Panthers' Pleasure [Impulse 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (6 page)

“Are you all right, darlin’?” Vilas asked, sounding as though he actually cared. “Can I get you anything?”

“Your reflexes,” Chantal said slowly. “The way you got that sack of flour down in the bar…”

“You already feel so much a part of us that I forgot you weren’t aware,” Rafe said. “Sorry if I scared you.”

“Not half as much as you are right now.” Chantal made a massive effort to pull herself together. “All right, let’s assume for a moment that I believe all this nonsense. Why do you say that I’m your er…mate?”

“Because you were sent here by our enemies,” Vilas said. “That’s why I was checking out your laptop. I had to be sure you were an innocent pawn.”

“How did you get past my passwords?” She flapped a hand. “Oh, I get it, your mental powers.”

“You’ve discovered that there’s no O’Malley’s hotel here, right?” She reluctantly nodded. “You’ve probably noticed as well that we can communicate with one another without actually talking.” Another halfhearted nod. She
had
noticed all of the things they’d said but still wasn’t taking them seriously. There had to be a more rational explanation. “Because there are so few places in this part of America where shifters can live
and
take advantage of the positive ions, Impulse is a prime target for others who want to take it over and oust us.”

“Let’s say that I still believe you.” If she humored them, they’d let up on her and she could hightail it out of here. “Why not let other, er…shifters live with you?”

“We would,” Vilas said, “if they were prepared to live in peace and not try to take over. Unfortunately, all those trying to oust us don’t feel that way. Werewolves, bears, and lions are all out to get us.”

“Lions?” Chantal felt faint. “But they’re felines, too.”

“Yeah, but they wanna rule our world.” Vilas scowled. “I blame Disney for that. They actually believe all that hype about them being king of the jungle.”

Chantal actually laughed. “Oh dear.”

“Oh dear is right. The only good thing is that our enemies don’t like each other any more than they like us. If they combined forces we’d never be able to hold on to Impulse. The lions have the edge because unfortunately, they can hear our pheromones.”

“Your what?”

“Our silent communications. Theirs are on a different frequency to ours, too high for us to hear. It doesn’t work the other way round though, and if they get close enough to Impulse, they can hear us and read our thoughts.”

“Why can’t they just stroll in and take over?”

“We put up a protective mental field round the town and know at once if anyone who comes in means us harm.”

Chantal swiped her brow with the back of her hand. “I think I could use a drink.”

Vilas leapt to his feet with…well, with feline grace. Without asking her what she wanted, he went to the kitchen and returned with a glass of white wine for her and bottles of beer for him and Rafe.

“Ah, so you do drink something other than milk?”

“Once we’re up and running,” Rafe said, winking at her.

Chantal took a healthy sip of wine. She sure as hell needed the alcoholic crutch. “I still don’t get what this has to do with me.”

“The lions have read our thoughts,” Rafe explained.

“Bastard lions!” Vilas growled.

“They’ve tried all sorts of ways to get their paws into Impulse over recent months.”

“Direct assault, stealth, coercing weaker colony members. So far we’ve been one step ahead of them.”

“And so we think they’ve gotten inventive through necessity. They knew exactly what sort of mate we want, which would be you,” Rafe said, focusing the full force of his piercing gaze on her profile. “They hang out near Tallahassee because there’s still a small area outside the city, hotly contested, that has similar properties to Impulse on a smaller scale. We reckon they had a look round Tallahassee itself to see if anyone there fit the bill.”

“They found you for us,” Vilas said, “but you happened to be in a relationship at the time. They sorted that by getting into your guy’s head and messing with it.”

“Hang on, are you saying that a pack of lions—”

“A pride of lions,” Rafe corrected. “And yes, they would find it easy to direct a human’s actions through mind control. They’re very good at it. They knew if your Jack cheated on you, you’d give him the elbow. With him out of the picture, all they had to do was find a way to get you down here.”

“By using your brother.”

Chantal’s shoulders jerked upright. “They have Max?”

“Almost certainly.”

“Here’s the deal, Chantal,” Rafe said, placing both of his hands on her shoulders and turning her to face him. “We’ll help you find your brother, whether you agree to be our mate or not.”

He eyes widened. “You can do that?”

“We can do pretty much anything we set our minds to,” Vilas told her.

“All we ask in return is that you allow us to court you in the old-fashioned way,” Rafe said, looking and sounding absolutely sincere. “We need you to fall in love with us so we can mate with you.”

“And we also need you to be comfortable with us and happy to live in Impulse with the colony for the rest of your life,” Vilas added, running a hand across her thigh, his touch so light and seductive that she almost felt like purring herself.

“I’ll go to bed with you anyway if you help me find Max,” she said without hesitation. In spite of the fact that they were a dime short of a dollar, just the feel of their hands stroking her body had her on sensual overload.

Rafe shook his head. “It’s not that easy. If we mate with you, it’s for life. You see, the moment we mark you with our semen, you become ours.”

Chantal laughed. “What about all the women you’ve…er,
marked
before me.”

“We haven’t,” Rafe said, a flash of pain marring his handsome features. “That’s part of our problem. If we mark the wrong mate then it’s almost worse than having no mate at all because our powers will diminish anyway.”

“Hang on.” She stared at each of them in turn. “Are you telling me that you’ve lived for ninety years and have never once had sex with a woman?”

They nodded in unison. “We’re desperate, baby,” Vilas said.

“I guess you must be.” Chantal bit her lower lip as she thought about it. “So what do you do instead?”

“We fuck each other.”

“Pardon?” Chantal gulped before sharing a glance between them. “Perhaps there’s something in this crazy air of yours that’s contagious, but did you just say that you fuck each other?”

“I know it’s a lot to take in,” Vilas said, continuing to stroke her thigh. “Just imagine how we feel.”

“And we already warned you not to cuss. Do it again and I might have to spank that cute butt of yours.” Rafe’s fingers gently caressed the back of her neck. “Okay, you’ve gotten the gist of it. Now, if you still want to leave, we won’t stop you.”

That was absolutely what she ought to do. Max wasn’t here, and she didn’t seriously believe that he was being held mental captive by a pack…pride or whatever of lions, so she had no reason to stay. Even so, there
were
definite anomalies about this place, and Rafe and Vilas certainly had nonhuman qualities that weren’t easily explained away. Besides, their hands innocently massaging her skin felt magical.

Chantal closed her eyes, willing the world to stop spinning for a while, just until she’d gotten this mess sorted. Or until Rafe’s fingers made their way down to her aching tits. She really did need to get laid! She could only imagine how they must be feeling if…Hell, what was the matter with her? There was no
if
about it. Their story was bullshit. They wanted her here for some other reason, and she needed to find out what that reason was. To do that, she’d play along with them for just a little longer,
and
get a free massage.

“Everyone in the bar seemed to be…er, close,” she said, her voice sounding more like a whimper when Rafe’s fingers attacked the tangled muscles in her shoulders.

“We are,” Vilas said. “It’s us against the world.”

“Do you like the idea of a close-knit family, babe?” Rafe asked.

Her eyes flew open. “How did you know that?”

His purring laugh, innocently suggestive, caused dampness to seep between her legs. How could she be so turned on by two such fruitcakes, albeit hunky ones? Dammit, she was a pushover—always had been.

“I’d like to impress you by saying I can sense the need for a loving family unit deep inside you,” Rafe said. “Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be true.”

She rolled her eyes. “And you’d never lie to me.”

“We haven’t yet,” Vilas assured her.

“You wear your need to be loved like a comfort blanket,” Rafe said. “Your parents died when you were at an impressionable age and it was just you and your brother from then on in.”

“That’s why you’ll do just about anything to find him.”

Rafe nodded. “I’m betting that guys have taken advantage of your need to be loved ever since—”

“Especially that rat Jack,” Vilas added, glowering.

“Jack strung you along, making dates and breaking them when he got a better offer,” Rafe said. “He got you to move to Tallahassee so you could be at his beck and call. And the worse he treated you, the needier you became.”

“Until you caught him with another woman,” Vilas added.

They spoke like a tag team, finishing one another’s thoughts without appearing to consult. The worrying thing was that they’d got it spot-on. She had been a doormat for Jack for far too long. She knew it and hated herself for being so lame. But any dream of happy ever after, however unrealistic, and a family unit all of her own to love and cherish, got to her every time.

“You
did
feel the family love in the bar,” Rafe said.

“Yes, I suppose.”

She was being economical with the truth and sensed that they both knew it. The feeling of community in that bar, the closeness, the caring, had been one of the first things to strike her. She’d put it down to small-town neighborliness, too concerned with learning her new job to dwell on the sense of oneness that had made her so comfortable. But thinking about it now, she’d felt safe and protected, warm all over. It was odd that it hadn’t struck her more forcibly at the time.

Two pairs of piercing blue eyes regarded her closely as she recalled how pleasant it had felt to actually belong in a relationship where she wasn’t the one to do all the giving. Regardless of whatever was
actually
going on here in Impulse, she somehow knew that if she was in trouble, any one of the people in that bar would have come to her aid, no questions asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I miss what I had when Mom and Dad were alive. That’s natural, isn’t it?”

“Sure it is,” Vilas said easily.

“It’s a damned sight more natural than what we have going here,” Rafe added. “Several different species of big cats all living together without scratching one another’s eyes out.”

“Just supposing that I believe you, how do you manage that?”

“We have a feline council, a bit like a city council, I guess,” Vilas explained. “The alphas from each species are represented on it. We dispense our own justice and deal with any problems individuals might have.”

“Don’t you have an actual city council?” If they didn’t, then perhaps she’d start to believe their crazy make-believe.

“Sure we do. Outwardly this is just another American town, which is just the way we want it. The city council is run by various felines’ human mates.”

“Of course it is!”

“We have fewer hotels because people can’t stand the atmosphere here for too long. Some geologist made a documentary about our special atmosphere, decades ago now, telling people it was something to do with the fragmentation of the earth’s crust.”

“He was good looking and sincere,” Vilas added, “so his findings kinda made it into folklore.”

“With a little help from us.” Rafe chuckled. “We don’t like having visitors here for too long.”

“But the colony does well from day trippers, coming down to see what all the fuss is about, buying souvenirs, stuff like that.”

“Just what we need to keep our economy in the black,” Rafe said. “We’re not above commercializing what we have here if it keeps the werewolf from the door.”

Chantal shook her head. “I did see a lot of souvenir shops, but still I can’t accept what you’re saying.”

Rafe and Vilas looked at one another. Chantal got the impression that they were doing that pheromone communication thing again. Except that wasn’t possible. It was probably just some form of mental telepathy, which wasn’t the same thing at all, was it? Chantal wasn’t sure she believed that either form of communication was possible. Rafe and Vilas probably just knew one another well enough to anticipate what the other was thinking, nothing more than that.

“We’re going to have to show her,” Rafe said, abandoning her neck massage and standing up.

“She’s still here,”
Rafe said.
“That’s gotta mean something.”