Desired by Wolves [Call of the Wolf 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (3 page)

“Oh, Otis.” Wriggling, he licked her face with his little pink tongue. It was only then that she realized she was crying. “So what do you say? Want to be my forever dog?”

As if he could understand, Otis started licking her face harder which caused her to cry harder. “If only all dogs were as loveable as you. Let me get your stuff. You’re coming home with me.” She put him down in his basket, and she wrote a note for the volunteer who was on the early shift.

Finally she gathered up his collar, some toys, some dog food, and a small dog bed out to her SUV and then came back for Otis. He had an anxious look on his face but then calmed down when he saw her. She picked him up in her arms and walked out, shutting off the lights behind her. She settled him in the dog bed which she’d placed in on the passenger seat and clipped into place with the seat belt.

She felt that shiver again as she did up her seat belt. After she started the engine, she turned to Otis who was sitting up and looking around. He didn’t seem upset, though. It was like he was looking for someone he knew.

Did he feel something, too? Maybe it wasn’t just her imagination. But if he did, he certainly didn’t seem to be upset by it. She looked around the parking lot, but although her parking space and the clinic doorway were well lit, the outer edges of the lot were shadowed. She shrugged, telling herself she was imagining things, put the truck into gear, and headed home.

* * * *

Alex limped out of the shadows. It was good to see Lena again. He thought she was going home after the club. He hadn’t realized that she was going to the clinic. He’d come to see Otis when he’d seen her SUV in the parking lot, so he’d parked his truck in the next lot over and walked to where he could see the back entrance, but not close enough that she would spot him in the shadows and waited.

He reached down to rub his own lame leg. He’d seen the posters she’d put up and the pictures on her website trying to find the owner of the spirited little animal. He wasn’t sure what had made him break into her clinic for the first time three nights ago, but he felt a kinship with the abandoned pup. Lena really needed a better security system because it had been darned easy. He had only planned on checking up on the pup and maybe trying to find out if she had been contacted by the owners or someone who knew the owners. He felt a need to punish anyone who’d do that to an innocent creature, or that was what he’d told himself the reason was, but one look at Otis and he found himself shifting and curling up with the little animal, sleeping soundly for the first time in months. He’d almost overslept and had to dress quickly and slip out before the volunteer on early shift caught him.

He’d been more careful when he’d returned the next night and the next. He hadn’t planned on coming tonight. It was foolish of him to visit the dog. What if Lena caught him? But he was drawn to Otis and took as much comfort as he gave. But now that Lena was taking him home, he wouldn’t be able to spend nights with his little buddy.

He wondered if she’d take Otis to work or leave him at home. If it was the latter, hopefully her home security system would be just as poor as her office security.

He turned to walk back to his truck. She’d looked good. She’d looked good when he’d used the security cameras to watch her at Lupo’s. Okay, he admitted to himself. He’d been spying on her. He’d been back in Harmony a week and had done everything to find out how she was and what she was doing except actually see her in person or talk to her. He’d been stalking her online for a very long time, even going to far as to create a fake Facebook identity and friend her and the clinic a few years ago so he could see her photos and see what she’d been up to. It was sad, almost pathetic really, but he’d been unable to stop. He needed to know if she was involved with anyone.

She had plenty of photos of her with her best friends Penelope and Ginger, but none with any men except the occasional one with his brothers. Since he got back, he knew that she still slept with them periodically, but they’d told him how she was keeping them at an emotional distance and wouldn’t come near them on full moon nights, not that anything permanent could be established at that time without his participation. However if Joe or Will bit her on a full moon night, then she would be caught up in an uncontrollable arousal that would last until the sun came up. It would be the same if he bit her, but his brothers did not like what happened the night before he left. But from what they’d told her, it seemed that Lena had decided never to lose control like that again.

He wondered if there had been many other men in her life during the years she’d lived away from Harmony. He knew about her broken engagement to a doctor, a human he presumed.

Lena was of wolf-shifter blood. The women of the bloodline didn’t shift themselves, but they were drawn to men who did, and generally had relationships with all the men in a family. He and his brothers had grown up knowing that, one day, she would be theirs. He’d taken that commitment for granted and expected her to just blindly submit to his will and wait for him. He’d made his decisions without any consideration for what she wanted or even what his brothers wanted. What kind of crappy Alpha was he? He was supposed to care for his brothers and his mate. Instead he’d fucked up all of their lives.

She looked good on the security monitors. She looked even better in person. The ten years looked good on her. She was most definitely a woman now. She was still fit, but her breasts looked bigger and her ass lusher, or maybe that was just his faulty memory. She wore her hair shorter, probably because it was practical for work, but the pixie cut looked good on her. It still amazed him that she worked with all sorts and sizes of animals, considering her slight five foot one, but she was of wolf-shifter blood, so she was definitely stronger than the average woman her size.

He felt his dick stir at the memory of what it was like to hold this taut little body under him and pound into her as she came apart in his arms. He remembered the last time they’d all been together, the night before he’d left. It had been the first night of the full moon, and she’d, hell, his brothers, too, they’d all wanted to do the mating ritual. He’d convinced the three of them that the third night of the full moon was the most powerful, so that night, only he had given her a mating bite. That had caused her to become almost overwhelmed with arousal, but would wear off when the sun rose.

It was the most sexually satisfying two nights of his life. She’d been insatiable, and the three of them had taken her over and over, singly and in combination each night, and slept most of the day. Being wolf-shifters, they recovered after sex much faster than human men, and they were able to satisfy her over and over until they were all exhausted, sleeping most of each day. But even being of the wolf blood, even three of them could barely keep up with the need the mating bite had unleashed in her because she, too, was of the blood.

He thought back to the very last time, just before dawn broke at the end of their second mating night when the three of them had once again taken her together. She was sandwiched between his brothers, the twins buried deep in her ass and pussy, unmoving even as she struggled between them. But then she realized that he was watching and waiting, and her eyes, big and dark and aflame with arousal, looked up at him as she silently begged him to take her mouth so that their possession of her body would be complete.

He throbbed at the memory of twining his hands in her long dark hair and pushing into her mouth, forcing her to take him deep, controlling her totally. Three strokes and he was buried to the hilt. Her eyes rolled back in her head in pleasure. He could have stayed like that all night, her warm mouth caressing his cock, but he had to move to come and mark her as his. He’d heard Will groan from underneath her, his cock buried in her pussy.

“I can’t wait any longer, Alex. She’s squeezing my cock like a vise. I have to move.” He flexed his hips, and Joe flexed as well, and then they were pounding into her from both sides. She moaned around Alex’s cock, and he, too, was soon pounding into her, burying his dick deep in her throat over and over again. He wanted to draw out the sensation, but he could see that her own orgasm was beginning as the little tremors started in her body and quickly grew to giant quakes as she convulsed around their bodies. He couldn’t hold off any longer. He pulled out of her mouth and stroked his cock once, twice, before the first stream of cum jetted out, hitting her chin and sliding down her body. He jerked his hand again, and cum landed in her hair and on her belly and breasts, and he pushed her head back and aimed his cock at her body before shoving it back in her mouth and finishing in that warm pussy as she went limp, spent from the force of her orgasm.

Carefully, the three brothers pulled out of her body. Alex lifted her into his arms and carried her into the bathroom. He sat down on the toilet seat as Will and Joe wet washcloths and carefully cleaned her body and hair as best they could. She was so spent she barely opened her eyes at their tender ministrations. And when Alex carried her into the bedroom and settled into the big armchair with her still in his arms, she just snuggled up to him and slept.

It was almost noon when he’d finally arisen with her still sleeping soundly in his arms. His brothers were in the big bed. He nudged Will, who was closest to him. Will got up sleepily, and Alex carefully set her down in the bed beside Joe and motioned for Will to slide back in beside her. His brother looked at him with puzzlement, but he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Alex watched the three of them cuddle close. They’d look after her while he was gone. And if he didn’t come back, Joe, who was twenty minutes older, would be the new Alpha, and he and Will would eventually mate her and raise a family together.

They’d discussed having the mating ceremony before he left the first time. She’d offered to do it then, but he’d said no. He had been only twenty-two and the others were eighteen. No one pushed it. But now he knew that the three of them had discussed it during his absence and were determined to be mated this time. It was up to him to do what was right for all of them.

The twins couldn’t leave Harmony. They’d just taken over Lupo’s and were excited to be running their own business. He knew that if they did the ceremony, Lena would have to give up her dream of being a veterinarian to be with her mates. There were no vet schools in driving distance of Harmony, and the mating bite wouldn’t allow her to live far from them. And he knew Lena. She wouldn’t let them give up their dream business, so she’d help them with Lupo’s but would always regret her own lost dream even though she’d never admit how much she missed it.

And it would tie him to Harmony, too. If he was completely honest, he wasn’t ready for that either. He was the Alpha, but even with the mating ceremony, he could do as he pleased, but they’d be tied to him and wait as long as they had to, and he wasn’t that much of an asshole. He had things he needed to do away from Harmony, and he couldn’t leave Joe and Will in some kind of limbo and Lena mated to an absent Alpha.

So he’d gone back. It wasn’t because he loved war, but he had men who depended on him. He was a good soldier, and he knew he could make a difference. He was fearless in battle and a good leader. There was one soldier in particular who drew him back. Craig had joined the unit six months before Alex went on leave. Craig wasn’t well suited to being a soldier. But he was a good kid, and Alex worried about him. Craig’s was the oldest in his family, and his salary was what let his widowed mother stay home to raise his younger sisters. He was determined to provide for them, but he had to stay alive to do that. He died while Alex was back home, but Alex didn’t find out until he was back overseas and had Lena and his brothers hating his guts for sneaking off while they were sleeping.

Maybe he really was a coward. He’d wanted to make memories that could comfort him when he was in far-off war zones and give him inspiration to survive and come home, but that had been more selfishness on his part.

He’d planned to tell them all this before he left, but when he saw them all sleeping so peacefully, he’d rationalized that it was easier to leave a note and just go without any messy scenes. He could face the enemy and guns and bombs and bullets, but he wasn’t man enough to face her expression when she found out that he wouldn’t mate her while he was a soldier and faced possible death on the field of battle.

Some brave warrior he was. He felt like a fraud when he had to dress up and wear his medals. When he learned of Craig’s death, he’d accepted an offer from the Rangers and had thrown himself into his new training. The military called him a hero, but he knew that he was a coward and didn’t deserve a woman like Lena. And now, with his injuries, he didn’t even have the military to fall back on. They’d have given him a desk job, but he didn’t want that, so he came home to lick his wounds and figure out what to do with the rest of his life.

Part of him wished he’d died. If he had, the three of them would have mourned him, but then his brothers would be able to have a full moon mating ceremony with Lena, and then the three of them could be happy together. But here Alex was fucking up everyone’s lives again. Maybe if he left town again, Lena, Joe and Will could have a happy life together, even if they could never truly be mated.

But then he remembered what she looked like standing the lighted doorway of the clinic, holding Otis tight, and he knew he could never leave Harmony again, not while she was there. Even if he could never be with her again, he liked just being close to her and maybe, in time, he’d be able to see her again and not just lurk from a distance. He didn’t have any realistic hope that she’d ever want him again like she did before, but just to be near her again, in the same town, made him happier than he’d been in years. Maybe it could be enough?