A short while later, the three mates said goodbye to Scarlett’s family. Scarlett stood in the doorway, watching until they couldn’t see the SUV any longer. She sniffled and shut the door, turned the deadbolt and leaned against the door. “I’m so glad they’re okay.”
“You have a great family, sweetness,” Ray said. He pulled her away from the door and swung her up into his arms.
She circled his neck with her arms with a soft murmur, her lips finding his throat and making his cat purr. “I’ve missed you,” she whispered.
He chuckled as he turned and walked toward the stairs. “We were together all day.”
She hummed and wiggled slightly in his arms, and the sweet scent of her arousal filled his nose. “Now we’re alone, and I want what we started earlier,” she said.
Wes followed them. “We definitely want that, too.”
Ray carried her into the room and laid her down on the bed as Wes locked the door and joined them. “Later on, we can talk about our new bedroom and getting it ready for us to move into,” Ray said as he began to unbutton her top.
She kicked off her shoes and reached for him, pulling him down to her. “I want you so badly,” she whispered against his lips.
“Me too, sweetness,” he said, nibbling her bottom lip as he lightly pressed his palm to her stomach. “I’ve never wanted anyone more.”
He and Wes worked together to strip her and bring her to climax several times before they took turns making love to her. It never ceased to amaze him how little jealousy he had when Wes was with her. Ray loved being with Scarlett, loved hearing her cry out his name as she fell apart in his arms, but he enjoyed knowing she got pleasure from Wes’s hands, too, something he’d never expected.
As Scarlett dozed off between them, he and Wes talked about their future and made plans to see to Scarlett’s every need and desire. With the two of them working together, he knew they’d have no trouble making her happy for the rest of their lives.
Late Friday morning, Scarlett sat at the kitchen table with Jilly and Melody and looked at paint samples. Wes and Ray were working at the farm, and had been since Monday. They didn’t like leaving her, but they had to work – not only for income but because Rhett needed them, even in the winter. Before they’d come to find her, they’d built a gazebo for Rhett’s human wife, Lisa. Now they were hanging drywall in his garage. She’d been interested to learn that Grant and Jericho also worked on the farm. Jericho mostly worked on the vehicles that Rhett used around the farm, and Grant, like Wes and Ray, did whatever was needed. She liked having handyman mates. Quentin had never done anything himself except fight. When their home needed repairs, other wolves in the pack did the work. Ray and Wes were planning to do almost all the work getting the two bedrooms on the second floor ready.
Melody yawned and pointed to a pale blue. “Do you think you’ll have a boy?”
“I think it’s extremely likely. My mom said that Breeding Queens have a tendency to have more boys than girls because the wolf DNA is dominant and wolves tend to be male. But with mountain lion in the mix, I don’t know what might happen.”
Jilly pushed several samples of pale pink around with her finger as she took a drink of coffee. “Can I ask you something really personal?”
Scarlett looked at the pretty lioness. According to Melody, she was the first female mountain lion to successfully be transformed from the curse because of her twin black panther mates, Wyked and Fate.
“Sure, it’s just us girls here,” Scarlett said, smiling in encouragement.
Jilly didn’t say anything for a long moment, just shoved the paint samples back and forth, and then she said, “What are you going to do about giving them the same number of kids?”
“You mean Ray and Wes?”
Jilly nodded.
“Well, they’re fraternal twins, but aside from their eye color and hair color, they almost look identical. We may be able to tell when they’re little because of their eye color, but if we can’t I’m not really worried because we’re going to have more than one child.” Scarlett looked at Jilly, who was frowning and staring down at the paint samples. Then she glanced at Melody, who looked concerned, and both women reached out to take Jilly’s hands.
“What’s wrong, hon?” Melody asked.
“I was just thinking about having a baby. I know I’m still a while away from being able to be with the guys, but I worry about it. Whether they’ll be upset if they can tell the baby belongs to one of them.”
“Wyked and Fate are identical twins, though. I would think it would be impossible to tell who the father is,” Scarlett pointed out.
“Maybe,” Jilly said, chewing on her bottom lip. Then she smiled ruefully. “Having two mates makes all the already hard stuff more difficult. They’re so different from each other, and waiting three years is making all the normally hard relationship stuff extra-strength hard.”
Melody had explained to Scarlett that in panther tradition, mates didn’t
mate
unless everyone was at least twenty-one. Jilly had turned eighteen in August, so they had a while to go before they could be legal. Scarlett was sure that the parents didn’t mind them staying single a few more years and growing up a bit, but it looked like Jilly was having a hard time. Like her own life, sometimes traditions made things almost too difficult to bear. If she’d had to wait three years to make love to Wes and Ray, she probably would have gone bonkers. Just eight weeks without them had made her feel like the walls were closing in.
“We need to have a girls’ night,” Melody said. “Get Sam, Lachlyn, and Lisa and go do something fun, like see a movie.”
“What about Callie?” Scarlett asked. She’d met the she-wolf, who was mated to Ethan and Eryx, when she and her family had come over for dinner on Wednesday night. She had three adorable boys and was pregnant with their fourth.
Jilly shook her head. “They won’t let her go anywhere without them because she’s pregnant.”
“Wes and Ray wouldn’t mind me going.”
Shrugging, Jilly said, “They’re always protective of her because she’s their mate and mountain lion guys can’t seem to help themselves, but Callie was attacked by the females when we all lived in King, and they even tried to mess with her since she’s been in Ashland. Callie is the reason that mountain lions realized they could actually have mates outside of the pride females. The females have always blamed her for that, and they don’t ever want to take a chance that someday they might decide to do something to make her pay for that.”
Scarlett shivered and looked at Melody. “The females haven’t messed with the males since your problem, though, right?” Her bestie had been kidnapped and almost beaten to death by a group of female lions, and Micah had been sexually abused. The pride had rescued them and the females had scattered. According to the pride, they had headed to Canada and as far as Scarlett was concerned, they could stay the hell up there unless they all found their truemates to make them less psycho.
“No, but that doesn’t mean the males don’t worry about it,” Melody said.
Scarlett thought it was nuts that the female lions hated anyone who might be a mate to the males, but she kept that thought to herself. Jilly had lived with the females for two years after being slowly poisoned as a youngster by the venom in their claws, and Melody had been kidnapped and held prisoner by them for a year before she’d managed to escape. Scarlett had thought her best friend was dead, and it was the loneliest she’d ever felt.
“I don’t know your guys really well, Jilly, but I think you might be over thinking the situation. The only real way to tell with identical twins is for one of them to wear a condom until you’re pregnant, and I have a feeling they’re not going to be interested in condoms when you guys are finally able to be together,” Scarlett said.
Jilly blushed and buried her face in her hands. “I’m so glad my dad isn’t here to overhear this conversation.”
Scarlett and Melody laughed. Melody said, “Your guys adore you. I know they’d never do anything to purposely make you sad. If it’s really worrying you, then I think you should talk to them. Three years is a long time, but it’ll pass quickly. Hell, it’s already the end of November.”
Jilly rubbed a tear from her cheek and smiled. “We have a wedding to plan.”
Scarlett knew her smile was a mile wide. “Christmas Eve will be here before we know it, and you both have to help me with the plans.”
“We will,” Melody promised. “Then you can name your baby after me. If it’s a boy, you can call him Mel for short.”
“Oh, I know!” Jilly chimed in. “You can make his first name Mel and his middle name Odee. Then everyone’s happy.”
“Oh sure,
everyone’s
happy,” Scarlett said, wrinkling her nose.
“Now, that’s a good idea,” Melody said with a wink.
Scarlett groaned. “Why does everyone want to name my baby?”
“Because he’s the first,” Jilly said.
“But Callie has three and another on the way.”
“Doesn’t matter. Yours is the first one in the house, and that’s special,” Melody said.
Scarlett laid her hand on her stomach. “The baby is special, but not just because he or she is the first. I’m sure he or she will be the first of many. Mom said that when groups of supernatural creatures live together – like us or a pack – that the females will have kids around the same time. It’s something to do with creating the next generation. I bet that you’ll be pregnant in no time, Mel, and Lachlyn, too.”
“And me, eventually,” Jilly added.
“I bet you’ll be pregnant the day
after
you turn twenty-one,” Melody said, winking.
Jilly blushed brightly and started to giggle.
There was a loud knock at the door. “I bet that’s my package,” Scarlett said. “Mom said the horse statue would show up today.”
Jilly stood up and said, “I’ll go sign for it. I like this shade of blue for Mel Odee’s room, and I like this for your room, the one called ‘sand.’”
“I’m not naming him Mel Odee, but thanks,” Scarlett said, chuckling as she set aside those samples while Jilly walked out of the room.
“If it’s a girl, though, you have to go totally girly and do bright pink,” Melody said, tapping her finger on a color that was just a shade lighter than neon.
“I think that would make my eyes burn, it’s so bright.”
Chuckling, Melody moved a few of the samples around.
“Scarlett? The delivery guy says you have to sign for it because your mom requested your signature,” Jilly called.
Pushing the chair out noisily, Scarlett said, “I can’t wait for you to see the horse statue. It’s so detailed. Domino is very talented.”
Scarlett walked down the hall toward the front door where Jilly stood, leaning against the open door. A male in the olive uniform of the delivery company, with a baseball cap pulled low on his head, stood on the porch holding a box and an electronic device that she assumed was for her signature. As she moved toward the door, she noticed that the buttons on the uniform’s shirt were buttoned wrong, as if he’d rushed to get dressed. The hairs on the back of her neck began to tingle as the feeling that something was very wrong rose inside her quickly. She had reached for Jilly to pull her away from the door when the delivery man raised his head and she saw Quentin’s second in command, Leon, smile at her darkly. Something liquid shot from a small tube in his hand, hitting both her and Jilly in the face. Mace! Her eyes burned severely as she tried to scream for help, but the mace was too strong.
Jilly groaned, falling to the floor with a loud thud, and Scarlett groped about blindly for her, but the only thing she felt was Leon’s shirt as he grabbed her roughly and tossed her over his shoulder. She could feel him running down the steps and onto the gravel in front of the house, and then the sound of a door sliding open.
She was upended and landed hard on her butt, the motion jarring her teeth in her head. Someone grabbed her roughly and she lifted from the floor for a brief moment before landing on something that was both hard and soft. Still blinded and gasping for air from the mace, her hands squeezed what she’d landed on and she felt cold liquid and flesh. She couldn’t see, but she bet she was lying on the dead body of the original delivery man.
She kicked out blindly as she felt someone loom over her, then a hand clasped over her mouth and nose and her struggles became weaker. She scratched and hit as panic crested inside her and then everything disappeared.
* * * * *
Ray’s phone rang at the same time as Wes’s, as they were hanging a sheet of drywall in the garage. Balancing the big piece against the wall, he grabbed for his phone while Wes mirrored him. He was surprised to see Dylan’s number on the screen.
“What’s up, D?”
“Get home now, Ray! Scarlett’s been taken!”
He didn’t bother to ask for confirmation. He let go of the piece of drywall at the same time as Wes, who was speaking to someone else, and the two of them rushed out of the garage to his truck. His hands trembled as he turned the key in the ignition, but he knew he couldn’t let his fear for Scarlett’s safety override his ability to help her.
Wes had a death grip on the oh-shit handle next to the door. “Chase said he and Dylan came downstairs after they heard someone banging on the front door. They found Jilly blinded by some kind of mace. Melody was outside, chasing after a vehicle, but she lost them at the main road.”
“Fuck!”
Ray’s knuckles cracked as he squeezed the steering wheel.
He jerked the truck into the driveway, speeding toward the house. The brakes squealed as he stopped and leaped out of the truck. He took the steps fast and rushed through the open door. The scent of mace still lingered.
In the kitchen, he saw most of the pride males and their mates. Melody’s tear-streaked face looked bleak as she stood in her mates’ arms. “I’m so sorry,” she said. She explained what they’d been doing when Jilly went to answer the door. Wyked, one of Jilly’s mates, said, “Jilly’s with our healer. Her skin is reacting badly to the mace. It’s got something in it that aggravates shifters. It’s leaving blisters. She can barely speak – her voice is just a whisper. It almost completely incapacitated her. She said that Scarlett seemed to know right away that something wasn’t right with the delivery guy, but they were both hit with the mace quickly and Jilly couldn’t even scream, so she pounded on the front door.”
James and Eryx stood in their uniforms at the island. “I’ve got an APB out for the delivery van. Aaron was already patrolling, but he hasn’t seen them and we think they’re already gone,” Eryx said.
“I need to call her brothers. It must be her dad and the males who were expelled from the pack,” Ray said.
James nodded. “We’ll do our best to get her back. No lion will rest until she’s home with you again.”
Ray clenched his hands into tight fists. He wanted to roar in rage that Quentin had dared to take Scarlett from them. Guilt and grief warred together inside him. He’d left her unprotected in the house.