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  His eyes burned into mine, not blinking for even a split second.

  “Do I want him to replace my Aidan? Of course not. But can selfish Aidan come out to play sometimes? Yeah he can, whether Sen sticks around with us or not.”

  “I like this plan.”

  We both looked back to see a sleepy-eyed Peter regarding us. He hauled me back against him, his mouth dropping kisses on my neck. “I’m your safe place?” I nodded. “That’s all I ever wanted.” He looked back at Aidan. “You don’t like Sen directing her, but you’re trying to do the same.”

  Aidan looked stung at that.

  “That’s not quite right,” I said by way of a rescue. “Some of you have more opinions than others, some of you will back my plays no matter what. The balance is what I like. The responsibility is shared.” I yawned again, both their hands going to my stomach. “Just keep talking, that’s what I think. Rick always stopped that, at first by being snide, then yelling, then—” I stopped still for a moment, a flash of the old fear rising, then falling as I just breathed through it. “We’re gonna have to work through this, no matter which way things go.”

  They rolled into me, arms criss-crossing as they went around me and I was held. I just lay there, breathing in time with them, feeling that warm, comforting, suffocating, all-consuming bond rise. It was an intense thing, being pack. Much more than any relationship I’d ever experienced, and the only thing comparable was my love for Kade.

  Kade. I extricated myself gently, rolling over and looking at the clock. Time to give him my daily call. Aidan was passing me the phone before I could say anything, Renee’s number cued up. Peter sat up too, so I could lean against his bulk as we made the call.

  35

  Rick saw the three backpackers walking along the road, thumbs out, and slowed down. She was laughing at something the two blokes said. Her eyes were hidden behind sunglasses, but that long tumble of brown hair, those long limbs…

  Her, an instinct growled inside him. That slut, she must be taking both of them on the regular.

  Not her, a purring voice argued. But prey all the same. Let them in the vehicle.

  “How’s it goin’?” he said when he pulled up beside them, and his smile felt like it tore at his face as he tried to make it easy-going and friendly looking. “Need a lift?”

  “So what brings you all the way out here, Rick?” the girl asked in that sweet tone women always use when they want something. The bitch didn’t give a fuck, not when she had those two young bucks pressed up against her on the back seat. One said he was her brother, but Rick didn’t believe that for a second.

  “My wife and son went missing,” he said, trying to keep his voice from betraying just what he thought about that. He studied her in the rear vision mirror, waiting for an appropriate level of sympathy to be shown. She did, stupid fucking bitch, cooing some bullshit about finding them soon and trying to imagine how he felt. She wouldn’t be saying shit about what he felt if she actually knew, except for run.

  “I figure we stop here for the night,” Rick said, pulling over into a rest stop.

  Why don’t we keep going? he’d argued with that inner voice. We could be on that bitch in hours.

  Practise, young one, the voice had replied. How will you know the perfect way to punish her, your woman, if you do not explore your options? His gaze had swivelled back to the mirror, watching the hitchhikers dribble shit. They will become willing accomplices. I will make sure of it.

  The voice in his head had been spot on. Of course it had. It had helped him punch Macca into a bloody smear when he balked at giving Rick his car. It had him trawling the back roads of god knows where, sniffing for signs of her. And it had the two men’s eyes shining red when the time came. He’d liked the way they glowed, that familiar bright red light, as they tore into the girl. Initially, it was just thrusting into her while she screamed and sobbed and begged, before she realised what these men had become.

  Animals, the two black dogs… No, they were wolves, he knew that now. Savage beasts that stood like sentinels as they watched the two of them work her over until there was nothing but a bloody wreckage left. They lifted their muzzles when the men finally stopped, the red light fading for a moment to leave them alone with their actions. Rick hadn’t liked that much, not really understanding the looks of fear and anguish on their faces. But then the red came back, staining their eyes and then their flesh as they tore each other to pieces as well.

  He’d looked at the wolves.

  That didn’t tell me much. I know what I wanna do to that fucking bitch.

  No, but it feeds our power, makes us stronger. We are predators, red of teeth and claw. We must rend, we must tear, if we are to be strong.

  He shrugged, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it up, momentarily obscuring the view of the horrors before him in a cloud of smoke.

  36

  “Is there a rule that we stay here during the heat?” I asked, walking into the lounge room wearing Aidan’s t-shirt. Both Noah and Sen looked up, eyes boring into me and seeming to see past the fabric.

  “What did you have in mind?” Sen asked. “Why don’t you take a seat with Noah there?”

  I smirked at his tone as he tried to make it a suggestion and failed miserably. I padded over to Noah, who was slouched on the couch. Those pale blue eyes tracked my every moment, his body shifting to make room for me before I’d even sat down. I stopped and reconsidered what I was going to do, then crawled into his lap. I still felt the residual effects of what he had done to me, but I knew little about the man himself. If proximity was what made things happen here, then I may as well put myself in his path.

  Which was Sen’s plan all along, I thought as I settled. “This OK?” I asked Noah.

  His nod was enthusiastic and fervent, his eyes wide, trying to take everything in as I relaxed against his chest. His arm went around me, stiffly at first, then they softened as I laid my head down, the other stroking down my legs in slow, soothing movements. He tensed again when I tilted my head back and placed a kiss over the rapidly beating pulse, holding himself oh so still. I just waited for him, and sure enough, his head came down, lips perilously close to mine.

  “Can I kiss you?”

  “Please,” I said.

  As that wave of warmth he always seemed to exude washed over us, I wondered if men realised how much feeling safe made some women—this woman—so much more responsive. In not having to hold myself tight and on guard against him, I found all that lovely desire rushing up unimpeded by worries and concerns, and just felt soft and natural. What other crazy shit will Noah want us to try? I thought as I squirmed a little. His hands snapped down on my thighs and held me in place hard against him, as a dizzying array of possibilities popping into my head.

  “What are you thinking about?” Noah asked when he finally pulled away.

  “You were saying something about—” Sen went to interrupt, but Noah held his hand out.

  “What was it?” he asked again, more gently.

  “I guess I was just wondering what that mind of yours had in store for us today.”

  “Swimming,” he announced.

  “What?”

  “You want to get out of here? Getting cabin fever, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I nodded, realising that was what it was, the itch under my skin.

  “We could go down to the Old Man Falls,” Aidan said. “It’s nice down there this time of the year.”

  “I’ll ring Ophelia,” Sen said. “Ask her to put the word around to keep everyone else away for the day.”

  The car ride over was an interesting one, especially after the last time I was in Aidan’s truck.

  “Nice memories?” he asked with a smirk, pulling himself into the driver’s seat.

  “I know I’m gonna get hard each time we get in here for a bit,” Peter said from the passenger seat. “I’m taking mine when I do the school run for now.”

  “Don’t want the ladies at the school gate getting all flustered?
” I asked as a joke, but as he turned around, he smiled at seeing my eyes narrow down, a growl rising in my chest. “They better not.”

  “Fuck, that growl is sexy,” he replied. “So, to be clear, we aren’t having sex down at the waterhole, right?”

  I nodded slowly, not so sure about the plan that had seemed like such a good idea moments before.

  “So what is your definition of sex?” Noah asked, lifting my thigh onto his knee, resting my foot on the centre console so I sat there with my legs splayed. Those sensitive fingers trailed across the bare skin there, revealed by the brief shorts I was wearing. “Like is this considered sex? Anatomists have found that in some women, the same nerves connected to your clit can be detected all the way down here.”

  Right now, I could believe that, as I felt every single stroke of his fingers, an answering pleasure flaring somewhere much deeper.

  “Keep your leg there,” Sen said when I went to pull away. “Keep stroking her for the drive over. Tell us more.”

  “Ah…well, the movement of the muscles in the thighs and pelvis can also contribute to stimulating the clitoris indirectly. Not as intensely, obviously, but if you lift her other leg.” Sen’s hands went under my other knee, drawing my foot up onto the seat.

  “Uh!” I yelped, feeling an incredible stretch throughout the whole groin area, one that seemed to make my clit sit up and take notice. I started to squirm, noticing an emptiness I wasn’t aware of until now.

  “Fuck…” Aidan grumbled. “I’m gonna wreck us if you guys keep doing that. Five minutes out. Keep it in her pants until then.”

  The heat wasn’t entirely at bay, hence the call to Ophelia. The beautiful waterhole was completely empty, so we weren’t going to scar anyone. I slid out of the car and into Noah’s waiting arms, his smile growing as my body brushed against his. He pushed me against the side of the car, his hand above my head as he kissed me. It felt much like the sun on my skin—warm, comforting, sensual. When he pulled away, my lips followed his.

  “C’mon, let’s go.”

  We carried down towels and baskets of food Aidan had carefully packed, walking down to the banks. A kind of calm settled over me at the sound of the water running down a tiny little waterfall. A faint mist from the stream hitting the rocks made it feel considerably cooler, especially with the trees growing around it, shrouding us in shade.

  “This is so pretty,” I said. “God, I feel better already. It was starting to feel like the walls were closing in on us.”

  “I didn’t mind,” Noah said, nuzzling my neck. “I felt like I was drowning in you. Your scent was everywhere.”

  “There’s a kind of magic to it, the heat,” Sen said. “For just a moment, it creates a little world within a world.”

  “You sound sad that it ends,” I replied.

  A quiet fell over the group, the sound of the wind in the trees and the birds calling all that could be heard.

  “I’m going in for a swim,” Aidan said, my eyes following him as he jerked his shirt off. “Coming, Pete?”

  I couldn’t focus on anything else until those big bodies were submerged under the water, but when they were, I felt a pressure inside me to say something, do something, break the silence.

  “What if it didn’t have to?” My voice to my ear sounded like a little squeak, tinny and high, but I forged on. “Not like this exactly, obviously, but if you guys…”

  Fuck, my heart pounded so hard in my chest. Just get the words out, Flick. If they don’t want to pursue things, that’s the way it is. You have two gorgeous mates. It’ll hurt, but it’d be better to nip things in the bud now.

  “Ifeelaconnectionwithbothofyouandwanttoseehowthingsgo. Whoa!”

  Noah jerked me back so my head was lying in his lap, and those intense eyes studied me, searching for something, perhaps the meaning of my vomit of words, because damn.

  “Noah, let the woman up.”

  His head whipped around to face Sen, and an honest to goodness snarl formed on his face.

  “No, mine!”

  He covered me with his body, angling it to almost protect me from Sen.

  “Let's hope so, mate, but right now, Flick needs to talk to us about what she just said, slowly. How about you turn around and hold her in your lap, if you’re feeling that strongly about her. Feel her body pressed against yours, and then we can talk this out, yeah?”

  It took a while, but he followed Sen’s advice, the other man’s eyes watching our every move as Noah rearranged us.

  “Flick…” Noah whispered against my back, thinking I didn’t hear it as he rested his forehead against my skin.

  “So,” Sen said, fighting for calm, but I saw the flash of red in his eyes. “You want to pursue things beyond…?”

  I nodded.

  “With both of us?”

  Noah’s arms tightened around me, so I ran my hand along them, stroking him until they loosened a little.

  “I can’t promise anything. A lot relies on Kade, how everyone gets along, whether we’re all compatible, but…”

  “‘But,’” Sen said with a smile. It was a strange one, like it wanted to be a whole lot bigger, more relaxed, but he kept that held back. He nodded. “I can work with ‘but.’ Noah?”

  “I…” I heard his voice crack as he forced the word out. “Flick, can we go for a walk?”

  “Uh, sure. Where did you want to go?”

  “I’ll take you up to the top, where the stream runs through.”

  Sen passed me a bottle of water as I got to my feet, and Noah’s fingers tightened around mine when I reached down to take it.

  “I’m heading in for a swim,” Sen said, standing up. He moved in closely, slowly, but I think even he felt the tension in Noah’s body. He placed a gentle kiss on my lips and pulled back before Noah could get too wound up, then stripped down to his shorts and ambled off down to the water.

  It was beautiful up here. We’d walked up a well-worn path past the water, rising up and over an outcropping of rocks. Noah had smiled when he saw me pause, watching the three guys sitting in the water. Someone had gone to get beer cans, and they were relaxing with them.

  “They really pull at you, don’t they?” he asked.

  “You all do. This is…” He took my hand, helping me traverse a fall of rocks. “If I was back at home, telling people how deep I was getting in with a bunch of guys I’d either met a bit over a month ago or had only just slept with, they’d think I was mad. Being…whatever Tirian is or means makes everything really intense. My wolf wanted to mark you when we had sex.”

  His fingers went limp with shock, and he froze where he was, leaving me to jump onto the ground unaided. He just stared until he finally seemed to realise what he was doing.

  “She did?”

  “I stopped her. You might not like that, but I had to. Noah, I don’t know anything about you except for your seemingly endless knowledge of human sexuality.”

  “Right, yeah.” His head dropped down as we walked farther down the path, along the river now, the trees forming a thick canopy above us. “That’s kinda the scary part.”

  “Why?” I peered under the curtain of hair. “Do you harass little old ladies for fun or something?”

  “No, nothing like that. I guess everyone says I’m a dreamer. I’m at work or I’m reading. Books, the internet, forums.”

  “Porn?”

  He flushed red at that.

  “Like what do I have to offer you, Flick?” he soldiered on. “You’ve got a phalanx of muscle dudes all panting after you. Why me, I guess is what I’m asking.”

  “And I’d say, why not you? But we both know how this started. I touched you, and it was intense. I had no fucking idea what I was doing at the petitioning ceremony, and then my heat hit. It feels like the wolf inside me makes most of the choices, and I just process them as fast as I can. And she chose you for some reason, and I don’t think it’s because of any of the reasons you told me before. It’s something else. What would you do if there
was only you as a contender? If you were coming into my life as it is now, how would you play it?”

  You could tell when Noah was really engaged in something by the way his eyes changed. The doubt dropped away, and then there was something keen and sharp looking out from behind them.

  “I’d focus on Kade first. I’ve told myself that if you decided to let me stick around that I can abstain from sex.” I snorted at that, which drew a rueful smile from him. “Yeah, I might be a bit optimistic at that, but I would concentrate on him, just coming around a bit at the start, letting him get used to me. Like bringing you both dinner or something. Aidan said he loves Star Wars and I love Star Wars, so I figure we could watch some movies. He says Kade likes to talk about the plot threads and characters. I’d want Aidan there, so he still feels safe, but yeah, I’d probably try and engage him that way, see if he felt comfortable with me, would be OK with me sticking around. I know that nothing’s gonna happen without that, so I’d want to build things from there. If he doesn’t feel safe…” Noah shivered a little, his eyes seeing something I couldn’t. “Then I’d leave it, us. Maybe we’d…get together every now and then, but yeah…” He shook his head. “I should’ve said something more romantic. My family always tells me I’m way too clinical.”

  “You’ve thought about this a lot,” I said, unable to keep the wonder from my voice. He was right, it was probably a little clinical to plot out his introduction to my son before we’d even expressed an interest in going further with things, but the detail with which he’d planned things was kinda stunning.

  “Yeah,” he said, raking his hair back. “I kinda do that all the time. People are always telling me to stop, but I can’t. I need to think about all the possible outcomes and the consequences for them and—Fuck! I am ballsing this up so badly.” I tried to hold onto his fingers as he strode over to a nearby tree, ripped up a handful of wildflowers, roots and all, then came back and thrust them into my hand. “I like you, Flick, a lot. I know from what Jules and some of the other outsider women have said that it takes a longer time for you to decide on someone than is normal here, and I’m happy to wait. I just…”