Loving Lachlyn (Ashland Pride Two) (7 page)

Chapter 8

After packing a bag for herself and Jericho with borrowed clothes, she kissed her aunt and uncle goodbye and left with Alek and Jericho in the camper.  She sat at the kitchen table while Alek and Jericho sat in the front and talked about Ashland.  It sounded like any other small town she’d ever been in, with a few businesses, a school, and a small police force.  The drive didn’t take long, and when the camper turned into a hidden driveway, she leaned forward and watched out the windshield as a huge house came into view.

“How long have you and your family lived here?” she asked as Jericho parked off to the side so he didn’t block anyone’s vehicles.

Alek unbuckled his seatbelt and moved to open the side door so she could get out.  She took his hand and stepped down onto the gravel driveway.  Jericho came out last, holding their bags.

“About two years,” Alek said, and then explained that along with his family, who had rooms on the second floor, seven other mountain lions had joined them and had bedrooms on the third floor.

“This house originally belonged to a family that was hit by the Depression.  The husband went east to look for work, and the wife opened the house up to renters and slowly remodeled it to add more bathrooms and split up larger rooms into multiple smaller ones.”

His family had beaten them home and was already inside.  She’d been totally smitten with his adorable young cousins.  Only one woman lived in the house now, Samantha, who was mated to Alek’s uncles, Grant and Aaron.  His brothers and their mate lived in a converted apple barn on a farm in town that belonged to his Uncle Rhett and his mate, Lisa.  Rhett and Lisa hadn’t come to the dinner, but he promised to take her to meet them soon.

As they entered the grand foyer of the house, she could hear the chatter from deeper within the house and assumed it came from the kitchen.  Alek paused after he shut the door and said, “How about we save introductions for tomorrow?  If we go in the kitchen now, it will be after midnight before we get a chance to talk privately.”

She and Jericho agreed, and they followed Alek up the wooden stairs.  Her heart was pounding by the time they reached the second floor and stopped in front of the second door on the left.  Nerves made her tremble as excitement coursed through her while her bear pranced around in her mind, truly happy for having found both mates.

The large bedroom had a king-size oak sleigh bed, with matching dresser, nightstands, and an armoire that was open to reveal a flat screen television.  The floor was carpeted with thick, midnight blue plush.  When Alek flipped the light switch, a ceiling fan began to turn lazily, and the light fixture illuminated the room.  The door locked behind them, and he walked to the closet, pushing one of the sliding doors open.

“Tomorrow I’ll clear out drawers for you both in the dresser and make room in the closet.”  He toed off his shoes and pushed them inside the closet, and she and Jericho followed suit.  Jericho put their bag on the dresser and pulled out the small bag of toiletries, taking it into the bathroom.

When Jericho returned, Alek said, “Do you want me to go first?”

She glanced at Jericho, who gave a slight shrug, and she walked over to Alek and put her hands on the sides of his face.  She drew him down to her mouth and kissed him, smiling when he sighed and wrapped his arms around her waist.  “Go ahead, Alek, and then Jericho and I will tell you about us.”

Jericho joined them as they sat on the bed.  Alek began talking about their lives in King, Pennsylvania, where their pride had contained more than one hundred adult males, females, and children.

“Female lions don’t want things like relationships or families.  They’re cold and often cruel.  Mountain lion males are the ones who are the nurturers, the ones who want mates and children, and to make a home.  Once the females shift at age sixteen, they leave their fathers and brothers.”  He sighed, running a hand through his light brown hair.  His blue eyes dropped down to where his fingers drew an invisible pattern in the blanket.  “The females will have sex with males, even carry children, but they will abandon the children immediately and want nothing to do with them.  They don’t seem to even recognize their own offspring.  Many males have tried to have relationships with the females, to make a family with them, but they refuse.

“Where things get tricky is that while the females don’t want the males for anything outside of sex, they refuse to allow the males to pursue relationships outside of the pride.  When males would date humans, the females would threaten and even attack the women, driving them away.  It wasn’t until my brothers found their mate and left the pride that the females started to lose their power over the males.  We’d stayed in the pride because we didn’t know that truemates existed for our kind, until Ethan and Eryx mated Callie, and it was clear as crystal that they were meant to be together.  That hope is what prompted my family to leave the pride and move out here to Ashland.”

She tipped his face up with her finger, and his eyes were filled with sadness.  “You never knew your mom?”

“I know who she is, but she never acted like a mom, or even that she knew who I was.  Our father loved her, and he always hoped that she would come around, have an emotional epiphany, and suddenly want to be a wife and mother.”

She kissed his forehead and hugged him.  His arms went around her waist immediately, and the tension that had been evident in his body relaxed.  After several quiet minutes, he eased away and continued the story of their lives in Ashland.  The pride believed that the majority of the female lions had relocated into Canada after the deaths of two of the females at the hands of a girlfriend of a male pride member several years earlier.

Jericho asked, “And you haven’t heard from the females since?”

Alek said, “After my brothers first moved here, they got a nasty delivery in the form of some unflattering pictures meant to drive a wedge between them and Callie.  But, much worse than that, is back in April several females hired some thugs and came here to the house to kidnap the kids while we were all out hunting on the full moon.”

Lachlyn’s mouth fell open.  “What?”

Alek nodded.  “Henry escaped, and Sam bought us time to get home by convincing the thugs to take her instead.  The females disappeared over the border into Canada, and all the kids and Sam were safe, but it still haunts us all. How close we came to nearly losing the kids.”

Jericho’s voice was a low growl.  “What are you doing to prevent it from happening again?”

Alek stared at Jericho and then nodded.  “Now, we hunt in shifts.  Those who are home on the full moon take turns going out hunting so that the kids and Sam are never alone.  We stay vigilant.  And the Canadian authorities are in contact with your Uncle Don, to alert us if any of the females try to cross the border.”

Jericho snorted.  “Fat lot of good their human descriptions would do if they shifted and ran over.”

“It’s not a perfect system, but we haven’t heard from the females since then, and we’re hopeful that they’ve given up.”

Lachlyn could tell by the look on Alek’s face that he was certain that the females
had not
given up in their quest to have the males back under their oppressive thumbs.  She said, “Now you have a big bear to help keep the kids safe.”

Alek raised a brow.  “You said you were a bear.”

She grimaced.  “I am, but I’m a shifting dud.  I’ve never been able to shift.”  When he smiled in understanding, encouraging her to speak, she found herself telling him everything about herself, from the moment she realized she would most likely never shift, to the death of her parents and, most recently, her grandmother, to the situation with Jericho’s father.

Alek’s eyes flashed angrily, and he looked over her shoulder to Jericho.  “Are you safe here?  Both of you?”

Jericho nodded briefly.  “I don’t see how he could know that we are here.  We’ll just have to be careful not to use our real names.”

Alek straightened.  “Everything that I have is yours.  Whatever you need to be safe.  I’ll do my best to help.”

Jericho said, “I have an idea.”

“Oh?” she asked.

“We should change our last names.”

“To what?”  She was willing to do anything at all to be safe.  It wasn’t just that she wanted to be safe herself, but also she didn’t want anything to happen to Jericho.  Or Alek.

“Fallon,” Alek offered.  “I can marry Lachlyn, and she can change her last name, and Jericho, you can change your name legally.”

The room was dead silent for several moments, and Alek’s face heated with blush.  He began to stammer, “I didn’t mean, uh, Jericho, that you should marry me, too, or anything.”

Jericho barked out a laugh and slapped his thigh with his hand.  “Holy fuck, Alek, I know you didn’t mean that.  Shit.”  He started to laugh again, and Lachlyn thought that Alek’s confused face was too adorable.

Jericho finally stopped laughing.  “I know what you meant, Alek, and I think it’s a great idea.  I don’t wish to carry on with the name Knight any longer.  But you can’t marry her legally right now.  Her name would be on the marriage license and that would go into a database that anyone could access, even my dad.  Don told me earlier tonight that he knows a man who can make fake IDs.  We can use your last name for now on the fake IDs, and when we’re able to, we can change our names legally, and you can marry Lachlyn for real.”

He moved on his knees across the bed to where she sat with Alek.  Putting one hand on both of their shoulders, he said to Alek, “I love Lachlyn.  I’ve loved her since we were kids.  As my mate’s other mate, I see you as a brother and nothing more.”

Relief washed over Alek’s handsome face, and he grinned.  “I’m glad, Jericho.  I definitely welcome you into my family, as my mate’s other mate and as my brother.”

Lachlyn hugged her mates together, bracing herself between them as their arms wove around her and each other.  “Let’s keep each other safe.  And happy.”

Looking at Alek, Jericho said, “Are you ready to make love to your mate, Alek?  I think it’s time we solidified our new mating by making our mate scream our names.”

A devilish grin eased across Alek’s lush mouth, and Lachlyn felt her heart kick up a few notches.

“The walls are sound proofed, sweetheart,” Alek said as he gently pushed her back on the bed.  “Just so you know.”

“Then you don’t have to be quiet, either,” Lachlyn groaned as Alek pushed up the hem of her shirt and kissed her stomach.

“I won’t be.”  He grinned at her.

Jericho helped Alek strip her, and then they shed their own clothes.  Alek leaned over and looked down at her with bright blue eyes.  He lowered his head, brushing his lips across hers in silent invitation.  She wrapped her arms around his neck, playing her fingers through his soft, short hair as the kiss deepened.  Their tongues stroked and played together.  One of his hands slid down her side tentatively, and she could feel the tension in his shoulders.  She was nervous, too, because it wasn’t as if she’d ever dreamed that she’d wind up with two mates.

He left her mouth, dropping kisses on her chin and neck, across her collarbone, and biting lightly against the crux of her neck.  With aching slowness, he kissed down her chest, his hand moving upward at the same slow pace until he cupped her breast and kissed her nipple.  She drew in a deep breath, shivering when he stroked his tongue across the hardened tip and then sucked it into his mouth.

As he licked and sucked on her nipple, she opened her eyes and found Jericho, stretched out next to her, his dark eyes smoldering.  One corner of his mouth lifted slightly, and she saw acceptance and understanding in his eyes.  He wasn’t going to touch her right now, because this was her first time with Alek.

She mouthed,
I love you
.

Love you
, he mouthed back.

Turning back to Alek, she slipped her hands through his hair and scratched her nails lightly against his scalp.  He shivered and made a soft groaning sound, sucking her nipple deeply into his mouth, making her arch her back in appreciation.  He lavished her other breast with the same slow attention, until her whole body throbbed.  With a low growl, he kissed down the center of her body, pushing her legs apart and slipping between them.

His fingertips brushed over the neatly trimmed curls that covered her sex, and he inhaled deeply.  Exhaling on a growl, he pushed her knee up and to the side with one hand, spreading her body wide for him.  Her hands dug into the comforter in anticipation.

The first stroke of Alek’s tongue up her pussy made the world around her drop away.  There was nothing but the feel of his tongue as it glided around her throbbing clit and dipped into her core, the firm grip of his hand on her thigh as he kept her leg open, and the soft tickling brush of his hair against her inner thigh.  Sucking her clit into his mouth, he rubbed the tip of his tongue around in dizzying circles.  Her stomach clenched and heat flooded her.  A finger pushed inside her, ratcheting up her desire, as his tongue tormented her, pushing her close to the edge.  A second finger pushed inside her and she cried out a little, driving up her hips.  His top teeth grazed her swollen clit and pleasure spiked through her.  Her climax hit her fast and hard, and she cried out in bliss, “Alek!”