Where Wild Things Roam

Mates

Jack    

So the whole threat to Darby thing really has Ian riled. And not that I don’t think what they’re contributing isn’t great, but Sean and the Desert trackers aren’t making that easier. Which means that my normally cush job, just got annoying, and it’s putting a crimp in my s*x life.

Between regular maintenance contracts, and now the addition to the pack house, there are all kinds of contractors and crews coming and going constantly. Getting their background checks and keeping track of them the whole time they’re in Candlewood is an exercise in irritation. I’m actually considering sending the alpha pair on a honeymoon—a long one.

The team I put together to enforce the security protocols, while loyal, follows my instructions to the letter but can’t think outside the box when someone forgets their badge or shows up and isn’t on the schedule. This morning, there’s some issue with the grounds maintenance team that’s usually assigned to Candlewood and the replacement team is held up at our border for more than an hour because my guys can’t figure out how to handle it.

By the time I get grounds maintenance cleared and get my guys re-educated, it’s almost noon, blistering hot and I’m dying of thirst.

I’m closer to city center than I am to the packhouse, so I decide to drop in at Darla and Joe’s. It’s a cute little mom-and-pop diner run by a couple of empty-nest weres and makes the best raspberry lemonade in the entire state.

I wave to a couple of folks who greet me on the plaza and hold the door with my best lady-killer smile for a nasty little blonde I’m exceptionally familiar with who gives me the eye and looks like she might be my lunch. I’m following her ass into the diner and admiring the view when the most amazing smell in existence hits me.

It’s warm, rich loam and piney woods and it smells so good, I want to roll in it.

My wolf half is bouncing around inside my skull like a madman, carrying on in an infuriating little howl.

The wicked blonde gives me an indignant look when I push past her, but she’s s**t out of luck now. I can’t fill my lungs with enough of this woman’s scent and every heave is making my c**k harder in my shorts. Making my way up the line to the counter, I search for the source of the smell.

Her long straight black hair is pulled back in a ponytail at the nape of her neck and hangs nearly to her narrow waist in an inky fan. Her eyes skim the diner decor as she waits her turn at the register and talks on her phone. There’s a faint sheen of sweat on her tan shoulders, and she’s got a dirty baseball cap tucked under one arm.

“Yeah. We’re up here the rest of the week, which makes for a boring bus ride. Some weird security detail held us up this morning, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we have to come back next Monday to finish. It’s a cute town, Lili. You should meet me up here one afternoon to check it out.”

My mate looks right through me as she’s looking around, and I’m devastated. It’s a first for me, to not have a woman’s attention, but I couldn’t care less after I get a good look at her.

She’s got almondish-shaped dark chocolate colored eyes, with fat heavy eyelids with an extra fold that sets them deep. High cheekbones really accent the angular lines of her face and jaw and when she laughs, there’s the cutest wing-shaped crooked incisors front and center in her smile. She’s lean and athletic, just like I like, with gorgeous freckleless suntanned skin.

I push my way up behind her and bury my face in her neck.

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Pump the brakes on that, beefcake!” She pushes me away, smacking at my hands when I reach for her. “Hold on Lili. You got a problem, pretty boy?”

“N-no,” I stutter and she gives me a doubting look. “Yes!”

She smacks my hands away with her free hand again, still keeping the phone pressed to her ear. “Yeah, lady-killer? Let’s hear it.”

She drops her guard, and in that split second I pull her hard against me. My tongue lolls out and I lick her from the edge of her tank top up to her ear. “You’re my mate, beautiful. I love you and I can’t wait to take you to bed and f**k you senseless.”

Straight-arming against my chest, she arches back to see my face. Her expression morphs from annoyance to amazement. “Oh my God. Look at your tongue!” Then her eyes drop to her hand, pressed flat on my chest, following it as she explores with her fingertips through my t-shirt, biting her lower lip the further south she goes.

“I’m built for your pleasure.” I grind my hips against her to reiterate the point.

“Oh, I bet you are!” It comes out as a wicked little laugh and I love her more. She shuffles forward at the same time she pushes me back, moving us out of the line. “Sorry, go ahead,” she says to the shocked woman in line behind her. To me, she holds up one finger in my face. “Listen, stud. Be a good boy and stay just a sec.”

There’s nothing sexier than a woman in charge.

There’s a string of excited babble coming out of the phone and my mate directs her attention there. “Lili? Lingling! I’m okay. Listen. Remember that thing we were talking about a few weeks ago?” More babble from the phone. “Yeah, that one. Hang on.”

Dropping the phone so she can see the touchscreen, she taps an icon with one slim finger and opens the camera. “Let me go now, Sampson—let’s get a picture.”

“I’m Jack.” I ease my grip on her hips and she draws up beside me under my arm, positioning us for a selfie.

“Okay, Jack. Smile pretty and give me your best Mic Jagger. Oh! Wait! Take your shirt off.”

I reach behind my neck and pull my t-shirt over my head, watching her expression. She’s pleased and the smell of it excites me. I reach for her again.

“Aaah! Noooo! This first.”

Her finger’s raised in my face again and I debate sucking it into my mouth and showing her what I can do with this tongue. But she’s so cute when she wants something, I delay my gratification momentarily to make her happy. She adjusts to center us in the image, grins and says huskily, “Gimme the tongue, beefcake.”

I smile beside her, my tongue hanging out and she snaps the picture and promptly forgets me as she messes with her phone again.

“Triumvir, I’m sorry. Please put your shirt on. There are rules in this establishment.”

“Sorry, Darla. It was just for the picture.” I tug my shirt over my head again and turn to my delectable mate.

She looks up from sending the picture, her dark eyes keen. “Triumvir? I thought you said your name is Jack.”

“My name is Jack. Triumvir is my title.”

“What kind of title is that?” She glances at the time on her phone as the excited string of babble begins again. “Listen, stud—uh, Jack. My break is over. Why don’t we talk about it tonight after I get off work? Meet me here at five?” As if she knows my answer, she starts around me towards the door, her phone to her ear again.

I follow like the lovesick puppy I am, but when she starts to walk away from me outside, I grab her arm. “You’re my mate. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

She stops, giving a low husky laugh. “There’s not much in your head, is there? But that devotion is really appealing. You want to keep me in sight? You’re going to have to hang out while I get my work done. A girl’s gotta pay the bills.”

**

She’s the only thing I can think of the rest of the afternoon. Watching my mate clear weeds, plant flowers and mulch beds, prune trees and shrubs along the plaza and cart out the trimmings, I pace the periphery. I love everything about her, except that I’m having to wait to take her clothes off and bury myself balls-deep in her and wring more of those husky wicked giggles out of her. Delayed gratification isn’t the kind I’m good at.

On her next break, she laughs in my face when I tell her she’ll never have to work again—that I’ll take care of her every need.

At least she spends it with me instead of on her phone, but if she asks me again about the Luna lilies, I might have to kiss her until she’s too breathless to talk.

If she’d ever let me touch that million-dollar body of hers.

I can’t decide if I’m wounded or thrilled that she’s so strong and independent. And I don’t think it matters because every time I get close enough to talk to her, her scent knocks every other thought out of my head.

At five, my mate loads up her tools and waves to the foreman. She tells her coworkers and the bus driver they came with she’s got a ride, then waves me along behind her as she starts towards Darla and Joe’s again.

“I’m right here, mate. We can go to my house instead. I promise, everything you’ll need is there. And if it’s not, I’ll arrange for it immediately.”

She’s pressing her ear to her phone again. My teeth clench resentfully and I quiver, just a little annoyed. I can’t wait to power that thing off for the night. And maybe tomorrow. And tomorrow night. In fact, I’m going to monopolize her every moment until she can’t walk anymore and then I’m going to do it again.

“What are you? Some trust fund kid?” Stopping in place, she says, “First, I don’t know what this mate thing is, but I’m Anna. Wait—.”

It’s her finger in my face again, but this time I do suck it into my mouth. I lock eyes with her and give her finger a sample of my tongue talents. It earns me another wicked giggle before she mouths the command ‘open’ and makes me let her go.

Sweet goddess, I f*****g love this woman.

“Lili? Hi. Yeah, we’ll be right there.” She turns her attention to me again. “And second, we’re going back to your place, Jack, but we have a stop to make first.”

And that’s when the second most wonderful smell in the world hits me. It’s so overwhelming, I think I forget to breathe.

Clover and wide-open sky and it blends perfectly with Anna’s loam and pine.

My mouth falls open and I’m heaving both of them into my lungs when a petite Asian woman carrying a backpack draped over one shoulder comes around the corner. Her shiny black hair is cut in an angular bob that frames the most perfect heart-shaped face set with a laughing pair of dark eyes, a narrow nose and a cherry-red rouged perfect pout. She walks up in the shortest denim shorts ever and the highest fire-engine red wedge sandals ever and taking Anna’s hand, she kisses her on the mouth.

With tongue.

My jaw hits the pavement.

“Hey, Jack.” The Asian woman eye's drift over me wantonly, from head to toe and back.

Her voice is ear candy and I’m going to hear her screaming my name all night. I’m going to hear them both screaming my name all night.

“I’m Lingling, but you can call me Lili. I hope you don’t mind the surprise, but Anna and I are a package deal. You down?”

I grab both of them around the waist, biting each on the neck with a low growl, just so I can sneak a little taste. “You two are in for the night of your lives, every night from here on out.”

I yank them both off their feet and carry them towards my rooms in the packhouse.

**

“These are some nice digs, Jack.” Lili looks around at my bedroom, setting her backpack on the bench at the foot of the bed and opening it up. She’s got the voice of a siren—I could listen to her all day. And all night doing a different kind of singing.

While it’s not a first for me, having these two—my mates—here, together, in my room, I’m as distracted as I’ve ever been in my life. Like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest, as my adoptive dad, Michael, used to describe me.

Anna backs me up and sits me down on the side of the bed, standing over me with her breasts in my face. I kiss her belly through her shirt and inhale deeply before answering. “I’m the pack Triumvir. My rooms are part of the benefits. Come to bed, ladies.” I pat the spaces on either side of me, popping the biggest boner in the history of weres as Lili pulls restraints out of her bag.

“Why don’t we talk about that pesky triumvir thing later?” Anna suggests huskily, drawing my attention again by tugging my t-shirt over my head.

I make certain hers quickly follows mine to the floor. And since why stop there, I kneel, pressing hard kisses into her flat abdomen while I undo her shorts and slide them over her hips. I realize with a groan, she had no panties on under them—All. Damn. Day—and I can’t believe how stupid I am.

Inside my head, my wolf half is salivating like that dome-headed drooling alien in whatever horror movie that was.

I should have carried her off. Or at least behind a building or somethin—

“Oh, holy f**k!” It’s a half-whisper half-moan, and all worship as I stare at the little steel balls gleaming against her gorgeous skin. Her nether lips, like her n*****s, are a mocha cream color, and she’s waxed everything, so there’s no mistaking the piercing through her c**t. I swear, this is two steps from heaven.

“Let’s play a little game, okay, lover?” Lili advances with the restraints dangling from one hand.

I chuckle and the laugh rumbles deep in my chest as I get to my feet. “Lili, honey. Those aren’t going to fit me if that’s your plan.”

I hold up one gigantic hand, my wrist obviously larger than the last link on her cuffs and her face falls into the cutest little pout of disappointment.

“Now, none of that. Never fear.” I grab her chin, give her a deep kiss, plundering every corner of her mouth.

Scooping Anna up and depositing her on the bed, I lick her exposed c**t, working the piercing with my tongue and immediately her fingers are clenched in my hair, her hips arched to me.

I love this! Abso-f*****g-lutely love this! My c**k’s so hard I’m getting lightheaded.

Reaching towards the bedside table, I pull open its drawer. “Here, Lili. We’ll use mine.”

**

Jack    

Call it deviant, call it kinky, f**k, call it whatever you want. To me, the only thing sexier than a woman who wants control in the bedroom is two women who want control in the bedroom. Together. In my bedroom in particular.

So I’m predictable.

There’s something reassuring to be said for my reliability.

And really, they don’t scare me.

Maybe it’s because even tied up together, these two don’t outweigh me. For that matter, even the largest female were I’ve been with was still a good sixty pounds lighter than me. So what real harm can these two do that a big strapping were like me can’t heal?

Not that they don’t give it their best. Anna has some real talent with a riding crop. And Lili—the little vixen—what she can do with dripping candle wax and dirty talk with that siren voice—I tell you what...

It is goo-ood.

If it’s perverted to love being used like a s*x toy by the two most spectacularly hot women in the existence of life on this planet, fine. I’m a pervert. Once they had me restrained on the bed, they rode me every which way they wanted, bucking and screaming, over and over with every orgasm I gave them.

It was beautiful.

And when they’d had their fun their way and let me loose, I f****d them both until they were drained beyond their capacities to do anything but sigh and cuddle up against me, one on either side.

 It’s the most blissful thing I’ve ever felt spooning around Lili’s petite frame while Anna presses up against me from behind, both their scents mingled. It’s like sleeping out in the forest in high summer.

It’s late—well past midnight and probably closer to morning—and it’s dark and quiet around us. Reaching over me, Anna slides her hand under Lili’s arm, cups a breast and squeezes her pierced n****e. We both love the sighing moan it draws out of her. “Lili,” she whispers, deliberately loud, wanting me to hear. “Can we keep him?”

I chuckle. “In the interest of informed consent, you should know I’m a werewolf.”

In my arms, Lili sucks in her breath and holds it. Behind me, Anna snorts and bursts out laughing, her body shaking against me. It makes my c**k stir interestedly.

“Okay.” I nuzzle into Lili’s hair, contentedly inhaling the smell of clover. “I guess we’re good then.”

“Hang on.” Lily squirms in my arms, which I enjoy entirely too much so I tighten them and make it harder for her. Now my c**k’s not stirring anymore—it’s all in for the next round.

When she’s facing me, she rolls me onto my back beside Anna. “A werewolf. Like rip people’s throats out and make off with virgins?”

Anna groans. “Come on, Lili. Don’t start this. Rob was not a vampire. Jack isn’t a werewolf.”

“I have doubts about the existence of virgins myself,” I offer in humor. “But, seriously, what about a vampire?”

“You brought it up,” Lili chimes in an I-told-you-so tone with a so-there glance at Anna.

“Fine. Give him the CliffsNotes version.”

“For my master’s thesis, I spent a lot of time in the Abandoned Piles—it’s what grad students call the old paper archives in the attic at the university library. One night I was in there later than I planned and this creepy guy approached me.”

“If you tell me he hurt you, I will hunt him down and tear his head off.”

There’s a long pause while Anna and Lili exchange a bunch of meaningful expressions in an unspoken communication I don’t understand. Yet.

“I guess that answers the part about ripping people’s throats out. Anyway, the guy introduced himself as Rob, told me he was working on his thesis too and asked if he could walk me home. He was sort of cute in a sinister goth way. So I debated it, but he smelled like graveyard rot, and I just couldn’t take the thought, so I told him bug off and had Anna pick me up.”

“And now she’s convinced he was a vampire.”

“He was, Anna! You’d know if you smelled him too. Nothing living smells like that.”

“They actually do reek really bad,” I confirm. “Graveyard rot isn’t a bad term for it. Usually I refer to is as wide-open ass, but that gets under Ian’s skin and he’s a d**k when he’s testy.”

On my chest, Lili has c****d one brow at Anna. “Hold up there, lover. Did you just tell us there are vampires?”

“Yes. Vampires. Witches. Werewolves and other shifter species. Up until a month ago, I wouldn’t have believed it myself, but even faeries. Or rather one faery. Probably other s**t I don’t know about. Only vampires have a stench like that though.”

While I’ve been answering, Anna has rolled up on my chest too.

“You’re serious.”

I can’t help myself, her cynicism is adorable, and I grin. “Yes. Let me up and I’ll show you.”

Sliding them off me on either side, I scoot towards the foot of the bed.

“God. I wish I hadn’t brought Rob up. It’s almost like I can smell him now.”

I stand over the bed, giving a grunt of appreciation. “f**k, you two are a slice of heaven. Let’s do this another time an—.”

Anna points her finger at me. “Ahhh. You. No. Show us the wolf thing.”

“We can do that later.” I start to climb on the bed again. “Look at this c**k—it’s a shame to waste this thi—.”

Doubling over, I collapse on the foot of the bed at the sledgehammer hit in my gut, my ears ringing with the pain and something that must be part of the ward because I remember it from the first time.

Sean shouts back through the link.

Recovering, I pull myself to my feet and yank Lili and Anna to theirs.

“Jack! What’s wrong?”

“We’re being attacked.” Hastily I wrap each one of them in a blanket. Taking their hands, I drag them out into the hallway with me.

Sean’s already there, and as I pull Lili and Anna with me towards him, Ian’s bedroom door opens and he’s hauling Darby out behind him. She clutches a sheet around herself, and Tessa clings to her heels. I shove my mates toward Ian.

“Stay with them! Sean!” The two of us bolt for the packhouse door.

**

Lili    

Holy f*****g s**t. It’s like the entire house is full of nothing but gorgeous hunky men, all rippling muscles and enormous c***s, and all of them buck naked. It’s like being at a male review, only you actually get to have s*x with the dancers.

After Jack takes off with the blonde one, Anna and I are left staring a hulking beast of a man, with black velvet hair and p***y-drenchingly beautiful blue eyes. His nostrils flare, his eyes watching the three windows at this end of the hall.

One humongous hand clutches the spindly arm of a fragile looking woman wrapped in a sheet and as I watch, he pulls her in front of him to look in her face.

“I need to shift, Darby. I can’t protect you in this form.” His voice rumbles and scratches, resonating in all the right ways to make a woman melt.

She nods, turning to Anna and me. “It’s going to be alright. I’m Darby. This is my mate, Ian,” she says in this adorable lilting British accent.

“Did he just say shift?” I interrupt. “He’s a werewolf too?”

Darby exhales, relaxing. “Yes. Ian is Jack’s brother.”

“Darby.” Her name is a low, rumbling growl. It’s all the warning we’re given.

The sound of bones popping out of place and back into new alignments, stretching skin and even hair growing surround us and Anna and I cling to each other, huddled against the wall and unable to take our eyes off the sight.

The entire thing is over in perhaps a minute, and the hulking man with the wavy black hair becomes a hulking black wolf, standing as tall as the woman, Darby, at her shoulders. He shakes himself, his fur ruffling, as if to shake off aftereffects of what we just witnessed.

My mouth falls open in an excited grin. “Holy s**t, Anna. He’s a wolf! He’s a f*****g werewolf! I told you they existed.”

Beside me, Anna isn’t quite as thrilled. She stares in shock at the black wolf looming behind Darby. “J-J-J-Jack.”

Darby nods gently, clearly worried about Anna, but I know after a minute, she’ll shrug it off. “Yes. Jack is a wolf too. Half of Candlewood are wolves. I must apologize, I don’t believe we’ve met. Who are you?”

“Oh. I’m Lingling—you can call me Lili—and this is Anna. We’re with Jack.”

Darby chuckles. “Of course you are.”