Arielle and the Three Wolves (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (20 page)

Later they toweled each other off and went back to bed and ordered room service. They ate in bed and talked late into the night. Kyle called Luke and informed him they would not be home until the next morning. And Arielle called Jason in the hospital and told him everything was all right. They made love three more times that night, and Arielle was worried that if there were guests in the room that adjoined theirs, her screams might have kept them up that night.

She let Kyle exhaust her from pure physical exertion and gave herself no time to think about the decisions of the future that closed in on her.

* * * *

Early the next morning Arielle and Kyle decided to do the right thing. They set off to tell Jason about the cattle futures trading they had engaged in the day before.

“Families don’t keep secrets from each other,” Arielle had told Kyle when they woke up.

He had been easy to convince. They showered, checked out of the motel, and made the drive to the hospital.

Arielle’s heart was doing flip-flops as they approached the little hospital. She couldn’t begin to imagine what Jason’s reaction would be, but she knew he would be angry. The venture was over and done with and things had come out well, but she wasn’t sure Jason would see it that way.

Jason was looking better and sitting up in bed when they entered his room. Arielle went to him and gave him a hug. He returned her hug with a loving embrace.

“Arielle and I were busy yesterday,” Kyle started. “You know the money I’ve been trying to raise?”

“What about it?” Jason’s face became dark.

Arielle put a hand on his shoulder to try and calm him.

“Arielle loaned us the money,” Kyle came clean. “It was just enough to invest in the cattle market.”

Jason looked up at Arielle. “What’s he talking about?” he asked her.

“Your brother is a magnificent trader, Jason.” She gave him a reassuring smile. “He made me a tiny fortune yesterday.”

“He took your money from you?”

“It’s not as if he stole it from me. I loaned it to him.”

“How could you have done this?” Jason turned back to Kyle and raised his voice.

“I’m sorry, Jason. It was a dumb thing to do. But Arielle trusted me.”

“And he didn’t let me down,” Arielle put in. She continued to rub Jason’s shoulder soothingly, trying to keep him calm.

“I told you not to do that,” Jason said to Kyle.

“I know you did. That’s why I let Arielle loan me the money. I did as you asked and didn’t pull money from the ranch account.”

“How could you do this?” Jason was becoming angrier as he spoke. “You betrayed me, and you betrayed our future mate, too!”

“He didn’t betray me,” Arielle said. She bent to Jason on the hospital bed and forced him to look at her. “It was my idea he take the money. You guys are asking me to trust you with my body, and with my future. I can certainly trust Kyle with a little money.”

“You didn’t have to give him any money, Arielle,” Jason said. “Why did you do it?”

“Because I love him, too.” The words were out of her mouth before she knew what she said.

Kyle looked at her across Jason’s bed, and she nodded to him.

The fight had suddenly gone out of Jason.

“I love you both.” Arielle sat on the bed with Jason and took his hand between her fingers. “We didn’t tell you this today to make you angry, but because it’s the truth. Families tell each other the truth.” She gave him a kiss on the lips. “Don’t be angry,” she admonished him.

Her words had an immediate and visible impact on Jason. He pulled Arielle back against his chest and held onto her tightly. As he nestled his head against Arielle he glanced up at Kyle.

“Thanks for telling me, bro,” he told Kyle in a quiet voice.

Kyle approached Jason, and Jason took him in a hug with his other arm. He held both Arielle and Kyle at the same moment. Arielle felt the three of them had just become a family.

“I’m sorry if I let you down, man,” Kyle told him.

“Just make sure Arielle gets her money back.”

“Done,” Kyle said with a smile.

“You know I love both of you guys, too,” Jason told them both.

Arielle gave both of her men a kiss on the lips. It was a new feeling to be with both of them at the same time considering they were both her lovers now, but it felt right, and it felt natural.

She still had to worry about Luke. She didn’t know what she was going to do about him.

Luke pounded his fist against the stable wall. He fumed with anger. A week had passed where Arielle, his future mate, had lived under the same roof with him. Tomorrow Jason would be home from the hospital.

Luke had not touched Arielle once since she had been here other than to shake her hand on the first day she arrived. He had talked to her on several occasions, but each time the conversation had been stiff and gone nowhere. She had spent the last several days with Kyle. He knew Kyle had fucked her.

He hit the wall again with his balled up fist. He was angry at Kyle. He didn’t allow him any time with Arielle. He wasn’t jealous. He was happy that Arielle gave herself to his brother.
Envy
more succinctly described the way he felt.

Luke knew he had never had a problem with women before, so now why did he have a problem with Arielle? She was the most important women to ever come into his life, and he couldn’t even seem to talk to her.

Now he was finished with talk. Women had always loved him because he had been a man of action. Tonight he would act. A fire burnt inside him that would not go out. He had to have Arielle. He had to quench his desire or he would go insane. It wasn’t Arielle’s fault. She couldn’t have known what she did to him, but he would wait no longer. Tonight he would take what he wanted, and he would make her feel for him everything he felt for her. She still had a week before she was supposed to go back to her vet’s clinic in Wolf Creek. He didn’t care if it took the entire time. He didn’t care if it took longer. Because he would spend all of that time with her, and he wouldn’t let her go back until he had won his victory over her. He knew he could do it, too. She would respond to him like all the other women he had known. He just had to get her alone. He had to have her all to himself.

He knew he wasn’t thinking clearly right now, and if Jason ever found out what he had planned, he would probably beat him to within an inch of his life. He was duly scared of his older brother and respected his role as the alpha. But at this point he didn’t care. The only thing that mattered to him was Arielle.

He packed up the second duffle bag and tugged the zipper closed. He threw it beside the first one on the ground of the stables. The two bags held all the supplies they would need. He still had to see to the two horses he would need. Images of Arielle passed his mind, and he slowed in his work.

She liked to laugh, and when she laughed she had a funny sort of smile. It was pretty, and it was a turn-on. Arielle was not the most beautiful woman he had ever been with. He had taken some real beauties into his bed. But she had something so deep about her, something he couldn’t put his finger on. Of course she was his mate, but there was even more than that. She was an honest-to-God real woman, and he wanted to get to know her in every way a man could know a woman.

He saddled up the two horses and tried to bring his emotions under control. He wouldn’t get anywhere unless the first part of his plan worked. He ran his hand through his flyaway hair and went outside the stables and watched the night. There was the howl of a wolf out on the range. That was Kyle. He was out tonight.

Luke loved to shift. He loved to be naked and run free in his alternate form in the deepest part of the forest as far away from people as he could possibly get. Later that night he planned to shift as well. But right now he had to stay as a man, and it served his purpose well that Kyle was out on the range and not at the house with Arielle.

He looked from the prairie to the big house. Arielle was up there in the house alone. A smile played across his lips. His plan might just work out after all. When he went back inside the stables, he was quick to finish the preparation of the two horses. He gave his horse a pat on the nose.

“Do you think I’m crazy for doing something like this?” he asked the horse. “I probably am. Like always, good old Luke is probably going to get himself into a shitload of trouble. And I might even fail. But you know something, I don’t care, because she’s worth it. As long as I try then I’m okay with whatever the outcome is.”

After he was finished in the stables, he approached the house. It was almost midnight. He had no idea if Arielle would still be awake at this hour. In fact when it came right down to it, he knew very little about his would-be mate. Well, that’s what this covert operation was all about.

Just in case she was awake still, he approached the house in a stealthy manner. He didn’t want her to know he came for her. He wanted her taken by surprise. Her window was just above him, and he stood and stared up at it. There was a full moon and no clouds in the sky so the night was bright. He could see clearly. Her light was off up there. So perhaps she was asleep. Too bad, because she would soon be awake.

There was a ladder from where he had painted the house earlier in the spring. He moved it down from where it rested a few feet and got it square with Arielle’s window. He knew how to move quietly and didn’t make one sound while he positioned the ladder. Wolves could be silent predators when they had to be. Most of the time Luke would rather be a wolf than a human.

He started the climb and again made not a single sound. Her window was open just a crack to let in the cool night air from the mountains. There was a screen that blocked his entrance in front of the cracked window. Once more he moved with the sureness that was from his wolf heritage. He didn’t have a problem with the screen or with the window once the screen had been removed. Soon he was seated on the windowsill on the inside of Arielle’s bedroom.

The room was dark and bathed in moonlight. This gave him no trouble as his eyes glowed with the fire of the wolf and illuminated the dark for him. Arielle was in her bed and under the covers. Her eyes were closed, and she appeared to sleep peacefully. She was curled in a ball on her side and turned toward him. She wore a brief halter to sleep in, and her naked shoulders glistened in the moonlight. It took an effort not to go to her and crawl on top of her in that bed. His cock had grown inside his jeans to full mast and he painfully had to tuck it down his left pant leg.

Even in sleep Arielle wore that quizzical expression on her face. As Luke watched her chest rise and fall peacefully under the covers, he realized what it was about her that drew him in so hard. She was alive, and she had the capacity to enjoy life, not just go through the motions and check off another day on the calendar as she got one day older as most people did. She had the spirit in her to really live. Luke knew he had that same spirit inside himself, although his came from shifting into a wolf.

No other woman he had ever known had this spirit, not even the shifter women he had fucked on occasion. In fact he didn’t think his brothers had that spirit. His mother had it. That was about all. No one else that he had ever encountered had this glorious spirit to make life worth the ride. Now he had found someone who had the spirit, and she was to be his mate. And he would take her from her room tonight and take her deep in the forest where no one else could ever find them, and he would fuck her brains out until she surrendered that spirit completely to him.

* * * *

Arielle dreamed about both Jason and Kyle. They were on opposite sides of her. Jason pulled her to him from his side, and Kyle did the same from his. They were both big and powerful and pulled her back and forth. Arielle felt like a plaything between them as her body swayed between their muscles.

Her body was moved back and forth. She began to wake up, and her body was still shaken about. Groggily she opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was the figure of a big man crouched over her bed. Was it Jason? Was it Kyle? Her eyes adjusted to the dim light of the bedroom. The effects of sleep dulled her brain. She brushed some hair out of her face and looked up.

“Luke?” she asked as the form came into focus.

He had been the one to shake her awake, and now bent to whisper in her ear. “Arielle, I want you to come with me. If you still want to be my mate, if you still want to be a mate to any of us, then you will come with me now.”

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I want you to come with me.”

She looked past him to the clock on the bedside table. “Luke, it’s after midnight,” she protested.

He gripped her shoulder. “Get up,” he told her, and she noticed an unknown but dangerous look in his eyes.

She decided to comply with him. He helped her pull back the covers and she slid her legs over the side of the bed. She only wore a halter and panties to sleep in. “Where are you taking me?” she asked him. She suspected this was an abduction, but she couldn’t figure out why.

“We’re going into the forest—deep into the forest.”

“Well, can I get dressed first?”