Moonrise (5 page)

The early morning woods were quiet and peaceful, only a background noise of birds and other small animals lightly touching upon her senses. She inhaled the scents of old leaves and new, of spring and wildness, dirt and flowers, but most of all, secrets.

She wanted to cry beneath the weight of it all, but didn’t know why. “It almost hurts,” she told them.

Michael’s expression cleared. “Only because you don’t understand, love. The fact that you belong to us and have been kept away, that is sad. There is new life now. The new beginning of forever.”

His fanciful, poetic words struck a chord deep within her and she took in a deep breath and nodded. “Yes.”

“This is what you were meant for, Selene.” Trey began to undress.

She bit her lip, wanting sex, but knowing there was more. He wasn’t undressing just for sex. Were they going to pull her into some kind of secret ritual? An initiation? She had no idea.

Michael moved behind her and pulled her against him, his arms around her gently, consoling her. “Just watch, love. When you have questions, we’ll be here.”

Trey stood completely naked and so tempting, his stare steady and somehow fiercer. “And you will not run, Selene. I would find the chase too tempting to resist and you need time. Do you understand?”

She swallowed twice before she could speak. “I will not run.” So that was why Michael was holding her. “If I mean to, Michael, don’t let me. Not if I shouldn’t.”

“I won’t, love.”

But Trey closed his eyes, sniffing the air. “I can smell you. I can smell your fear and your excitement and your sex and it’s driving me crazy. Running would push me over the edge.” He opened his eyes so suddenly she gasped. They were no longer his eyes, not really. They’d changed somehow, had become longer, more silver, more … animal.

Wild, that was the word. A vague memory of seeing his eyes this way last night flashed through her brain.

She began to tremble, and Michael’s arms tightened around her. “Do it,” he told Trey. “I’ve got her.”

She wasn’t sure she was seeing what she thought she was seeing, and her mind began to swim dizzily. Trey was changing with what appeared to be deliberate slowness. Changing. Shifting.

His bones elongated with quiet snaps and pops, and with an almost seamless, flowing shift, he crouched on the ground, a wolf.

He was enormous. So enormous the top of his head was even with her breasts, and as he padded toward her she could see his huge paws with claws half as long as her hand.

She realized her legs were no longer supporting her and the only reason she still stood was that Michael held her up.

Werewolves. Shifters.

“Is this real?” she whispered, pretty sure that during one of the beatings Robert had given her, something inside her brain had been knocked loose and she was even now a resident of an insane asylum, drooling in her applesauce. “Am I crazy?”

“Don’t be afraid, Selene. The last thing either of us would ever do, in either form, is hurt you.” Michael put his hand on Trey’s huge, strong neck and buried his fingers in the fur.

The big wolf seemed to stare at her with liquid silver eyes full of something close to worship, and she saw not one ounce of threat in his gaze. Maybe if she ran, but she was not going to run.

They remained still and silent, letting her accustom herself to the wolf. He never moved, only stared at her with eyes she could have easily drowned in.

Michael caressed her arm with a slow, easy touch, his calmness soothing her, relieving her.

“I just…” She reached out a finger to touch the big wolf’s nose, and he chuffed gently, gazing at her with his wild silver eyes. “I mean, I’d heard of you, but never did I think to actually see one of you. To be this close. To have had—” She cut herself off, blushing furiously. She’d fucked a werewolf. She had.

How strong, how fearless. Could she be afraid, really?

From her peripheral vision she caught dark movement and gasped as she realized there were more of them. At least twelve figures drifting from behind trees, from out of deep shadows, and some of them were still in human form. Not all of them were wolves, either. She realized she’d stiffened and forced herself to relax, to prove to Michael and Trey that she trusted them. No one would hurt her with those two around, and the thought was so intensely gratifying that she shivered with the joy of it.

No wonder the townspeople had been so unfriendly. They were trying to drive the humans away, not collect more of them. This was a place they could have their secrets and their freedom.

She knelt on the ground and the wolf—Trey—lowered his head so that she could reach him. Still shaking—more from reaction than terror—she wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him, letting him and the others know she accepted him. She belonged to him.

She took Michael’s hand and pulled him down with her, then wiped at the crystal tears making silver paths down his cheeks. “I belong with you,” she told him. “With you and with Trey.” She raised her voice. “With all of you.”

If only the town would accept her.

“Be patient,” Michael whispered, and she wondered, not for the first time, if he could read her thoughts.

How quickly and how much her life had changed. Just try to come for me now, Robert. Just try. She smiled.

Again Michael proved he knew exactly what she’d been through. “I know you’re thinking he can’t hurt you here because of us. But gradually you’ll come to realize how strong you are. You’ll come to handle him and anyone like him if and when you need to.”

He was trying to show her she held her own power. She nodded. “Eventually.”

“It took me a long time, love. There’s no hurry.”

The shifters drifted away, perhaps not quite ready to accept her even if she was Trey and Michael’s mate.

She stood. “Show me yours, Michael.” Trey’s wolf was fascinating with his beautiful blue-gray fur. He looked like Trey. Again she wished for her paints.

Michael pulled off his clothes eagerly, smiling, and when he shifted he did so quickly. Trey had been trying to go slow for her, but Michael just changed.

He was smaller than Trey, and instead of silver eyes his human green gaze had changed to a green gold that took her breath away. His fur was rich browns and reds, with shades of gold splattered in random places.

He panted happily and loped toward her, his friendly nudge knocking her over. Trey gave a warning growl and swiped him with a reproving paw, and Selene sat on the ground where she’d fallen, laughing.

Right then, she’d never in her life been happier.

She’d found her place, her people.

She lay on the bed with Trey on top of her, tenting his body to keep his weight off her. Her excitement had doubled—tripled—since finding out he was a wolf and she stared up at him, feeling like a wide-eyed kid full of hero worship.

Over the last few weeks the two men had shown her what it was like to be loved. She had knee-jerk reactions sometimes, but could feel herself calming and coming alive at the same time, beneath the wolves’ tender ministrations.

Robert would fade, as would her life with him. She was sure of it. Her entire world now was her wolves and working at The Crescent.

They were teaching her so much. So much that didn’t involve pain or fear, and she looked forward to every second with them.

“What do you want, love?” Michael asked, sliding his hand between her and Trey’s bodies and caressing her belly. “What do you want tonight?”

“Anything you want to give me.” She trusted them that much.

Trey moved off her to lie on her other side. He cupped her breast and ran a slightly calloused thumb over her nipple. “Turn over, Selene.”

She stiffened at once and they waited her out, their caresses slow, calm. She took a few deep breaths. “Okay.” She turned over and lay on her belly, her breathing quick as she waited.

She closed her eyes as both men ran their hands over her, able to tell the difference between them without much trouble. Trey’s hands were bigger, more calloused than Michael’s. His touches were firmer and more commanding. There was always a little hesitancy in Michael’s touches, and she doubted he even realized it. But she felt it. Her own touches would be much the same.

Trey let his hot palm rest on her ass, his hand almost covering the cheek on which it lay. She loved his largeness.

She heard a sound like a lid being popped off a bottle, then a slick, cool finger slid inside her ass. She gathered handfuls of the sheet and squeezed so hard her nails nearly went through the fabric, but she didn’t ask them to stop.

Another finger thrust smoothly into her pussy, and she recognized Michael’s touch. Trey was slowly moving his finger in and out of her ass, gently, carefully, letting her accustom herself to the intrusion.

She was not a stranger to anal sex, but knew the wolves would make it pleasurable. They were chasing away all the old memories, just as they’d promised, and replacing them with good ones. Great ones.

The thrusts worked in rhythm, and as always, a familiar fire began to spread deep inside her belly. When one of them began to rub her clit, she cried out and moved her pelvis in small, pleading circles, unable to remain still.

When she was wet and had relaxed completely, Trey added another lubricated finger and Michael, from the way it felt, added two more. And still they kept up the steady pressure on her clit, keeping her so hot she could barely breathe.

She lay there on her belly as they played with her, her lower body humming with intense sensations. She felt them shift positions without taking away their fingers, and she gasped when a warm, damp tongue replaced the finger on her clit.

He licked her gently, quick little licks that had her squirming and opening her legs farther to give him better access. Michael.

When she was lifted from the bed and the fingers slid from her body, she was not happy. She opened her eyes and growled. “Don’t stop!”

Trey laughed and carried her to an overstuffed chair, and Michael rolled around on the bed, his smooth body too beautiful to ignore.

“My impatient little human,” Trey said. “Michael. Come help me, cub.”

Michael jumped from the bed immediately and she couldn’t help but compare the Michael she’d come to know with the quiet, rather grumpy one she’d first met.

She smiled at him, but before she could say anything Michael reached between her and Trey’s bodies and felt for her hole. “I’m going to guide him into your ass, Selene. Ready?”

Her eyes widened but before she had a chance to do anything but squeal, Trey sat down in the chair and impaled her with his cock.

It hurt. Even though she was ready and willing, and he was lubed to within an inch of his life, it hurt.

He was so big.

Her body automatically squirmed to get away, but he held her firmly in place as he inched his cock inside her. “Stay still, sweetheart.”

She looked at Michael as he knelt beside the chair. “Ouch!” was all she could manage, as Trey’s erection stole her breath.

“Michael,” Trey said, command and confidence in his voice.

Michael didn’t hesitate. He scooted around so he was kneeling between their legs, and as Trey held her thighs open, he began to eat her.

The feeling was indescribable. As Michael’s talented tongue took her mind off the pain and she relaxed, Trey slid the rest of the way in.

She let her head fall back against Trey’s shoulder and groaned. Oh, so good.

Trey lifted her with his hands beneath her thighs, as though she weighed nothing more than a feather, and then let her slide back down his cock.

She cried out with each movement and took her aching, sensitive breasts in her hands and squeezed them as Michael licked her and Trey fucked her.

“Faster,” she told them, panting.

She was going to come, and come hard, but before she did she wanted something more. “Michael, fuck me too.”

He wasn’t going to argue. She regretted the absence of his mouth when he moved to lie on the bed, but knew it would be worth it.

Trey carried her back to the bed, still inside her, and with little work on her part she was on her hands and knees over Michael. He thrust himself inside her without a word, and her orgasm hit her immediately—hard, fast, and almost too much.

But she expected nothing less from her wolves.

With only the thin bit of skin separating their cocks, they fucked her, and she buried her face in Michael’s warm throat and screamed as the pain and extreme pleasure didn’t just give her an orgasm, it wrenched it from her forcefully and some part of her wondered if she’d be able to live through it.

It was only afterward when she lay sandwiched between them, tremors shooting through her pussy like aftershocks from an earthquake, she realized every single time they made love to her she wondered if she could live through it.

She always did. And each time, it only got better.

She floated around at work, barely noticing or caring about the few hostile glares that came her way. She understood that The Crescent was for shifters and that she was, in their eyes, an intruder.

And it wasn’t that she didn’t care—but she wasn’t going anywhere. They’d get used to her eventually. She hoped.

Lora got a kick out of freaking her out every chance she got by partially shifting. Once she changed just her eyes; the next time feathers appeared on her face, and once, horror of horrors, she fell to the floor with a swan’s body and a human head.

She laughed hysterically each time her antics elicited a scream of fright or a dropped tray. Finally Mrs. G came out and threatened Lora with dismissal, and even though Selene was pretty sure she wouldn’t have followed through, Lora backed down.

When her shift was over she was almost glad, simply because it meant she’d be able to go home with Trey and Michael. Tremors of desire shook her body every time she thought about them, and only when one of the patrons informed her that the entire bar could smell her lust did she try to shut them from her mind.

It was humiliating.

“Go on home,” Trey told her. “I have some things I have to do and then we’ll be on.” His beautiful gaze started at her face and worked its way down her body, so thoroughly she felt naked by the time he was done. “Wait for us in bed, Selene. And don’t bother with pajamas.”