Billionbears' New Honey: BBW Paranormal Shapeshifter Mail-Order Bride Menage Romance (11 page)

Mama Dean thought she was the kind of girl Rhett and Rush should get together with, but at the same time she was the very same woman causing Mama Dean all her heartache.

Danni wanted to kick herself.

She finished up with Mama Dean, mostly nodding through the rest of their conversation and trying to engage as little as possible. When the matronly mother bear left, Danni locked the door behind her and slumped against it, sliding down onto the floor with her hands clenched around her.

What have I done?! I didn’t want to hurt anyone… And now I’m breaking Mama Dean’s heart… Oh, Danni, you knew it was too early to go for anyone…

She rested her head against her knees, keeping the sobs back. She was too confused to really think. All she knew was that she couldn’t see the Dean brothers again. Not if it meant hurting someone as badly as she’d been hurt just recently. It became clear as day to her again that fun with no strings attached couldn’t work – someone always got hurt.

***

“I think you broke those two,” Cerise said matter-of-factly, sipping on her latte.

Danni picked at the rhubarb pie listlessly. A little bit of her twinged at Cerise’s words – she didn’t need the confirmation. She knew she’d done wrong. Both in letting her relationships with Rhett and Rush go as far as they had, as well as ending them so abruptly. She’d sent Rhett a message over SassyDate that she couldn’t see him anymore and told Rush as much when he showed up at the salon the next day.

Now, several days had passed and Danni was still feeling no better about the whole thing. She’d hoped that some wave of clarity would wash over her, making her feel good about letting the Dean boys go and not stringing them along anymore, but that satisfaction was nowhere to be found.

“I think I broke me too,” she admitted.

It sounded ridiculous, but that was how she felt. With Rhett and Rush, she’d felt so… whole, so right. Like all the good and bad decisions in her life had been leading up to her meeting them and getting to know them, and now that was all for naught and her future had no direction. It didn’t help that Taylor had been harassing her the entire time on SassyDate, though she was beginning to consider it as nothing more than an annoyance.

At least nothing he said could upset her any further. She was far too angry at herself for breaking her own heart, as well as possibly the Dean brothers’ to care about Taylor and his scummy ways.

“So why don’t you fix it?” Cerise asked in her usual no-nonsense way, stealing a bite of the pie.

“How? Mama Dean made it plenty clear that when I thought we were taking things slow and not forcing anything, Rhett and Rush were still sort of competing for me. I don’t want them to argue, I don’t want them to hurt their mother’s heart. I’m just trouble, it seems.”

Cerise snorted at her words.

“You haven’t even talked to them about it! You know that Rhett found out that I know you and came to ask me if they’d done something wrong? That man was not playing around, and by the piles of flowers you get delivered to the salon every day, I think it’s pretty obvious that Rush isn’t giving up either. You should at least give them a chance to explain, or explain your thinking to them. It’s only right.”

Danni gnawed on her lower lip, setting the dessertspoon down. There were a lot of could haves and should haves going around in her head, but Cerise was right, as always. It was both an endearing and a stupendously annoying quality she possessed.

“Maybe,” she agreed. “But how long could they stick around here for anyway? They both have these huge companies to run. I didn’t even know they came from money. Well, I guess I could have assumed with Rush and that hot air balloon, but I… I don’t know. I’m not that kind of girl. I wouldn’t fit in that kind of world.”

“If they wanted a girl who was a part of that kind of world, they wouldn’t have come looking for her in Idaho, honey.”

Damn that Cerise. Couldn’t she just agree with Danni’s lopsided reasoning for once and let things be?

“I’ll think about it.”

“Good. Now eat your damn pie. It’s far too good to be left uneaten just because you have some completely unnecessary heartache going on.”

***

It was late when Danni finally got home that night. She’d stayed with Cerise hours after closing, just talking and hashing out her options. She’d tried to fish out some information about Cerise as well, but the woman wasn’t budging. For someone so willing to share her opinions about everybody else’s lives, she was curiously tightlipped about her own. Danni knew she shouldn’t pry too much, but it was a nice change to her own irritating problems.

When she got to the clearing, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She immediately felt like she was being watched, like two eyes were fixed on her, weighing and considering her every move.

She started walking faster and then broke into a run, panic welling in her throat, though she knew it was silly. She was in the middle of a forest in Idaho, near just about the safest town in the entire region, filled with shifters who were far too nice for their own good. So what did she have to fear?

But a primal part of her took over and she ran and didn’t stop until she got to her door. Danni fished out the keys and opened her door with shaking hands. She slipped in quickly and a sigh of relief was already on her lips as she was closing the door. But instead, the sigh turned into a scream as the door was slammed open.

Danni froze in place, feeling every bit like a tiny field mouse being hunted for game.

Taylor stood in the doorframe, tall and imposing, his green eyes burning with fury.

“Hey, baby. Missed me?”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Rush

The last few days had been pure, unadulterated hell. Rush still couldn’t believe how quickly things could change. They’d woken up with Rhett in Danni’s bed the following morning, feeling like they were gods ready to conquer the world. Nothing seemed impossible now that they knew they had found their mate.

Rush was certain of it – he knew she was the one. The first kiss had been plenty enough to confirm that his initial attraction had been right on the money, but the night they shared? That sealed the deal.

Rush knew he had meant it when he said that there would be no strings attached. But now? Fuck.
All
the strings were attached and there was no way of unraveling them. Not in a million years. How could he possibly claim that things could go on as they had if he didn’t have his mate by his side?

It was some cruel twist of fate to dangle the completion of the triad in front of his nose and then snatch it away. Rush grumbled to himself, kicking back in the chair on his mother’s porch. Rhett was glued to his laptop, as he had been since Danni’s rather unceremonious message about not wanting to see either of them again. She’d said she was sorry it had to end that way, but that it would certainly have to end, and that she didn’t want to hurt them.

What Rush couldn’t understand was what the hell they’d done wrong? Were they too much for her? No, that couldn’t be it. He’d seen the way Danni writhed under their touch, absolutely adoring every kiss, grope and thrust. Their bodies had come together as one and Rush knew it could only get better when the bond was sealed. But even without it the experience had been completely mind-blowing.

“So what are we going to do now?” Rush asked, glaring into the distance.

Rhett looked up, his expression almost gray. He had aged several years over the last few days. It wasn’t surprising – Rush figured he looked much the same. It wasn’t easy to come to grips with the fact that their mate might forever be out of their reach.

“We give her time. And then try again,” Rhett said, but Rush heard the way his voice wavered.

Hope was a fine thing, but it only went so far. Both of them had tried every imaginable way to get her to talk to them, but so far it had produced nothing but additional heartache.

The sun had already set and it was dark, but sleep wasn’t something that came easily to the Dean brothers in their current state. Rush had been training himself to exhaustion every day in the hopes of catching a few moments of rest, and Rhett had been working his fingers to the bone. Rush was pretty sure that his brother might have doubled their market value in the last two days alone.

Just more to give away, I guess,
he thought grimly, remembering that their birthday wasn’t far at all.

He was about to add to their listless conversation when something in him tugged painfully. His eyes went wide and wild and met Rhett’s, who looked just as shaken.

“Danni,” they said together, leaping out of their seats so fast that they sent the chairs toppling over.

Rush jumped over the porch’s guardrail and hit the ground running, with Rhett just a few steps behind. They shifted so fast that Rush had to take a moment to let his two personae adjust – the human sink down and the bear rise up – but he didn’t stop for a second. His feet carried him towards Danni’s home at the speed of the wind. Something was wrong. She was in danger. The bond might not have been sealed but both Rush and Rhett felt it in their bones, at the very bottom of their souls. She was tied to them for life.

Rhett had fallen somewhat behind by the time they reached Danni’s house. Rush could smell another shifter there, and the growl that bristled up from within told him in no few words that his bear didn’t think that shifter had good intentions. He bounded up the few stairs leading to the porch and slammed his weight against the front door.

It cracked and creaked, and the second time he pounded into it, the door fell straight off its hinges. Danni screamed, back against the wall and tears in her eyes. Rush roared, catching the tail end of the other shifter’s transformation. It was a lion, a great big hulking one. The lion’s mane was thick and luxurious, and his coat gleamed a rich copper tone – all indications that the shifter was (perhaps a little bit too) well fed and well kept.

The lion hissed, putting himself between Rush and Danni. She was trembling like a leaf. When Rhett pushed in through the door as well, the living room was pretty much filled to the brim with shifters, Danni’s little house not exactly the best staging ground for a shifter battle.

Rush shared a look with Rhett and they leapt into action together. They’d never had to fight much, but they would stop at nothing for their mate. Rush went to the right while Rhett went to the left – the lion didn’t know what hit him when both of the big Mississippi black bears bulldozed into him from the sides. Rhett grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, dragging him out of the house while the lion yowled in pain, swiping left and right and trying to get the bears off of him. Rush took a great big chomp out of his rump, which made the lion move a lot faster.

Rhett tossed him off the porch and both of the Dean brothers were on the lion immediately. Taylor roared in fury, long white teeth gnashing at the bears. Rush growled low in his throat as the razor teeth cut into the skin on his neck, drawing blood. The lion was a fighter, at least he had that going for him. Though a cowardly puss who cornered a defenseless woman was not worthy of the praise.

Rush ignored the pain and his nails dug into the soft underbelly of the lion. He thrashed against him, but Rhett was on him from the other side, ripping at his back. The fight went out of the lion fast, the cuts and wounds that the bears could inflict overpowering him easily. Instead of the threatening roars the big cat had given before, it now only mewled and yelped in fear. Rush raised his paw to strike him, but the lion contorted on the ground, just within the sphere of light cast by the lamp, and turned back into his human form.

His bear wanted to rip the bastard to shreds. Anyone who dared lay a finger on his mate deserved nothing less than death. But Rhett stopped him, putting himself between Rush’s rage and the trembling man on the ground, backing away on his hands and feet.

With far more effort than Rush cared to admit, he shifted into his human form at the same time as Rhett did. Rush walked over to the man, who was still on the ground, his green eyes filled with fear, and stopped his further escape.

“Danni, did he do something to you?” he yelled, his blue eyes set square on the bastard before him.

“No,” she squeaked lowly, standing at the shattered doorway.

“You can tell us the truth, Daniela,” Rhett said, always the more composed one.

Rush’s hands were balled into fists as Rhett walked up the stairs and stopped in front of Danni. The lion in the dirt looked like his tongue had been ripped out of his mouth – he was nothing less than pathetic.