Jaguars' Reward [Impulse 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (21 page)

Zayd laughed. “Stay where you are. I’ll see to it.”

“I need to shower.”

“Not until Mikael’s checked you out.”

Vadim pulled a face. “Well, if you can stand the smell, I guess I can, too.”

Vadim, not wanting to disturb Talia or give way to temptation and ravish her, managed to slip out of bed without her waking. He pulled on a pair of shorts and followed Zayd into the living room.

“What we gonna do about her?” he asked.

“We need to give her time to make her mind up. She’s only known us for five minutes
and
she’s been programmed all her life to think badly of shifters.” Vadim shook his head. “She doesn’t need to know that by fucking her, we’ve blown our chances of ever finding another mate if she turns us down.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Zayd grimaced as he banged about in the kitchen, preparing breakfast. “Except rejection ain’t an option. We’re just gonna have to charm her into submission.”

“Who would have thought it?” Vadim mused. “Quarter-shifters being able to restore our powers more effectively than pure humans, I mean. For once we have reason to be grateful to those damned bears up Tallahassee way.”

“The human-shifter business isn’t an exact science,” Zayd said. “We’ve always known that.”

“Yeah, but we’ve also been taught that for us alphas only pure humans would do as mates. Wonder what else our ancestors got wrong?”

“Maybe they didn’t. Perhaps it’s just an evolution thing. Who knows?”

“Who knows what?” Mikael asked, poking his head round the door. “Say, you’re looking better. Let me take a look.”

Vadim bad-temperedly allowed himself to be prodded and poked. Mikael then told him what he already knew.

“Good as new,” he said, chuckling. “Wish I could take the credit.”

“You will anyway,” Vadim groused.

“Oh, by the way, Rafe’s called a council meeting for an hour’s time.”

Zayd grinned. “I assume the wolves we captured had something to say that we all need to hear.”

“Information revealed voluntarily, no doubt,” Vadim added, chuckling.

“Is there any other way?” Mikael asked, knowing very well that there were thousands. “Anyway, you know we always have a council meeting to reassess risk after any battle.”

Zayd nodded. “Not only that, but my buddy deserves the hero treatment.”

Vadim shot Zayd a filthy look.

“No falling out now, girls,” Mikael quipped.

“Fuck you.”

“I’ll leave that to those who love you.” Mikael stood. “Looks like your breakfast’s up, so I’ll leave you to it. Oh, and word of advice, don’t rush her.”

“Smart-ass,” Vadim said, giving Mikael the finger. “I hate smug bastards who think they know it all, just because they’re happily mated.”

“Well, at least you’ve been given the all clear by our resident witch doctor.”

“Yeah, there is that, I suppose.”

“Oh, come on, lover, lighten up. You’re just grouchy because you’re hungry.”

Was that all that it was? If so, why couldn’t Vadim shake the feeling of impending doom that had been with him ever since he got out of bed?

“And horny as a domestic cat,” he said, cracking a grin.

Zayd rolled his eyes. “Well, it just so happens that I have a cure for both maladies. Let’s eat first.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Vadim cleared his plate in minutes. They were short on time, but the desire to slip back into the bedroom and wake Talia with something more than a kiss was compelling. He resisted, mainly because he knew she really did need time to adjust to all the changes that had occurred in her life over the past couple of days. Rafe and Vilas had talked about how hard it was to convince Chantal that they were shifters and to accept them as such. Talia was one of the few people who knew shifters existed, but she’d been taught to hate and mistrust them. One wrong move and she’d hightail it out of Impulse, never to be seen again. Vadim wasn’t prepared to do anything that might cause that to happen. Like pushing himself on her before she was ready for him.

Instead he turned to Zayd and fell into his arms. Conscious of time restraints, they got right down to business, cutting the usual foreplay. Frotting was one of their favorite pastimes. With rigid cocks tied together they moved their hips with the perfect symmetry that came from years of experimentation. They created pleasurable friction against the frenulum nerve bundles on the undersides of their cocks, panting and groaning as their need escalated.

“Shit!” Vadim bit Zayd’s shoulder hard as he shot his load. “That was so fucking good.”

Zayd’s sperm gushed over Vadim’s gut in a perfect arc. “Ain’t that the truth.”

Vadim glanced down at the sticky mess slipping down his stomach and grinned. “If we had the time, I’d make you lick that off.”

“Perhaps that’s something we could get our mate to do for us. I love what she does with that wicked tongue of hers.”

Vadim’s grin widened as he headed for the shower. “Now there’s a thought.”

A short time later the two jaguars maneuvered their boat onto the dock outside the Cat’s Whiskers
.
As soon as they walked through the door, Vadim was treated like some sort of conquering hero. He was slapped on the back and congratulated by every colony member he met. He also had to field endless questions about his injuries. Vadim knew that any doubts about his loyalty had well and truly been eradicated. It wasn’t every day that an alpha wolf was killed in protection of the colony as a whole. Now that he’d gotten the acceptance he’d always craved, Vadim was a bit embarrassed by all the fuss and tried to act cool. Zayd merely grinned at him, letting him know he wasn’t fooled.

Rafe lost no time in calling the meeting to order.

“Thanks to Vadim,” he said, “we don’t have to worry about more attacks from wolves for a while. It’ll take them a while to regroup and even when they do, they’ll think twice about attacking us inside Impulse.”

“Agreed,” said several voices.

“Vilas was in charge of interrogating the two wolves we captured,” he said, turning to his fellow alpha panther. “Wanna give us an update, Vilas?”

“Sure. As it happens they were most anxious to tell us everything.”

Zayd chuckled. “I’ll just bet they were.”

“Paw screws at dawn,” quipped someone else.

“Not quite,” Vilas said. “They knew they had no choice, and that we’d let them go if they told the truth. And the truth is that everyone in the pack warned Wilson against attacking us in Impulse. Word of how well we defend the place from within had reached all of them.”

“It ought to reach a few more shifters after last night,” Tyrone said with satisfaction.

“Right, anyway, it seemed Wilson wouldn’t listen to reason. He was confident that he could win both Impulse and Talia.” Vilas fixed Vadim and Zayd with a steady gaze. “But Talia was his main objective.”

“Bastard!” muttered Zayd.

“He didn’t think it would come down to a fight. He figured we’d give up Impulse in exchange for our lives because we were so heavily outnumbered.”

“How did he get all those people past our guards?” Vadim asked.

“Well, it seems Wilson was a bit of a nerd and experimented with higher pheromoning frequencies than we’ve ever tried before.”

“Ah, that would do it,” Zayd said.

Vilas nodded. “Exactly, he found a frequency that worked long range, and which we weren’t attuned to because we didn’t know it existed.”

“We soon will be,” Kane said with conviction. “With what those guys…er, volunteered, I reckon we’ll crack it before the end of the day.”

Vadim did, too. Kane and Tyrone were no rookies themselves when it came to all forms of communication. It would be a matter of pride for them to get up to speed with Wilson’s discovery.

Rafe ran through the rest of the colony’s business and the meeting was about to break up.

“There’ll be a party here tonight, of course,” he said.

Vadim and Zayd nodded. They’d forgotten that there was always a celebration when they’d successfully defended the colony. The felines in Impulse knew how to let the claws out and it would be a great opportunity to show Talia the social side of the colony.

“We ought to buy her something pretty to wear tonight,” Zayd said as they made their way home in the boat. “She doesn’t have anything with her.”

“True,” Vadim agreed. “Perhaps Chantal or Layla could take her to Feline Fashions
and help her pick something appropriate out. Women like dressing up. It’ll make her feel good about herself.”

Zayd threw the lines over the bollards on the dock as Vadim brought the boat in. “Let’s go and tell her.”

The bed in their room was neatly made, and Talia wasn’t in it. She wasn’t in the sitting room, either.

“Perhaps she’s in her own room,” Zayd said, dashing to see.

An Arctic blast passed through Vadim, settling in where his heart used to be. Talia wasn’t in her room. He knew it before Zayd even went to look and came back shaking his head. She wasn’t anywhere inside the house.

“So, she’s gone out,” Zayd said, shrugging. “Perhaps she needed some things, or Chantal and some of the mates came to entertain her while we were in the meeting. It’s not as if she’s a prisoner and has to ask our permission to go out, especially since she can now breathe the air.”

“Let’s go and find her,” Vadim said grimly.

Half an hour later Vadim’s worst fears were realized. Talia was nowhere to be found and everyone they asked hadn’t seen her. Vadim then did what he should have done the moment he found her missing and sent out a general pheromone asking for information. It was answered in person by one of the beta jaguars.

“She asked Giron about the best way to get back to Venice,” he said. “So Giron drove her there himself.”

“Why would she do that?” Zayd asked, slumping to the floor and shaking his head in bemusement.

“I’d say the answer’s pretty obvious,” Vadim replied. “She’s never hidden the way she felt about shifters. And after what she saw last night it would be enough to put anyone off for life.”

“But she was so worried about you when she thought you were going to die.”

“She’s had time to reconsider.”

“I just don’t get it, Vadim. Why did she let us fuck her if she hates shifters so much?”

“Hell if I know. Perhaps she just felt horny.”

“We had unprotected sex, too. She could be carrying our cub.”

“Yeah, and we’ll never know.” Vadim clenched his fist and thumped the arm of his chair with considerable force. His claws emerged, as did his whiskers, a sure sign that he was fired up. “Fuck giving her space. We should have gone back in there this morning, fucked her until she was boneless, and tied her to the bed. She’s ours, or would have been if we’d played it right.”

“Well,” Zayd said, sighing, “at least we had her once. We know how good it feels to fuck the woman who’s right for you.”

“You realize what this means,” Vadim said tersely. “Our powers will decrease quite rapidly. We’ll have to give up being alphas. Giron and Jud will have to take over security and we’ll fade into obscurity. By this time next year we won’t be able to win a fight in the Cat’s Cradle nursery.”

“Yeah, but do you know what, buddy?”

“What?” Vadim barked morosely.

“Given my time over, I wouldn’t change a thing.”

“Yeah, me, too. She’s something else.”

Zayd’s own whiskers emerged. “I just wish I knew why she took off in such a hurry. She might have at least said good-bye.”

“Perhaps she thought we’d try to persuade her to stay if she did that.”

“Well, she got that part right. We would have.”

“Should we go after her?” Vadim asked. “Try and make her see…see what? Nah, she needs to be here because she wants to be, not because she feels sorry for us.”

“Right.”

The two men fell into a moody silence.

“Some party it’ll be tonight,” Vadim said.

“Yeah, but…shit, did you hear something?”

Both men sat up straight, their heightened sense of hearing on high alert. Footsteps…light footsteps…ran up the stairs and Talia burst into the room like a ray of sunshine. Vadim and Zayd jumped to their feet and stared at her like they couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing. Giron appeared behind her, clutching two bulging suitcases. He dropped them on the floor, grinned at Vadim and Zayd, and made himself scarce.

“Thanks, Giron,” Talia called out after him.

“My pleasure.”

“What’s going on?” Vadim asked, nodding toward the cases. “Where have you been?”

“Giron took me back to Venice so I could clear out my things,” she said breezily. “I figured I’d be back before your meeting ended.”

“How did you even know we had a meeting?”

“When I woke up and you weren’t here, I went out to look for you. I saw Giron and he told me. He also said there’d be a party tonight and I wanted to get something to wear. Thought I might as well get all my stuff while I was there. I got caught up with my mom, otherwise I’d have been back ages ago.”