She bit her lip as he strode from the room. Jessie and Kane, looking equally grim faced, followed him. She looked up at Dante, who'd grasped her around the waist to steady her as Maurice moved away. He stroked her face soothingly. “I'm sorry, baby, but it was the only way."
"Why?” she asked, a tremor in her voice.
Dante stared at her pale, stricken face and felt his guts tighten and twist into a knot of remorse. He hadn't wanted to scare her, hadn't considered that it might scare as much as he could see it did, but he knew that he was doing the right thing, the only thing he could do. He settled his palms on her cheeks, nuzzling his face against her temple in apology. He had to protect her, though, and he knew her well enough by now to know he couldn't count on her cooperating, couldn't trust her to just do as he told her to.
Her scent filled him with the myriad of emotions he'd come to expect—desire, love, possessiveness, the fierce need to protect. He caught the scent of her fear. He hated that, but he also caught the scent of the chemical change within her that told him his seed had taken root within her and her body was already nurturing their child. He had to protect both of them. She'd get over the fear. He wouldn't get over it if anything happened to her or their baby. “You're carrying my baby, Shilo. I need to know you'll be safe. Be good for me and stay put."
Tears clouded her eyes. “What's happening?” she asked fearfully. “Please, Dante. Tell me."
He shook his head fractionally and brushed a light kiss across her lips. “I love you, Shilo. Just stay put and you'll be safe. It will all be over soon."