“Not if it means putting a dick up my ass, no I do not. I absolutely do not.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Lianne squirmed on top of him, and he figured Seb was giving her a little taste with his fingers.
“Seb…don’t.”
“Hush. Just enjoy it.”
Will touched her clit, knowing the sensation of being touched in so many places would overwhelm her already overwrought nerve endings. As he hoped, she let out a sharp moan at his touch.
“See, it’s not so bad,” Seb said. “Now, don’t go crazy, but I’m going to slip this finger inside now, okay?”
Lianne didn’t say anything, but her hands tightened on Will’s shoulders.
“Do you trust us?” Will said softly.
“Yes, I do. God help me, I do.”
“Then let us do this. We want to fill you up at the same time one day. We want you to connect us the way no other woman ever has.”
“What do you mean?”
He held her face. “We’ve never done that with any other woman. You would be our first.” And suddenly it hit him. She was it. She was the one. They’d never done that with another woman because deep down they were waiting. He hadn’t known it until that moment, but with her, he understood. This was the last woman he would ever be with, and that thought filled him up with such a radiant, fearsome joy he could hold still no longer.
He slammed up into her.
“Will.” She cried out his name, and he heard her soul in it.
He knew exactly when Seb slipped his fingers inside her ass. She clenched around him and moaned. “Oh god,” she said, throwing her hips into their fucking with abandon. “More.” Will pressed and circled her clit. “More,” she said again. “Seb, please.”
They all became frantic. Will lost all semblance of thought as his mind and body disappeared into Lianne and her pleasure, his pleasure, their pleasure. His balls grew heavy. He was so damn close. Squeezing her hips with his hands, he rocked up into her hard. He thrust and thrust until she sucked in a harsh breath, and he knew she’d reached her end. He came soon after, his cum bursting angrily out of his cock.
After a long moment, after the raging diminished to a steady burn, Lianne pulled off and rolled onto her back. Seb had already gone to the bathroom to get a washcloth. When he returned, Will climbed out of bed to dispose of his condom. Afterward, he looked at himself in the mirror over the sink.
You’re so gone
.
A huge smile lit up his face.
Lianne tiptoed downstairs. She knew it had to be close to five in the morning, but she’d awoken and realized her mouth was too dry.
It was overwhelming. This couldn’t be her life. She couldn’t have just made love to Will and Seb Carson. That had to have been a dream. She didn’t know much about sex—practically nothing until about six hours ago—but it seemed like they’d enjoyed it. And that was just as hard to believe. They’d enjoyed it. They wanted her. And there were moments when Will had looked at her, when Seb held her gaze, where she thought
surely
.
Surely they must care about me. This is real. This has to be.
But she didn’t want to let herself hope too much. Everything felt precarious. She was too happy. She knew that if she felt this happy, if it all came crumbling down, she would be devastated. And so she’d woken up with a very dry mouth.
The moment she stepped into the kitchen, light splashed across her face.
“Oh!” she squeaked. Mrs. Carson stood in front of the fridge in her robe and slippers. At Lianne’s exclamation, she jumped and turned to face her.
“Oh!” she squeaked back.
They looked at each other for a moment. It was a little longer than necessary. It was a bit awkward.
“Oh,” Mrs. Carson said again.
Her insides clenched, and her face felt like flames. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know anyone would be down here,” she whispered.
“Lianne, dear,” Mrs. Carson said, “don’t you dare apologize. Come give me a hug.”
That was unexpected.
But she did as Mrs. Carson asked, padding across the kitchen and wrapping the older woman up in her arms.
“Oh dear.” Mrs. Carson pulled out of the hug but wrapped her fingers around each of Lianne’s arms. “You are much too thin. This will never do. I’d say ten pounds at least. I was just gonna whip up some eggs, but now I see that won’t be enough.” She let go of Lianne’s arms and began rummaging through the fridge in earnest. “Pancakes or waffles? Eggs, bacon. Here’s some orange juice.” She pulled several items out and handed them to Lianne who placed them on the counter.
“Oh, you don’t have to go to any trouble. I just came down for some water.”
“Nonsense. You’ll need your energy if you plan on spending time with my boys. We want you healthy. You need some meat on your bones. Take my word for it. You will need your strength. You will need your stamina. Your will need your endurance. They have a lot of energy, those boys. And bear-shifters in general. Running here, there, and everywhere at any and all hours. Gallivanting and parading around doing no one knows what. A body gets worn out just trying to keep up.”
Mrs. Carson began throwing ingredients together in a large bowl—flour, eggs, milk, baking soda, a pinch of cinnamon—all the while letting Lianne know the taxing nature of spending time with bear-shifters. A short while later, they were seated at the table with two plates full of pancakes, bacon, eggs, and fresh fruit. She was a bit hungry, she realized, and it was little wonder. Not after certain activities that she had engaged in. She choked on a giggle and stuffed a huge bite of pancake down her throat.
“Thatta girl! Eat up, I say. You never know when the next meal will come. One can never count on these things. A body likes to eat at regular intervals. And it’s much healthier to do so, I must say, but still, plans can sometimes be thrown off route, and then it can be very tedious to try and get back on track.”
After Lianne got a few more bites down and steered her thoughts away from subjects that ought to be ignored around the twins’ mother, Lianne said, “There is something I’m very curious about, Mrs. Carson.”
“Yes, dear? What is it?”
“I’m sure you know, but Noah and Carter Strong are my cousins.”
“Oh yes! Quite! I do remember that. Your mother and their father were siblings, am I correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I always did admire your mother. A very clever woman.”
“Did you know her well?”
“No, not as well as I should have, I dare say.” Mrs. Carson reached across the table and patted Lianne’s hand. “You do her memory credit. God bless her soul.”
Lianne bit her lip, her emotions feeling suddenly very tender. “Thank you.”
Mrs. Carson gave one more solid pat and then released her hand. “Now, what was it you wanted to ask me?”
“Well, when we were growing up, Noah would always tell me these stories. They were stories that he heard from his father about the bear-shifters and the family history. He said there was some sort of journal written by his six-times-great-grandmother, or something like that, with the family history written out.”
“Yes, Helen Strong, I believe. She spoke with all of the original bear-shifter families and recorded their stories for future generations.”
“Well, it seemed to me that Noah and Carter always held a bit of a grudge against the rest of the families.”
“‘Grudge’ is one word for it.” Mrs. Carson sniffed.
Lianne chuckled. “Yeah, they’re a bit rough. But I was wondering if you knew anything about that? Noah would never tell me what it was, but somehow I got the idea that it must be related to the original families. It always seemed to go back to that.”
“Oh I remember this story well. In fact, after I became engaged to Will and Seb’s fathers, it was one of the first things they shared with me. You know who each of the original wives were, I trust?”
Lianne nodded.
“So you know that Charlotte Wilson, sole daughter of Charles and Violet Wilson, was the original Carson wife?”
She nodded again.
“Did you know that the Carsons inherited Savage Valley Bank from Mr. Wilson?”
“I didn’t!”
“They did. Mr. Wilson loved Luke and Matthew Carson like sons, and really, he spoiled Charlotte rotten, but I’m getting ahead of myself. To begin with, you must know that Charlotte’s daddy let her have almost anything she wanted. Practically everything her heart desired. She wanted a new dress, and her daddy bought her three. She wanted a new set of combs, and her daddy ordered them from London. She wanted to learn French, and her daddy brought in a tutor straight from Paris. There was only one thing, only one desire, that he would not give in to.
“Charlotte wanted herself a beau. Plenty of the local gents asked to court his beautiful, headstrong daughter, but Charles Wilson put his foot down. ‘Not until she’s twenty-five,’ he said, which is most absurd and quite unheard of in those times, but his mind was made up. Even his wife tried to coax him to at least allow her to have a couple gentlemen callers at the age of twenty-one, but Mr. Wilson said no.
“So when all her friends started pairing up with the local bucks, and then getting engaged, and then marrying, Charlotte started to get a little antsy and resentful. She loved her daddy, don’t get me wrong, and she understood that it would be difficult for him when she left his household, but twenty-five was ridiculous. So she decided to take matters into her own hands. And as chance would have it, Charlotte twisted her ankle and went to visit the Doctors Ashley. While there she had herself a chat with Moira Ashley, their wife, and of course an original wife, and in practically no time at all, it was decided that Charlotte would be the next bear wife.”
Mrs. Carson tilted her head up for a moment.
“What?” Lianne asked.
“You know, she must have been very desperate to not only agree to marry two men, but to marry two men that also shifted into bears.”
Lianne snorted. “Or maybe she was insane?”
“You’re probably right, but then aren’t we all?”
“Good point.”
“Now what you should know is that Charlotte—as agreed upon by she, Moira, and Anne Kinman—would be taken out to a specific spot in the forest. Then the Greenwood bears would be brought to her, and you can imagine what would happen after that.”
“They’d be mates.”
Mrs. Carson gave her an amused smile. “Yes, dear. But, you know, things rarely go according to plan, and when Charlotte snuck out of her house and got to the appointed spot, she waited. But she was an impatient and impetuous girl and so decided to go find these bear-shifters herself. She wandered through the forest alone for quite some time so that by the time she did stumble upon the bears, she was exhausted, hungry, and quite frazzled, I imagine.
“Now this is where it gets really tricky. She was supposed to be matched up with the Greenwoods, but one of the Greenwoods was gone, and it turns out that he came upon a young Indian woman in the forest and bonded with her before Charlotte made her grand entrance. So the Greenwoods were already attached to a woman they’d never met before because bear-shifter brothers can only be mated to the same woman, and then Charlotte waltzes in and the Carson brothers take in her scent, and before you know it, she’s bonded with the Carsons instead of the Greenwoods.”
Lianne imagined what Charlotte Wilson would have looked like and how she would have acted. It seemed like the Carsons’ ancestor had a lot in common with Lianne. She’d grown up in Savage Valley. She was very involved and connected with people in town. She was independent and thought for herself. She was spirited.
Yes, Lianne quite approved of this Charlotte Wilson.
“But what about the rift with the Strongs? Where does that come into play?”
“Oh yes, of course. Well, they got left behind. Plain and simple, and they didn’t like it.”
“That’s it? They were pouting because they were the last bear family to get a wife?”
“That’s about the sum of it.”
“Hmm.” Lianne thought there might be more to that story than Mrs. Carson let on, but she wouldn’t push. She’d ask Will and Seb about it to see if they knew anything different. She slurped down the rest of her orange juice and then helped Mrs. Carson clean up in the kitchen.
“We can leave most of this out because my boys will want something when they finally wake up. Just put the eggs and milk away, please, dear.”
After everything was finished, Lianne yawned. “Well, I think I’ll head back up to—” She cut herself off, realizing that it could be a tad inappropriate to admit to Mrs. Carson that she was headed back up to bed with her sons.
Mrs. Carson patted her on the cheek. “Make sure you keep your socks on. It can get a bit drafty on this side of the house.”
With that, she turned and headed back over to the annex.
* * * *
Lianne pawed nervously through her portfolio. She didn’t need it with her, not for what she had to do, but it was nice to have something to clutch against her chest when a fresh wave of anxiety hit. There was only one other person in the luxurious lobby, and he was engrossed with his phone. She shot a furtive glance at the administrative assistant behind the front desk, but he also was engrossed with his work.
She wished Seb and Will were with her. She wanted to hold their hands and feel them beside her for this, even if they didn’t say anything. But she knew this was something she needed to do alone.
“Mrs. Seward, Mr. Norman will see you now.”
She bolted out of her chair at the sound of her name. Then she took a deep breath, straightened her blazer, and followed the receptionist down the hall to Mr. Norman’s office. One time, when they were teenagers and Lianne had to ask Mr. Norman for permission to let Jamie stay with her in Savage Valley for a month, Jamie had offered her advice on how to deal with her father.
Look him in the eye, and don’t let him talk down to you.
The receptionist opened the door, ushered Lianne inside, and then closed the door behind her. This was it. She had to be strong. She had to stick to her guns.
After the last couple of nights with Will and Seb, Lianne realized that she couldn’t accept Mr. Norman’s offer. She’d thought and thought about it, thought about everything she’d be giving up and everything she’d be gaining by choosing to stick with Seb and Will. She’d written out a huge, sprawling list of pros and cons, and then once she’d made her decision, she’d written out a huge, sprawling list of reasons to explain her decision to Mr. Norman.