Page 36

Harper

Shifters were ruining me for human men. Usually one orgasm was perfect for me, but as Tor plucked me from Mack’s failing grip and laid me down on the bed, stroking his hand up my thigh, I shivered.

“Look at you.” Kieran’s voice was a low rumble as he settled down on my other side. “Like a kid that got caught with her hand in the candy jar.”

“And wants more.”

Tor grinned down at me as his hand slid higher, and damn me if I didn’t let my thighs fall open.

I wasn’t sure if Mack had a realistic idea of the danger his brother posed, but real or not, I knew to take my pleasures where I found them, because who knew if they’d be there to enjoy tomorrow?

My clit was sensitive, something Tor noted with a small nod.

His caress was feather light, teasing it back to life, pleasure washing over me in soft waves.

Something I wanted them both to share in.

I flopped onto my back, their protests choked off the moment my hands went around the base of both their cocks.

The spines were far shorter, almost vestigial at the base of Tor’s, but the way he shuddered made clear they were no less sensitive.

My thumb found the hard ridge of Kieran’s baculum and he let out a long hiss, before batting my hand away.

“This is about you,” he said, looming over me.

I stared into the dark shadow of him, the lack of light making it easier to say this.

“It’s about us, right?”

It was meant to come out as a statement, but I couldn’t seem to commit to that.

Couldn’t commit to anything, really. Maybe because I’d tried before and failed miserably, my lovers walking away from the mess they’d made of my heart without a second look.

I wouldn’t have to worry about the guys doing that, so why was that so much scarier?

“Us,” Kieran agreed, grabbing my hand, then holding it against his chest so I could feel the rapid beat of it.

“I haven’t had an us before.” I was forced to look away, not able to cope with his shadowy gaze. “Not one where I wasn’t left wondering what I’d done wrong.”

“Idiot.” Tor’s growl had my eyes snapping up to meet his. “Them, not you,” he added hastily. “Any guy that walked away from you?—”

“Is lucky.” Kieran shot me a dark look. “Would’ve been real awkward, breaking your ex’s arms and legs, then telling you that you were destined to be with us.”

I shook my head, unable to stop myself from grinning, and that had me throwing him on his back and straddling him.

“That right? You’d mess Kevin up for me?”

“Your ex’s name was Kevin?” he spluttered.

“Rob, Marty, Jim…” I started ticking my fingers off, and that forced him to move.

Just one long sweep, that thick cock ground into me in all the right spots, a prelude of what was to come.

“OK.” My hands slapped down on his shoulders, holding on for dear life.

“I can’t remember any of them, not when you do that.

How about…?” I felt the head slip, notch against my entrance, and suddenly I couldn’t want anything more.

“How about we stop fucking around and start actually fucking?”

“Not yet.” Tor plucked me off Kieran, much to the bear shifter’s disgust, then held me against his chest. That was fine.

Spiky dick or bony, they’d both scratch the itch that had started up inside me.

I reached down to push him in, only to have my hand slapped away.

“Harper.” Suddenly Tor’s joker facade was pushed aside and something far more real rose in its place. “That’s not what this is.”

Oh shit.

I felt like I was being pulled in two different directions, one to pull him close and the other to run the fuck away, but this is what I always said I wanted, right? Every complaint delivered in a drunken rant to Daria about my latest shitty date?—

Fuck, Daria. I hadn’t warned her not to go home.

As if sensing the wild spiral inside my head, Tor turned my face his way.

“If you’re not ready yet.” He was trying so hard to be cool about this. “If you need more time.”

“You do need more time,” Kieran insisted, sitting beside me. “Mating a woman when there’s a threat hanging over her head. That’s no way to do things.”

We all glanced over when we heard the door click shut. Mack had slipped out without a word. I stared at the door, as if that would summon the wolf shifter, but it didn’t. The smooth painted surface stared back, mocking me with its blankness.

He’d walked out. Of course he did. To protect us from his brother, but…

that’s not how my brain took it. Just that he was here and then he wasn’t, without saying a word.

Because he never wanted to come in here, Harper, I thought.

Because you forced things. Well, if he didn’t want to hang around for the second act, I was fine with that.

“Apparently Mack agrees,” I said, forcing myself to smile.

“Don’t let him—” I pressed my fingers to Tor’s lips, trying to hold back the torrent of excuses. I’d heard plenty of them over the years. Now wasn’t the time for more.

“It’s fine,” I said, glancing at Kieran, then back at Tor. “He got what he wanted. Shit, after blowing his load, maybe Mack will be thirty percent less grumpy or something?”

“Harper…” Kieran rumbled.

“I’m fine. This is fine.” Did anyone sound convincing saying those words? “So, where were we?” My voice became all throaty as soon as I got back on familiar ground. Hands smoothed down their chests, loving the way their muscles jumped with each pass. “Pretty sure I was?—”

“Harper.”

Tor was grinning along with me, getting closer, leaning into every stroke, just like a big kitty would, but Kieran stopped me with one word. Those honey coloured eyes, they saw too much as they stared right into me. My lips twitched, but my smile faded away, stripped from me by his constant regard.

“So it’s your turn now.” When I tried to push the two of them on their backs, Tor went with a laugh, but Kieran remained unmoved.

His thumb kept brushing back and forth against the back of my hand.

“Kieran?” I wanted to ask what the hell was going on, that surely everything would be better with a hand or blow job, but he just kept on staring.

The longer this went on, the more fidgety I got. “Look, if you’re not into?—”

“Does it feel like I’m not into you?” He lifted me up and placed me so his cock pressed hard against my seam. “Getting turned on is never an issue when I’m close to you, Harper.”

I went to argue, but his hand dropped down, his thumb finding my clit. My breath came out in a noisy huff as I felt a coil of arousal tighten inside me.

“But I’m always going to want more than sex.”

He said those words so seriously, bending his head to stare into my eyes.

“We do.” Tor sounded somewhat abashed, but his hands were gentle as they traced the shape of my shoulders. “If it was just a matter of rutting…”

“Rutting sounds pretty good right now,” I gasped out, trying to move to spear myself on Kieran’s cock, but neither of them would give me an out.

“What’s here, it's more than that.” Kieran’s tone remained serious, even as his thumb moved faster.

Tor, damn him, covered both breasts, rubbing my nipples between his fingertips.

“I get that guys before us have valued you for what they can get from you.” I went to argue, but another hand pushed fingers inside me, forcing me to stretch.

“They used you as a hole to get off in.”

I was beginning to understand that rationale, because right now I’d have done just about anything to ease the tension inside me.

“We screwed up on the first night.” My head sank backwards as I stared up at Tor.

“We fell into bed too fast, thinking that all of this would be easy.” He shook his head ruefully.

“Seems like if it was written in the stars, that’s the way it should be, but…

” His fingers pinched cruelly, sending waves of pleasure/pain reverberating through me, my clit throbbing in response.

“I told you about climbing onto the roof, but what I left out was important.”

My focus was entirely trained on Tor, unable to look away.

“It was terrifying, being stuck up in that tree as a kid.” He shot me a lopsided smile. “I thought I was this big, tough tiger, but as soon as I got to the top, I realised I was a scared little boy.”

His childhood capers were a strange counterpoint to what they were making me feel, but I couldn’t say that, not when I was gasping through waves of pleasure.

“I couldn’t go up, I couldn’t go down, and that left me stuck.” Tor shook his head. “But staying where I was wasn’t a solution either. I had to do something, that much was clear.”

“So you leapt onto the roof?” I breathed.

“I leapt onto the closest safe place,” he said, drawing closer. They both did, enfolding me in their embrace.

“But you could’ve fallen and broken your damn neck.”

“I could’ve.” Somehow I needed that nod of acknowledgement. “I might’ve tested the theory that all cats land on their feet, even if I broke every bone in my body trying. I could’ve died.” His smile faded at that. “But I didn’t, Harper.”

“You had no way of knowing that when you jumped. Tor, you couldn’t have known you’d land on the roof.”

“No.” His lips twisted. “I didn’t. Some things in life, there’s no certainty to them.

All the evidence, all of your experience, tells you that it’s likely to end in disaster and heartbreak, but you make the jump anyway, because at some point, staying where you are hurts more than the potential pain of changing.

” He shrugged. “For me, it was the fact I really needed a piss and my mum had told me if I did it in her garden one more time, she’d beat the stripes off me. ”

I laughed despite myself, and that seemed to dispel some of the tension, just leaving them. Their hands, their bodies surrounding mine, my hands slipping down, no longer knocked away as I gripped their cocks. My strokes matched theirs, and so we climbed together.

“Ready to jump, pretty girl?” Kieran asked, claiming my mouth before I could answer. “Something tells me it’s been hurting you, staying where you were.” Damn him and his bloody bear Jedi mind tricks. “You’re not jumping without a safety net, because we’re right here.”

“With pillows!” Tor said, pulling free and tossing one from the bed at me.

I caught it and held it close to my chest, my fingers sinking into the soft filling, until Kieran gently pulled it free, replacing the pillow with his own hands.

“OK.” I nodded quickly. “Sure, yeah, we’re doing this.” My focus shifted from one guy to the other. “So if we’re not having sex because you’ll go all rawr!” My hands shot up and formed claws. “Then what are we doing?”

Kieran snorted, then picked me up and laid me down on the bed, following me soon after, staring at me in the dark. The feel of the bed shifting made clear Tor was following his lead.

“We’re here for each other, that’s what we’re doing,” Kieran told me. “Things are tense right now.”

“And not the good kind.”

Tor’s hand slid around my ribcage but stopped short of groping me.

“Maybe we’re in imminent danger,” Kieran continued. “Maybe Mack’s overreacting.”

“Maybe I’m just using that as an excuse to see your boobs, because damn…”

Tor wiggled his eyebrows for effect before staring conspicuously at my chest.

“Well, at least we’re back on familiar territory,” I said with an exaggerated sigh. “Though, if we’re going to have some kind of shifter style sleepover, I better not wake up to one of you humping my leg.”

“That’s a wolf’s M.O.,” Kieran growled. “Not bears.”

“Hey, I brought you flowers,” Tor spluttered.

“You also licked my neck like a popsicle,” I said.

“Pretty sure you like my tongue fine.” Tor made a show of leering at me. “When I use it in the right place.”

“What we’re doing, Harper,” Kieran’s voice cut through our banter, “is making clear that you don’t have to carry everything on your own anymore.”

I smiled as I snuggled into his chest, hoping it masked my true reaction.

“That sounds dangerously close to emotional intimacy.”

“Terrifying, huh?”

Tor’s tone was a lot gentler now. I wanted to protest, to say something stupid and get him riffing off that, but instead, I stayed right where I was, cradled in Kieran’s arms.

“You have no idea.”

My voice was little more than a whisper, but nothing escaped the sensitive hearing of a shifter.

They both settled in closer, sandwiching me between them.

Kieran kissed the top of my head and Tor’s fingers laced with mine, and I felt that spike of fear, but for once I didn’t surrender to it.

I just gripped Tor’s hand tightly, breathing through it.

Because for once, this wasn’t about sex. It was about us, and maybe I was ready to find out exactly what that meant.