Vegetarian Mate [Pack Law 5] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (5 page)

Braxton reached over her and carefully placed her arm on top of a pillow. “Don’t move again, Rochelle. You’re causing yourself unnecessary pain. I’m calling Blayk.”

With his command still ringing in her ears, he rushed from the bedroom. Slumping back on the pillows, she closed her eyes, intending to rest her heavy lids for just a moment. She must have dozed off, because it felt like only seconds had passed before Braxton and Blayk were in the room.

“I’m going to give you another shot for the pain, Rochelle, but you have to stay here and rest. You’re going to feel weak for a few days. You lost quite a bit of blood, honey.”

She jumped when she heard a growl and looked over at Braxton. He was glaring at Blayk as if he wanted to pound on him.
What the hell is he pissed about? Maybe he doesn’t want me here after all.

“Um, thanks, but I should be going,” she said and tried to hide her wince as the needle slid into her upper arm.

“You can’t drive with the use of only one arm, Rochelle. And I can’t let you leave since I am now your doctor. Just let Braxton and his brothers take good care of you.”

Rochelle wanted to argue, but she could already feel the pain medication working its way through her bloodstream. The floating feeling was so nice, and the pain in her arm began to lessen. Giving in, she closed her heavy eyelids and slept.

* * * *

Braxton watched Rochelle sleep the day away. He couldn’t bring himself to leave her alone, so he’d had Cindy bring up lunch and drinks. There was a jug of water and a glass sitting on the bedside table, ready for his mate once she woke. Glancing at the clock, he sighed with relief. Jarrod and Malcolm should be home any minute. He was going to need them at his side when they tried to convince their mate to stay.

He knew as soon as she opened her eyes she was going to want to try to leave. After pondering how to deal with a recalcitrant mate all day, he had decided honesty was the best policy. His ears pricked up when he heard his brothers coming up the stairs, just as his mate sighed and began to surface.
Perfect timing!

Braxton poured a glass of water, ready to ease his mate’s dry mouth as he watched her breathing change. She was so fucking gorgeous, and he’d been struggling with his wolf all day long. He was definitely going to have to go for a run later tonight. Hopefully by letting his beast run free and take control for a while, he wouldn’t have such a hard time with his dominance over his inner animal.

She opened her eyes, and even though they were glazed from sleep, he felt as if he was drowning in her depths. A shiver raced up his spine, raising the hair on his nape. But that wasn’t the only thing to twitch with desire. His cock jerked and filled with blood until his erection was pushing against the zipper of his pants.

He sat down on the side of the bed, slipped an arm beneath her neck and shoulders, and held the glass to her lips. She closed her eyes and sipped until she’d had her fill. Just as he placed the glass back on the bedside table, his brothers entered the room.

“How are you feeling, baby?” Jarrod came over to the bed.

“Fine, thank you.”

“Glad to hear it,” he replied and turned to look at Braxton.

“How is she really?”
he asked through their mind link.

“Our little mate is very tired. She woke up in a lot of pain, so I called Blayk and he gave her another shot of painkillers.”

“Good,”
Malcolm said from his position against the far wall.
“She hasn’t said anything about staying?”

“She’s been asleep all day,”
Braxton answered.
“But Blayk told her she had to rest for a few days. I don’t know if she will though. I think we should tell her what we are and what she is to us.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea. She may think we are crazy and take off,”
Jarrod replied.

“How the hell else are we going to make her stay?”

“Our mate needs to get to know us better before we tell her about us.”

“Okay, agreed. But we have to talk her into staying until she’s fully recovered. That will give us about six days for her to get to know us,”
Braxton stated.

“What are you doing?” Rochelle asked, drawing his eyes to her.

“Uh, we just…”

“Are you telepathic? ’Cause it looked like you were all talking to each other without actually speaking.”

All three of them froze. Braxton was the first to recover.
“Fuck! How the hell are we going to get out of this?”

“Tell her we are,”
Jarrod said.

He cleared his throat nervously. This was going to go over like a ton of bricks. “Yes, we are, darlin’.”

Her eyes widened. “No way!”

Braxton exchanged a look with Jarrod. “Way,” he said to Rochelle.

She examined him critically, as if looking for some outside sign of his telepathy. She examined Jarrod and Malcolm in the same way. Braxton tried to come up with some way out of this.

Then she said, “Wow. That is way cool. Are you triplets or something?”

Rochelle was gazing at them with a combination of awe and curiosity. This was not the freak-out Braxton had expected.

Malcolm answered, “No. But we are pretty close. We like to share.
Everything.
”

Rochelle crossed her legs as if settling in for a good story. “So when did you find out about your ability?”

“We’ve had it since we hit puberty,” Jarrod answered.

“You can’t read minds, can you? Are you empathetic?”

“No, darlin’. We can’t read minds or feel what others feel.” Braxton saw her shoulders slump as if in relief. Her eyes moved from him to Malcolm and Jarrod and then back to him again. When she wiggled on the bed, he caught a waft of her desire. Closing his eyes, he inhaled deeply, and his wolf pushed against him, wanting to claim its mate. Clenching his teeth, his pushed his animal back down, asserting his dominance.

God, how he wished he could assert his dominance over Rochelle. First he would strip her clothes from her delectable little body, and after he had tasted her mouth he would lick his way down until he came to her pussy. He would lap up her cream until she came and then do it again and again.

When he opened his eyes to look at her she gasped and her jaw dropped open. He curled his hands into fists and felt that his fingernails had changed slightly. She pushed up from the bed with her good arm, keeping her injured one close to her chest, and sat on her knees in the middle of the bed.

“Your eyes have changed. They are a glowing gold color. How do you do that? God, they look so pretty.”

“Go, Braxton. Now!”
Jarrod commanded through their link.

“No, wait,”
Malcolm said as he moved away from the wall, walking closer to the bed.
“Let’s see how she handles this.”

“How are we going to explain that we can change our eye color?”
Jarrod queried.

“Just tell her it’s part of being a telepath.”

Braxton cleared his throat while trying to wrest control of his wolf. His voice came out a little deeper and gruffer than usual, but at least it wasn’t a garbled growl. “It’s part of being a telepath, darlin’. Most of our family members have the same ability.”

“Way cool. Is that why you all live together, so the general public doesn’t realize what you can do?”

For a moment, Braxton couldn’t do anything except stare at his mate in astonishment. Not only was she not scared of their abilities, she was thinking about how they fit into the way the pack lived together.

His desire for her mingled with a kind of awe. This was what it was like to have a mate, he realized. She was perfectly suited to them.

“In a way,” Brax answered her. “We are a very close-knit family, Rochelle. We all like to live and work together. Each set of siblings and family unit have their own suite of rooms. We have lots of privacy, but we can also mingle when we want.”

“That must be so nice.” She sighed wistfully, glancing over to Malcolm and Jarrod. “How come your eyes aren’t glowing, too?”

“Our eyes only glow when we have to concentrate really hard, baby,” he answered, and Brax saw his brother’s gaze run over Rochelle’s bare legs and his nostrils flare as he inhaled her scent. If he kept that up, his eyes
would
be glowing pretty soon. Brax himself was only just in control of his wolf. Jarrod suggested, “Why don’t I run you a bath? Or would you prefer a shower?”

“As much as I would love to soak in that giant tub, I think it’s going to have to be a shower. I want to wash my hair.”

“Okay,” Brax said, moving toward the bedroom door. “I’ll go and get a plastic bag so we can tape it to your arm. You have to keep that bandage and your stitches dry.”

And I’ll have an excuse to get out of here
. He headed for the door before he even heard Rochelle’s reply.

In the hallway, he stopped, breathing deeply. Now that he couldn’t smell her desire as much, he could pull himself together.

It astonished him that Rochelle had accepted that they had strange abilities. Their little mate was a little quirky, but it worked to their advantage.

Braxton looked down at his hands and at the claws that were only now beginning to recede into his fingers. He hoped that Rochelle would be just as calm about the fact that she was surrounded by werewolves.

Because they were going to have to tell her soon. Braxton’s wolf couldn’t handle another second of this torture.

Rochelle ogled Braxton’s ass as he left the room, and her pussy clenched with arousal at such a damn sexy sight. She looked up to see Malcolm and Jarrod staring at her heatedly.

Quickly lowering her eyes to the quilt, she traced a pattern on the material and shifted into a more comfortable position. She caught a hint of musk from her wet pussy as she moved and hoped like hell they couldn’t smell her desire.

Glancing up at them again from beneath her lowered lashes, she saw them still staring at her with golden glowing eyes. She was so fascinated she lifted her head to stare back. Jarrod inhaled and groaned as he closed his eyes. The muscles in his jaw were clenched and his hands were fisted. Malcolm seemed to have the same problem. As much as she wanted to scamper from the bed and enclose herself in the bathroom, she didn’t want to move again in case they really could smell her wet vagina.

Movement near the door drew her attention and she watched Braxton walk toward her. He had a plastic bag and tape in his hands, and she reached out for them gratefully.

“I’ll help you wrap up. Are you going to be able to shower by yourself?”

“Yes. I’ll manage,” she answered while he taped the plastic to her arm.

“We’ll be back to escort you down for dinner.” Braxton rose to his feet. “We have some things we need to do before we can eat. Just yell if you need help.”

The three men left without a backward glance, and she relaxed for the first time since she had woken to find herself draped all over Braxton.
God sakes, girl, you need to get a grip.

The shower was awkward, but she managed to wash, dry off, and dress. It would have been a lot easier to ask for help, but she had never been naked in front of a male before, and she wasn’t about to start showing her body to strangers now. Yet she had to admit that she was intrigued by the lifestyle she’d glimpsed in this house. She wanted to know why all the couples weren’t couples at all but were ménage a trois or ménage a quatre. It was the kind of arrangement she’d only ever read about in books, but what she wouldn’t give to be part of such a big, close-knit family. What she wouldn’t give to live that fantasy with Jarrod, Malcolm, and Braxton.

Rochelle would never dare ask any questions, but she was definitely going to watch the ménage members interact. Michelle, Keira, Talia, and Samantha seemed to glow from the attention their husbands bestowed on them. They had to be in love with the men in their lives. What woman would marry or hook up with more than one male if they weren’t?

Rochelle had listened to the women she worked with bitching about the men they were either married to or in relationships with. Even though the married females had said they loved their husbands, they always managed to complain about something their men did or didn’t do.

There was no way in hell she was getting into a relationship with a man unless she was certain she held his heart as much as he held hers. She had seen what happened to the children from broken and dysfunctional families or unwanted pregnancies. No way was she subjecting a child to what she had gone through.

A loud growl from her stomach made her realize she had skipped lunch. She was hungry and didn’t think she could wait much longer for the three men to return to escort her down to dinner. She was just pondering whether it would be rude of her to go down by herself when she heard a snarling sound coming from outside the door to the suite. It sounded like a rabid dog was on the other side.

Just as she reached for the door handle and pulled it open, she heard a terrible snarling sound and Malcolm’s voice as he pushed on the suite door. Looking down, she jumped at the sight of a large wolf in the house. In her hurry to get away from the beast, she tripped and began to topple.