Once Upon a Shifter (102 page)

Dinner

"Smells good," I called. "What is it?"

"Come down," Xavier called. "Dinner is ready."

As I went, someone wearing a chef hat waved at me and was gone.

"Who was that?"

"We ordered a meal, but we told our chef that we wanted privacy. We gave him a 100% tip, so he was pretty happy to go."

My stomach grumbled. I hadn't even realized that I was hungry while I was in the shower, but smelling the food made me ravenous.

"What do we have?"

I looked at the table. It was practically groaning under the weight of all the food. There were potatoes, salad, and steak.My eyes popped out of my head.

"Holy cow!" My hand went over my heart. "That's so much food."

"We've got stuffed potato skins with caramelized Gruyère cheese, cream, green onions, garlic, and a little pepper. Try some. These are my favorite."

Without any kind of shame, Xavier quickly cut a piece and put it in my mouth.

"This is incredible," I said rudely with a full mouth. "Oh, my god." My mouth was bursting with the perfect medley of flavors. I had always liked potatoes, but this was next-level deliciousness.

"Try something lighter," Asher said. "Here." He stuck a fork in a romaine lettuce heart.

I chewed and swallowed. "What's even in this? It tastes like lemon."

"It's lemon zest dressing. Do you like it?"

"I love it," I said wholeheartedly. It was an understatement.

"Our main course is filet mignon."

"Of course it is," I said, refraining from rolling my eyes. "Because there's nothing more typical of bears than eating cows."

Asher laughed. "I like steak, sweetie. They are prey. We are predators." He cut off a slice and offered it to me. The soft meat was perfectly seasoned with rosemary and some kind of butter sauce.

"If you feed me like this for an entire year, you are going to have to roll me out."

They only laughed. "Sweetheart, bear cubs take a lot of strength and energy. Believe me, you'll need all of this. Anyways, I wouldn't mind putting more curves on your delicious body. We've got triple chocolate brownies warming in the oven."

I shook my head. "I can just about handle one steak, but that's all you should expect from me."

"Don't worry," Xavier said, grinning. "We'll eat the rest."

I looked at their strong, tall bodies with their broad shoulders and toned upper arms. I believed it. It took a lot more fuel to run one of those than my more petite body.

I sat down and spooned up some stir-fried broccoli and shiitake mushrooms onto my plate. I took some of the salad, the smallest filet mignon, and a potato skin.

The boys fixed their own plates, and we all dug in. We didn't talk very much as we stuffed our faces with the delicious food fit for kings.

I knew that I could get used to eating like this.

At the end of dinner, when my plate was clean and the boys had polished off everything in the dishes on the table, Asher went to the oven. He pulled out a pan of brownies. They smelled absolutely divine.

I looked at it, put a hand on my stomach, and groaned.

"I can't eat another bite."

"That's fine," Xavier told me. "I can."

Asher took out a tub of vanilla gelato from the freezer. I watched in disbelief as they scarfed down the pan of brownies a la mode. If a normal human tried to eat that many calories, I am pretty sure that they would throw up. I know I would have if I had tried to match their pace during dinner.

In no time at all, the brownies and gelato were gone. Asher put everything in the sink.

"Our housekeeper comes in the morning. You'll meet her tomorrow."

"Okay."

My eyelids were beginning to drift downward. I was so full, and I had had a big day.

"You're falling asleep in your chair," Asher said fondly. He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. "I'll take you to bed."

"I can walk," I protested, my voice muzzy. "I can do it."

"Allow me," Asher said. He picked me up tenderly, wrapping his arms around me, keeping me safe and secure. He took me up the stairs swiftly and steadily, staring into my face the whole time. His gorgeous face took my breath away.

When we got to the Rose Room, he put me down on the bed, turned down the covers, and then pulled me to the edge.

"Arms out."

If I were awake, I might protest, but it was hard to muster the will. I raised my arms. He took off my dress, unzipping me and pulling it off. Then he put me into my freshly turned down bed. The sheets were cool and smooth against my legs.

I should thank him. But somehow, sleep overtook me before I could.

Housekeeper

When I woke up, the sun was shining. There were birds chirping outside of my window. Assholes. I didn't want to be awake yet. I felt like I was part of a giant, fluffy cloud. I didn't want to move an inch. My eyes went around my room.

Where was I?

Yesterday came back. Right. I was in the Rose Room, not my own tiny little apartment.

I could smell something. It was like bacon. After a half second, I realized it was bacon.

I brushed my teeth, cleansed my face, and brushed my hair quickly. With a single coat of mascara, I pretended that I had on enough makeup, even though no girl in LA walked around bare-faced. There were too many perfect beach bunnies. I walked downstairs quickly.

"Good morning."

There was a matronly woman. She was loading the dishwasher with all the dishes and pans from last night.

She came to me, her hand out. "I'm Gaia. I'm their housekeeper. You must be the newest addition to the household."

I shook her hand. "I'm so pleased to meet you. Your breakfast smells great."

"Asher and Xavier have already eaten. Yours is on a plate in the toaster oven." She pulled out a heavy plate with bacon. There was an omelette on it.

"Is that spinach, mushroom, tomato, and feta? How did you know what I like?"

"Psychic." She winked at me.

"I think you really are," I said slowly. "There's no way that you could know this."

"It's a pretty useless gift, as far as talents go. If I could direct it, I would try to find tomorrow's lottery numbers." She laughed. "It just happens randomly that I'll know something with certainty. I'm glad you like it."

She squeezed some oranges right then and there to make me fresh juice, and then she took the plate to the table, which already had a fork and knife waiting. I dug in. She had put garlic and butter into these eggs. It made my favorite food even better than it normally was. I loved it. I loved her already, because she fed me awesome food. I ate slices of delicious bacon as the end of my meal, closing my eyes as I savored the salty crispness.

She was wiping down the counter. I rinsed my plate off in the sink, and I put it in the full dishwasher. I closed it. I couldn't find the start button.

"It's inside of the dishwasher," she said. "Here, let me."

She opened the dishwasher. There was a panel of buttons on top. She pressed start, and then she closed it.

"Wow," I said, blinking. "This house is so futuristic."

"You get used to it. Don't worry."

I shook my head.

"Do you know when Xavier and Asher will be back?"

"They come back after I leave. I leave around noon. I clean during the morning. If you have laundry, just drop it in the hamper in the laundry room. It's the first thing that I take care of after breakfast. Just put a note on something that should be dry cleaned, and I will take care of drop off and pick up at the dry cleaners. I have a debit card for household expenses."

"Sounds great," I said. "Thank you for breakfast. It was absolutely delicious."

She smiled at me. "Anytime."

I drifted upstairs and took out my computer. I had always been a big researcher, and now I needed to find out the best way to get pregnant.

There were forums upon forums filled with women who had fertility problems. I found so many horror stories. One woman talked about the expensive injections that she took over a long period of time in order to freeze her eggs. Facebook famously covered egg freezing for its employees, and it sounded like a great step forward. But as I read the accounts of these women, I realized that egg freezing wasn't as simple as people made it out to be. It was very expensive and took a lot of time. And you had no guarantees at the end that your egg would make a baby.

It looked like artificial insemination was a lot easier on a woman. You just had to check the time that you ovulated.

I started looking at when people ovulated. It was generally in the middle of their cycle. If you had a 4-week cycle, then it would be two weeks between periods.

I pulled up my period tracker on my iPhone and looked. That was today.

The fertile period was sort of up in the air. Some people said it was 12 hours. Others said that it was 36. I made a mental note to talk to the boys about it when they got home.

I closed my laptop and wandered around my new home. Besides the kitchen and my bedroom, I had not seen very much. I found a set of stairs going down, and I walked into Wonderland.

Wonderland

There are a lot of guys who turn their basements into Man Caves, with a big TV and a fridge full of beer. This Man Cave was on steroids.

They had a bowling alley down here. There was a pool table, a ping-pong table, and an air hockey table. I could see through a pair of French doors that they had an indoor swimming pool, which seemed smart with the Los Angeles sun. Mosaics covered the wall in there, telling the story of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, one of my favorites.

Another room had a movie theater. I guessed that this was the closest that they got to a prototypical Man Cave. It had surround sound speakers, and the screen wasn't a mere white place where you could project your movie. Instead, it was a multi-panel 4k LED screen that showed everything in ultra-sharp definition. It was amazing.

Instead of having a rack of DVDs, they had an automated rack of Blu-ray discs. It looked like a jukebox. You could flip, and then when you chose one of the discs, it would play that movie. It was absolutely awesome. I knew I would be back.

In the next room, they had a gym. It wasn't huge, but it had everything you needed. They had an elliptical, a treadmill, and a Stairmaster. They had racks of free weights and a complicated machine that had a set of instructions on the side for how to do a gazillion different workouts using it.

I went up to my room and put on a sports bra and running shorts. I laced up my sneakers. I grabbed my sports headphones and plugged them into my iPhone. I went downstairs to the basement, and I let the music take me away as I ran on the treadmill. I let go of all of the sorrow, all of the shock, all of the negative emotions from yesterday. My life was here, and now, in this gorgeous mansion with everything I would ever want and two handsome men who wanted me. Could life get any better than this?

I smiled as I thought about telling them tonight that I was fertile, that I was ripe for conception. Asher might be a gentleman about what it meant, but Xavier wouldn't be.

When I was done, my legs felt invincible, like they could go on forever. They were also sore. As I walked up the stairs, I was hobbling, using the stair rail for support. I went very slowly.

The housekeeper was already gone, and I walked upstairs to my room. She had cleaned up everything, and it sat in neat rows. My bathroom was far cleaner than I had ever made it.

I showered, getting the sweat off of my back. The water pressure felt great on my face, and I relaxed as the warm water flowed over me and my sore muscles.

I was just rinsing out my conditioner when my bathroom door opened. The shower door slid open. It was Xavier.

Fertile

"You're ready," Xavier said. He turned off the shower and pulled me into his arms. He kissed me thoroughly and fiercely.

"How did you know? I was going to tell you guys tonight."

"Honey, I'd have to be human-stupid to not smell you." I stiffened. "I'm sorry. I can smell. I have a nose." He tapped it.

Xavier picked me up off of my feet and threw me on my bed.

"There aren't time for niceties. Those will come later. Right now, I have to fuck you hard and fast."

He took off his clothes in record time. He discarded everything on the floor like it was trash, even though I could clearly see that his belt was Versace.

His body was magnificent, but not in the Mr. Olympia way. He was toned and broad-shouldered. It reminded me how Scotsmen threw trees. It was called tossing the caber. He looked like he tossed the caber every morning. I shivered in delight.

“Wait for me,” came a voice over my shoulder.

Asher stood there, and he stripped just as fast as Xavier had. He had washboard abs and the same build as Xavier: huge, sturdy, and burly.

I was naked and wet in more ways than one. I readied myself as Xavier positioned his body between my open legs. He pushed them apart, far enough apart that my thighs protested.

"I'm going to fuck you until you can't walk."

Xavier pushed the tip of his cock against my wet opening, and I moaned. He rubbed my clit as he came in for a hard, brutal kiss.

He entered me with a hard, swift thrust.

It hurt. My body was not made to take someone as big as he was. I felt like my body was being torn into two separate pieces.

I whimpered.

Instead of stopping, the sound spurred him on. I breathed deeply as I adjusted to his size. The pain turned into hot pleasure coursing through my veins. It was a mix.

He pounded me with his big body overtaking my smaller, more delicate frame. He kissed me again and again, his tongue darting in and out with the rhythm of his cock. I arched my back and panted hard as I came, fluttering and milking his cock. He bellowed above me as he released spurt after spurt of hot seed inside of my body.