The Dom Unites Wolf and Panther [Unchained Love 5] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (6 page)

Nicholas had texted most of their staff not to come in today, as the police were still poking around the grounds looking for evidence. Evidence of what, Curtis wasn’t too certain, as the broken lock on the one shed they’d managed to get into was about all the evidence there was, except for the people themselves and a slightly scorched wall where someone had tried to start a fire.

“What type of movies do you mainly shoot here?” asked Officer Nguyen.

“Not porn, if that’s what you’re thinking. We just signed a contract for a series of community-service advertisements about recycling,” said Curtis.

“Might some companies think they’ll lose business if these advertisements are successful?” asked Officer Diaz.

“How would we know? But why would they attack us instead of the company that hired us?” replied Nicholas.

Nguyen frowned at Nicholas.

“Why don’t you interview the men who broke in? I think you’ll find they’re none too smart. Omar said they were from the shallow end of the gene pool, and they truly act like they are,” said Curtis.

Diaz was trying to hide a grin now, and Curtis felt a bit relieved. He was so tired of the endless questioning. They were the victims here and they’d lost a day’s production over this fiasco already.

“Or maybe talk to the police who questioned them after they ram-raided the gate at Carnal Connections. A couple of them ended up hurt from their own stupidity over that,” added Nicholas.

“Stokes told me about the one not wearing a seat belt,” said Nguyen, shaking his head.

“There’re two more of them who just got out of jail as well. I’d be worried about what mayhem they were plotting if I were you,” added Curtis.

“We’ll definitely check that,” said Diaz.

They asked some more questions, but as far as Curtis could see they were just going over the same ground yet again. Finally, a good hour later, Diaz and Nguyen stood and Diaz said, “Thank you for your time. We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions.”

Curtis nodded and waited as Nicholas walked them to the door, but all he could think of was, “Please tell the judge to lock them up for longer this time, and please don’t any of you come back.”

But they did have a problem. And it was huge.

Nicholas sat down beside him after watching the police officers leave the property. “Something’s biting you. What is it? Spit it out.”

“If we’re going to mate with Autumn—”

“When, not if.”

Curtis found himself grinning even though he was worried. His best friend could do that to him. Cheer him up out of a bad mood even though nothing had changed. The problem hadn’t been resolved, but already he felt a little better about it. “Fine. When we mate with Autumn we’re going to need more than just a bedroom and a place for her to store her things.”

“Hell, yes. We need a proper bathroom especially for us, not just that bare place everyone uses.”

“Well, yes. But it’s a lot more than that. Omar will never let her leave Carnal Connections unless we prove we can keep her safe. And the kind of security fencing with electric wires and god only knows what else they’ve got there is so far out of our reach it may as well be on Mars.”

“Fuck! You’re right. Besides, there’s no way we can make a stage set secure, or even a room inside one of our buildings secure, because everyone working for us needs access to those areas,” said Nicholas.

“Precisely. Plus there’s simply not the room to build a house on our land. We really don’t have enough space as it is. The amount of film I have to cut because it shows something from another set, even when you and I have done the actual filming ourselves and been damn careful, is already too expensive.”

Curtis looked at Nicholas. The man was obviously thinking hard. Curtis hoped Nicholas had thought of a decent idea, because right now he was all out of ideas, decent or otherwise.

“If we sold this land to a developer, likely we’d get a mighty fine price for it. The land isn’t all that big, but it’s an easy commute into town and a developer could put a hell of a lot of tract houses on it,” said Nicholas.

“Are you suggesting we go out of business? Or sell the business? We’ve just gotten a rather nice contract if you recall.” Curtis liked the idea of selling the land and making money. Who wouldn’t like the idea of a nice pile of money? But what happened next? How would they get jobs? This was Ohio, not California, and they were a hell of a long way from Hollywood.

“What I’m thinking is we ask Carnal Connections if we can move our business there. Set up the studios near the road on the southern edge of the property. There’s that one-lane road that goes nowhere. We could ask the county if we could buy it from them as well as the land reserved on either side of it. It wouldn’t be a lot of land, but it’d give us our own access road so cast and crew wouldn’t need to go through the Carnal Connections entry,” said Nicholas slowly. Curtis guessed he was still thinking it through as he said it.

“Most of our equipment could be dismantled and transported to a new site. With our own access road, and a high wire fence surrounding our buildings to deter idiots, we’d be much more secure.”

“And we could find a nice safe place to build our own small home—”

“On Carnal Connections’ land but using all our own resources, and that will be much nicer than using the movie set lunchroom and bathrooms,” said Nicholas.

Curtis raised his hand and Nicholas high-fived him. “I’ll sound out the county about buying the road and source some developers and see what kind of money they’re willing to pay for this land, while you talk to Larry about us actually moving there. Since we’ve had to postpone filming for today, we may as well get at least some of our ducks in a row.” Suddenly, fear hit him. It was such a neat and perfect answer. What if they couldn’t do it? It all hinged on Carnal Connections agreeing to have them, then on getting a good price for their own land. And what if Autumn didn’t want to mate with them? She had to. She had to want them. He knew he had to have her. He loved her too much not to be with her forever.

* * * *

Autumn had a huge knitting project she was working on and it was a rush job, so she’d had to put all her other projects on hold and knit as fast as she could. But since the weather was still fine, although cool, and since Oliver and William, Leticia’s partners, worried if Leticia was out working in the garden by herself, Autumn had agreed to sit on the deck and keep her company.

So Leticia weeded and tended the vegetables and herbs in the back garden behind the main building at Carnal Connections, and Autumn concentrated on making her stitches perfectly even while her needles flashed in and out.

“What are you making that they’re in such a hurry for?” asked Leticia.

Autumn looked up for a brief moment and smiled. “It’s crazy, but hey, they pay me, so I shut up and knit. I’m making exactly the same beanie in four different ways with different thicknesses of yarn and different sizes of needle. It’s a pattern that repeats every six rows, so it’s easy enough to remember, except a beanie has a fair bit of increasing and decreasing just to keep the work interesting.”

“That sounds way too complicated to me.” Leticia laughed as she bent over some tiny green plants.

“Yes, but I’d have no idea whether I was pulling up a plant or a weed, whereas you know that sort of thing,” replied Autumn.

“I guess so. Will you go back to the movie studio? Do you think it’s safe for Ramona and Gaynor to be there?” asked Leticia.

“For a start, they were the same people who ram-raided the front gates here, so not the brightest or most professional of criminals. I knocked Jim out with my purse. I mean, that’s like something out of a movie in itself. But the key thing is they came at night, when they didn’t expect anyone to be there to stop them. If they’d been intending to hurt anyone they’d have come during the day. They just wanted to steal things they could use for money. I don’t think there’s any danger,” said Autumn. And she meant it, too. She could imagine Omar getting all bossy and Alpha, but he didn’t need to. Autumn felt sure they wouldn’t be back.

Leticia sat back on her heels and looked at Autumn. Autumn glanced up and stopped knitting. Leticia was about to ask her something that was important to her.

“Do you think my father will come back here when he gets out of jail? Or will he join up with the rogue panthers again?”

Autumn took a deep breath. That was a really difficult question, and no answer was going to make Leticia really happy. “Aw, honey, the short answer is, I haven’t got a fucking clue. But I guess since your father chose to leave us and go to the rogue panthers, I think he might go back to them.”

Leticia nodded and bowed her head. “That’s what I thought, too.”

“It might be for the best. Not everyone is happy having your brother living among us, although he seems to be working hard and learning the building trade under JB. Having Sam back as well might push people beyond their limits.”

Leticia smiled. “David is doing well, isn’t he? I’m enjoying getting to know him.”

Autumn started knitting again. “Yes, JB’s said several times he learns fast and works hard, and there’s still a lot of work to do here. When will your house be finished? How soon can you move in?”

Leticia moved and began weeding the garden bed again. “David’s helping us build the deck and I’m doing the garden myself, now that William has finished digging the flower beds for me. Inside, the first coat of paint is on the walls and Oliver hopes we can do the second coat next Sunday. Then it’s just a matter of moving all the furniture out of the living area so we can paint that room. Right now everything is piled in the living room. When the other rooms are done we’ll set them up how we want them then clear the rest of the furniture out to give us space to clean and paint that room, and then we’ll be done.”

Autumn’s fingers flew through her yarn as she knitted and chatted happily with Leticia. At last Leticia was enjoying herself and her life. She’d tried so hard to be the daughter Sam wanted her to be, but the man was unbalanced. At least now she’d taken the step to claim the two men who loved her and was living the life she’d chosen for herself.

And what about me? Am I going to see if panthers and werewolves can cooperate, or am I going to run away from the situation, saying it’s all too hard?

Autumn giggled quietly. Well, their cocks were always hard, that was for sure.

* * * *

Nicholas knew he was the right person to talk to Larry about transferring the movie studio out to Carnal Connections. Apart from the fact that he tended to do the more visible, up-front kind of tasks with the studio and Curtis tended to do the backroom-type work, both he and Larry were wolves and had a natural understanding of each other. Nicholas even understood why Larry had been very much in the closet about the fact he was a werewolf until recently. Growing up without a pack did that to a man.

It was strange how Carnal Connections had almost become their pack. Tor, Gaynor’s Dom, was a wolf, too, and he’d never told anyone at all, not even his partners Gaynor and Cameron, until Ramona had been attacked by rogue panthers. Ramona, a puma shape-shifter, had gone to live at Carnal Connections with her pack, and the very loose and tenuous association he and Curtis had begun with the BDSM community had suddenly ramped up into a major connection between them all. And now, he was part of a small pack with Tor, Larry, and Kurt, an older wolf who had lived with a pack until his wife had died and he’d become interested in the BDSM lifestyle and moved to Carnal Connections.

Nicholas was almost certain Raegan, an older man and his scene painter, was also a wolf, but Raegan had never so much as hinted at anything to him, and Nicholas didn’t consider it his place to ask. The man was paid to paint scenery and he did that amazingly well. End of story.

Nicholas was driving an old truck, not wanting to risk any rain on the paint job of the SUV before all the scenes involving it had been shot. He hadn’t called Larry to book an appointment because his day was ruined anyway, so if he had to sit around and wait until Larry was out of another meeting it didn’t really matter.

“Hi, Lucy. Is Larry free for the next half hour?”

“Hi, Nicholas. He’s busy clearing out his in-tray by emptying most of it onto my desk. If you keep him entertained for the next half hour, maybe I can get some of my own work done,” she replied.

“I heard that!” said Larry.

Nicholas grinned and took that as an invitation to enter Larry’s office. He closed the door behind him and sat in front of Larry’s desk.

Larry leaned back in his chair and crossed his booted feet on the open top drawer of his desk. “Hey, Nicholas. What can I do for you today?”

“It’s a long, complicated, and private story.” Nicholas stared at Larry. The other man was in a relaxed pose, but Nicholas could sense that he was ready and willing to listen. His brown eyes were alert and focused on Nicholas.

Nicholas composed himself and said, “Last night some of those idiot ram-raiders came to the movie studio to steal anything they could resell. We were there and they didn’t get anything. Not that we keep anything worth stealing there anyway. All our props are fakes, for fuck’s sake.”

Larry nodded. “I heard about that from Omar.”

Nicholas grimaced. “Yeah, well, Omar is part of the story. He worries about Autumn’s safety. But Curtis and I would never let any harm come to her. We love her.”