The Dom Claims His Cougar [Unchained Love 7] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (7 page)

Verity remembered all the links to porn sites which had been placed on people’s Facebook pages, and shivered.

* * * *

Verity and Serena had always been close to each other. They weren’t identical, but they were closer than many siblings, and they were sufficiently alike that, if they deliberately tried and were careful to stand apart from each other, they could fool people as to which of them was which. One of the reasons Verity had cut her hair short was to make the differences between herself and her twin more obvious. But that didn’t detract from their inner link. Nothing could break the mental and spiritual tie between them. They always knew when the other one was very upset or very happy.

Consequently, Verity wasn’t at all surprised when her twin leaned against her desk at work the next morning and asked, “Lunch? One o’clock?”

Verity nodded and Serena hurried away again.

They were also careful at work not to impose on the other’s job and personal space. They were both employed in the accounts department at DNK Technology, but their duties and responsibilities were quite different. While Serena adored her work and was never happier than when shuffling numbers around and making them line up neatly, to Verity it was just a job. Something she could do well and they paid her to do it.

She rested her chin on her hand for a moment and wondered if, once she had her new commercial kitchen, perhaps she could start her own small catering business. Most people didn’t realize it, but cooking was basically just math and chemistry. Get the numbers right, get the ingredients right, and the result was a delight to the taste buds. Plus her talent for math would ensure she priced her goods appropriately and made a profit without pricing herself too high for the customers to want to buy her products.

Hmm
. She must think about that more, later on.

She was very busy and the morning raced by until it was time to grab her purse and meet Serena.

“Where do you want to go?” asked Serena as she pressed the button to call the elevator.

“I’m thinking we get takeout and eat in the car.”

Serena shot her a sharp look but nodded. “A burger? Chinese? Pizza?”

“Pork in black bean sauce?” suggested Verity. It was an old standby. A simple, easy dish they both enjoyed.

“Why not,” agreed Serena, beeping her car unlocked and climbing into the driver’s seat.

Ten minutes later they had cartons of food on their laps, chopsticks in their hands, and were parked facing out over the skate park, which was totally empty, the equipment frosted with snow.

“So tell me what happened last night,” suggested Serena.

Keeping her huge smile inside herself and her voice perfectly even, Verity replied, “I got a clit hood piercing.”

“What?” Two or three noodles dropped off Serena’s chopsticks as her eyes widened and her head whipped around so she stared full face at Verity. “You what?”

“Had my clit pierced last night. Except it’s not really the clit itself which gets pierced, it’s the hood. It’s actually called a vertical clitoral hood piercing.”

“Is it hurting you right now?”

Verity wiggled her ass on the car seat. No, it wasn’t hurting, but every time the little barbell touched her clit she wanted sex. “Fuck no. It’s arousing me. Every time I move I want to make myself come.”

“That good, huh?”

“Even better than that. Much, much better than that.”

“O-kay. Anything more you might tell me right now could be way too much information. But I’m glad you’re happy. When you texted me to say your mating had been put back two months I was worried that may have upset you even though you said it was your idea. Well, at least to some extent it was your idea.”

“The men had to be made to see that I’ll be an integral part of the relationship. They can’t just continue their lives as they’d lived them before we mate. They’d just assumed I wouldn’t be interested in participating instead of asking me. I guess it made me wonder how well they really know me. Noah’s a wonderful Dom, but there’s more to a mating than the dungeon. We all need to get to know each other’s thoughts and feelings and innermost needs better, and the extra time will be good for that,” she replied.

“Good for you. I’m glad you shook them up. And have you achieved what you set out to get?”

“That’s harder to tell. But the house will be perfect for all three of us. It just worries me that Drew and Charlie are out there somewhere still hating on us panther women.”

“Yeah. You’ll need a security system for the house. Likely even bars for the windows. But you won’t be home alone often. You’ll be at work during the day and one or both of the men will be with you the rest of the time,” reassured Serena.

“Yes, that’s true. And hopefully the courts will do something about Sam Brooks. The man’s sick.”

“Fuck yes. I hope the judge extends his jail time by years.”

Verity sat silently beside Serena for a while as they both ate their lunch. Then she asked, “How does the mental telepathy work? Do you, like, hear them in your mind, or see pictures, or what?”

“For me, it’s hearing them talk, but in my head. When Leticia saw her Facebook profile had been hacked she screamed so loudly in my head I felt an actual pain. But I know she can see pictures as well as hear words.”

“Do you think I’ll be able to hear Noah and Ezra after we mate? You and I already know what each other feels sometimes, so the link must be there in me somewhere.”

“I have no idea. I don’t know what causes it or how it works. But it’d be good if you did develop mental telepathy more strongly. If there ever was trouble, you could call for help.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking.” Verity smiled and balled up her empty box and dropped it in the bag.

“Let’s get some coffee,” suggested Serena.

“Good plan.”

* * * *

A group of men sat in the barn talking and sipping coffee. A platter on the coffee table in the middle of the group held a pile of crumbs, all that remained of the hot vegetable samosas Jubilee had brought them less than ten minutes ago.

Ezra stared sadly at the empty platter, wishing he’d grabbed two samosas instead of being polite and taking only one. Oh well, too late now.

He watched Galen pacing up and down the room. Galen was one of the panthers, but he’d only recently arrived here at Carnal Connections. He’d left the pack years ago when Sam Brooks had refused to let him date his daughter, Leticia. Galen had travelled through America, ending up in Texas and becoming a talented photographer. Now he had returned to Ohio, had a contract with the World Photography website to provide special pictures, and was also helping out with some still photography for the movie studio.

Ezra wondered what was bugging him. Surely he wasn’t doing all that pacing just for exercise.

Ezra noticed David was watching Galen pace. David was another surprise addition to the pack. He’d been cast out of his own pack for being not a pure-blood panther and had wandered around the States for a long time, eventually forming a pack that became the rogue panthers. After his father, Sam, had tried to kill him, David had settled down and was now well on the way to becoming as good a builder as JB.

“Hey, man, what’s up?” David asked Galen.

Galen held his index finger up in the air and kept pacing. David raised an eyebrow at the group, and Ezra and others just nodded. David shrugged and Ezra tried to watch both Galen and David simultaneously. Meanwhile the group began to talk about football. Ezra wasn’t listening. Galen was obviously thinking about something, and Ezra was fascinated to know what he was going to say. If only he’d just hurry up and decide to say it!

After what seemed like forever Galen turned sharply and came over to the group. Without waiting for a break in the conversation he said, “Y’all know I’ve been down in Texas for a while?”

People nodded and grunted. Everyone knew that. It was old news.

“I missed not having a winter. I missed the snow and the cold.”

Ezra nodded again. Everyone knew that, too. Galen was certainly taking his time working up to whatever he’d been thinking about.

“Well, I was thinking…”

“Come on, man. Spit it out,” said David.

“Can we build a sauna? Not too far from the main buildings but where the snow is deep enough to roll in it after we sit in the sauna for a while.”

“Or down by the river. We could cut a hole in the ice and dunk ourselves in the water,” added Cameron. Ezra wondered if he was being serious or if he was trying to tease Galen.

David snatched up one of the paper napkins from beside the empty platter that had held the samosas and pulled a pen out of his pocket. “It’s just basically a wooden box with a door and the means to make it hot enough to cause people to sweat, right?” he asked, sketching on the paper napkin.

“Yes. With benches to sit on and an electric stove for heat,” said Galen.

“It needs to get really hot. Maybe one hundred sixty degrees,” added Cameron.

Ezra blinked. So likely Cameron was serious after all.

Suddenly a lot of the men were talking all at once, all with their own ideas for a sauna. Ezra leaned back in his chair. A sauna would be good. A fun place for people to meet and relax in winter, and healthy as well. Weren’t people supposed to hit their skin with birch branches after a sauna? The shape-shifters would know if there were any birch trees in the undeveloped land. Ezra grinned. God yes, the Doms would have some fun with that idea, too.

Ezra hoped there’d come a time when he and Noah could use the sauna alone with Verity. He could just picture beads of sweat on her perky nipples and shining on her clit jewelry. God, the thought of touching her there was making him as hard as a rock.

* * * *

The men cleared a space in one of the bigger maintenance barns and began working on building the sauna inside. They made each wall separately and the seats separate, too, so they just needed to be assembled. Noah, Ezra, and Verity stood and watched them for a while Sunday afternoon almost a month later. “We’ve been working on the modular homes for so long we think in kit form now,” joked JB.

“Besides the modules for your home are being delivered next week and we need to have finished the sauna by then, or Verity might get angry at us,” added Bill, an older human man.

Verity laughed. “No, I’d just tell Serena to attack you,” she replied.

Everyone laughed. The night Serena had thrown Josh and Pete out of her room, along with some crockery and furnishings, had gone down in Carnal Connections history.

Next they drove around to their new home. Or where it would soon be. The concrete had cured for almost a month now, and Verity liked walking on it knowing that here would be the bedroom, here the bathroom, here the courtyard, and here her kitchen.

Today she stood in her great room and watched Noah and Ezra pace along the dirt-and-gravel track that would soon be the circular driveway. They weren’t going to fully finish it until the house was complete. Then they’d do the landscaping. Verity had already talked to Leticia about plants to use for a flower bed out front and some flowering shrubs and trees to use along the fence line between the house and the movie studio lot. When the studio was finished it would have a high wire fence, and Leticia had suggested planting some creepers along it. Not so much as to disturb the security cameras, but enough that when people looked out her windows they saw green and flowers, not a fence. It sounded like an excellent idea to Verity.

Slowly Verity walked around the concrete pad that would soon be her house. A little sprinkling of snow lay over it, but as she walked her boot prints showed up clear and crisp, the gray of the concrete visible where she’d trodden. Except there. Verity turned and looked. One small patch seemed strange, almost yellowish rather than gray.

Verity kicked at the snow, but it didn’t clear, so she bent down and used her gloved hand to brush the snow aside. The concrete wasn’t smooth there. She’d been here before. How could she have not noticed that?

“Come and look here. This’s weird,” she called.

“What’s weird?” asked Ezra, turning to face her.

“This is.” She waved at the bumpy piece of concrete.

The two men walked across to her and Noah ran his hand over the patch of floor as she’d done. Then he kneeled down and got out his pocket knife and chipped a little at the edges.

“That’s concrete, Noah. The only thing that’ll happen is you’ll snap the blade off your knife,” said Ezra.

“Why haven’t we ever noticed it before?” asked Verity. She really didn’t understand. They’d been able to walk on the concrete for a while now and she would have imagined that they’d covered every inch of it planning their new home.

“It’s not visible unless you hunker right down and touch it,” said Ezra.

Verity was going to argue that the color was slightly different then decided not to. What was the point? They’d seen it now and still had no idea what it was. She couldn’t believe that this one tiny area had never been smoothed properly all along. The change had to be more recent.

Noah took a picture of it on his phone and sent the picture to JB. Within seconds JB had texted back.
Don’t touch. I’m on my way.