Moore, Gigi - Desiree's Lone Wolves [The Double R, Book 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

The Double R, Book 2

GIGI MOORE

Copyright © 2012

Prologue

The Double R, McCoy, Colorado

Six months ago

Sam Quarry nipped his older brother on the back of the neck, and Carson whimpered before turning to tackle Sam onto his back. He planted his large front paws firmly in Sam’s chest and bent to nip Sam’s ear, eliciting a good-natured yelp before Sam pushed Carson off and rolled to all fours.

The pair went at it like this for a long while, growling and circling each other, biting and wrestling until Sam finally submitted, rolling onto his back and exposing his vulnerable throat and underside. He drew his paws into his body just for good measure and to let his brother know that he was tired of the game. He waited for Carson to accept his surrender.

Like the big bad dominant asshole that he was, though, Carson decided to make his younger brother sweat, standing stiff legged and tall with his ears erect and his tail vertical and curled toward his back.

Carson stared at him so hard Sam swore that he was looking at their former pack alpha, Remy Bastien. When Carson finally strutted over, Sam held his breath, waiting before Carson pinned him to the ground and lowered his snout to Sam’s throat. If it had been any other wolf, Sam knew that he’d have been dead a long time ago, but it was his brother, and Sam knew that Carson would die before he let anyone or anything harm Sam. Sam felt the same way about Carson. He would die to protect his brother if he had to. Thankfully, in the last year and a half since they had been at The Double R, neither of them had found a reason to fight to the death against anyone, and the most blood that had been shed proved accidental and during these little impromptu brawls in which he and Carson occupied themselves. They engaged in these tussles more as a diversion, to work up a sweat and feed their animals’ hunter instincts, than to inflict damage or pain. Sometimes, however, the latter could not be avoided, especially when an overzealous alpha like his brother got carried away with the dominance act.

Sam shifted to his human form—bones rearranging, brown fur receding—before he lay naked beneath his brother within a minute. He reached up with both hands and wrapped his fingers around his brother’s thick, black-furred neck. “I give up already. Let me up,
craneur
.”

Carson shifted to human form and chuckled before releasing his brother to crouch on his haunches nearby. “I’ll be your show-off,
peeshwank
.”

Sam laughed as he pushed to his full height of six feet. Only Carson would call someone six feet and a hundred and ninety pounds a “runt,” but then he guessed he was a runt next to Carson, just not by that much.

“I’m gonna go clean up before we get back to the house.” Sam headed for the stream several yards away and didn’t hesitate to splash around and cool off, getting himself nice and wet before his brother joined him. He turned toward shore when Carson ambled over, and he watched his brother’s sleek-muscled form beneath the moonlight right before Carson submerged himself in the water beside Sam.

He splashed himself as Sam had before him, shaking excess water from his black hair before he pushed a hand through the waves to his nape. “You put up a good fight. You’re getting a lot better. Daddy would’ve been proud.”

Sam’s chest filled at the compliment, though he was thinking more of what the copper-skinned beauty at The Double R would have thought at seeing his physical prowess against his brother and not whether or not their dad would have been proud.

Would she have been horrified or fascinated by his and Carson’s wolf forms?

He already knew for a fact that someone on the ranch turned her on, and he wasn’t too modest to believe that it was him and Carson, since he smelled her arousal on the wind whenever he and his brother got near her. These occasions remained few and far between since the lady did her best to stick close to the main house and rarely ventured out and about except to go to and come from work. Whenever she did happen to stumble across them around the ranch, she shied away like a scared filly, but never before Sam caught that
scent.

What he wouldn’t give for just a minute to know what went through her mind. What he wouldn’t give to know what she thought of him and his brother. However, he’d been forbidden from getting to know her any better than as a passing acquaintance and the family of one of The Double R’s owners—basically, his employers. It wasn’t wise to fraternize with the bosses under normal circumstances, but when one was on the run and in hiding like him, Carson, and their mama, it paid to be even more vigilant than normal.

Granted, it was nighttime and far enough away from the ranch and the general human population that there proved barely any risk of being seen. However, they still took a chance shifting to their animal forms to tussle and play like they didn’t have any sense. They did it because nature remained nature and some things just couldn’t be denied, especially the need to stretch their muscles and feed the desires of their animals.

* * * *

The boys had come a long way since leaving the pack back in Louisiana with their mother, turning into young men a father could be proud of.

Remy had wanted that honor but had been deprived of it by their mother’s willfulness.

She thought to protect her boys from him. She thought to protect herself. Did she not understand that he had only their best interests at heart? Did she not understand that he only wanted to take care of all of them? Did she not understand that there was no escape from him if he really wanted her? Helena and her boys had remained free as long as they had only because Remy had wished it, only because he had
allowed
it.

He understood Helena’s fear, her hesitance. She had been a widow after all, still mourning the death of her husband and her boys’ father. Remy remained a patient man, but his patience grew thin. He had given her enough time, five years in fact—ten if he counted the five years between Ben’s death and Helena and the boys finally going on the run—and miles of space.

Watching from a far-enough distance that the young men wouldn’t pick up his scent, Remy raised the high-powered binoculars to his eyes to peer at Carson and Sam as they horsed around in the stream. He smiled at their playfulness.

The older one, specifically, fascinated Remy in a way he had not been fascinated in a long time. He remembered the teen and the young man Carson had been. He had admired the boy’s quiet strength and natural fighting skills. He had been an alpha in the making back then, a threat that his son Duane could not ignore, and a rarity born of a hybrid female and a beta male. He wondered how well Carson Guidry, or Quarry, as the family had assumed, would do in a fight against him. Killing a peer in a fair fight was one thing, but challenging an alpha male like him, one with decades more experience and nothing to lose, would prove another thing altogether.

Remy licked his lips, anticipating the showdown, for he knew it would come down to a battle with the boy if he wanted to win the mother. He just hoped Helena would forgive him for the inevitable outcome.