Juneau Heat (15 page)

“I thought
you said you had to respect her as his mate, but now you’re saying she wasn’t?”

“He claimed
her as his by marking her. He did not complete it with a bite and a declaration
before his pack. When he does that, it would mean she’s an alpha like him. He
let his dick lead him regarding her. No different than I did, I guess. She
wasn’t an alpha.”

The
jealousy that stirred in Shiya’s belly made her grit her teeth. What did this
woman look like that she caused Kotori to forget his principles to have her?
She supposed she should just drop it. The woman was old news, a long while ago,
from the appearance of his scar. Kotori’s concern seemed to be more about his
decisions than about caring for the woman.

Shiya
decided not to bother with examining her own feelings. She liked being with
Birk and Kotori. She definitely enjoyed the sex, and she would leave it at
that. After crossing the room, she sat on the bed and removed her boots.

Kotori
raised his arm to allow her to settle in next to him and lay her head on his
chest. They waited in silence for Birk to bring the food.

When her
second lover came in holding two laden trays, she shook her head at his
strength and sat up. Kotori slid to the top of the bed and hoisted her between
his legs. She leaned on his chest while Birk placed the tray beside them.

“Wow, I
don’t think I can eat even a quarter of what you have here,” she said. Bacon,
eggs, sausage, ham, rolls, and bread enough to feed an army crowded the plates.
“Are you sure you’re not wasting food, Birk?”

He winked.
“When we shift, it must eat up a lot of energy because Kotori and I are
starving beyond reason. A typical polar bear can eat forty pounds of food a
day. This isn’t that much.”

“Damn near
it.”

They ate in
silence, Shiya having drawn her knees up to rest her plate in front of her.
Birk eyed her half-empty plate and frowned. “Aren’t you going to finish that
bacon?” She shook her head, and he leaned over to nab the last few pieces with
his fork.

Shiya
rolled her eyes. “How could your mom afford to feed you? Come to think of it, I
know you have a sister that you don’t have much to do with, but you never told
me why.”

Birk
finished up the last of his food, piled her plate on his, and set them both on
one of the trays. He moved the trays to the floor and then pulled her knees
down so he could rest his head on her thighs.

“My sister
didn’t inherit the shifter gene, but it was the one thing she wanted more than
anything else. A long time ago, she left Alaska, and I haven’t heard from her
since. When my parents passed within a month of each other, she didn’t attend
either funeral, and I had no number to contact her. She made her choice, and I
accept that.”

Birk’s
words sounded determined, yet she heard the hurt and loneliness. He loved
family and wished he had more of one. She knew that much from talking to him
before she flew up here.

“I’m sorry
your relationship isn’t better. Maybe someday you’ll find a wife, and she’ll
birth you lots of babies.”

All three
of them fell silent at such a ridiculous dream coming from her. She felt like
an idiot. Kotori’s question surprised her.

“Would you
like to have children someday?”

“Of course.
I’m just like most other women.” Despite the family she had been born into, she
longed for someone to love her unconditionally and the chance to have his
children. “I always dreamed of having four. My mother used to tell me to wait
until I felt the pain of just one to be sure of that number. As a little girl,
I thought she was just teasing me because I was her fourth, and she used to
tell me often I was one of four perfect gifts.”

Kotori’s
arms encircled her, but she didn’t need comforting. The tears she’d cried
nonstop for her mother were all dried up, and while it had hurt beyond belief,
the past could not be changed.

“Shiya,”
Birk said, and she looked up at him. The pain in his eyes startled her. He hurt
for her mother’s loss on her behalf. Her heart constricted, and she leaned down
to kiss his lips. He caught her when she tried to pull away. “Tell me
everything.”

“I . . .”

He waited.
She looked from him to Kotori and turned away. They didn’t push, but she felt
the support from both of them. They wanted to know, and she desired to tell
them what happened, even if it hurt. After all, Kotori had shared his painful
past.

“We . . .
they
—my parents—were on an assignment. I
always admired the way my father allowed my mother to take the same type of
jobs my sisters take. I was the only oddball who stayed behind the computer.”

Kotori made
a sound of surprise, and she looked up to see it in his eyes.

“This was
your first time trying to seduce a shifter?”

She winced.
“I guess that’s kind of a compliment since you couldn’t tell.” She glared at
Birk, feeling afresh the sting at his previous words about her and her sisters
whoring with their kind. “I’ve never been out of my home office, except to sit
in the back when there was an interview. That was the closest I’d come to a
shifter.”

“An
interview?” Birk said.

She ignored
his question. “Contrary to what you think, not one of us has slept with a
shifter. I was the first.”

“Don’t be
so proud of it,” Birk snarked, annoyed.

She flicked
her gaze over him. “What, you think you’re all that?”

His hand
snaked out to her breast and covered it. In an instant, her nipple hardened,
and he poised a thumb above it as if he would strum the tiny peak. She forced
her gaze away from him, trying for an appearance of being unaffected. The low
chuckle told her she fooled herself and no one else.

“Stop
teasing her, Birk, and let her finish her story.” Kotori didn’t fool anyone
either, because she felt his cock twitch and stiffen behind her ass.

“The job
was supposed to be routine. My mom would enter the bar and sit near the jaguar
shifter. She would make contact and get him to talking. All she had to do in
this case was to draw him out, but something went wrong. Another man outed her
as a Keith in the bar. I don’t know how he knew or what connection he had. My
dad and my brother dealt with it, but they refused to share the details. The next
thing any of us knew was we found my mother dead in a motel room. She’d been
tortured and then left to die. That was five years ago, and we have been
reminded every day how cruel shifters are, how vicious.”

Birk sat up
and touched her cheek. She turned her face away, but he made her look at him.
“What did I tell you, Shiya?”

She glared
at him.

“I said
there’s a reason for everything we do.
Everything
.”

Kotori
added his thoughts. “Yes, we are part animal, but we are part human too. We
have reasoning where our counterparts do not. That can be challenging going up
against instinct. As we’ve pointed out earlier, the greatest reason for a man
to forget his human side is when someone touches his mate or his family. You
don’t want to hurt a man’s mate and leave him alive.”

The way
Kotori said it sent a dead chill over her being. She thought about it. Her
father and brother kept a lot of things from the women, even though they said
they were all in this together. The interviews almost never included the women,
and the only reason she’d sat in on one for a short period of time was because
her dad hadn’t noticed. When he did, she was shown the door.

Now she’d
heard straight from her brother that they wanted to kill Kotori’s entire
family. Birk’s sister might be safe since even he had no idea where she lived,
but what about Kotori’s grandmother? The old woman hated her, but she didn’t
deserve to die, and neither did his parents or siblings. She gasped at the way
she was thinking. When she stepped off the plane, she’d thought she was firm in
her beliefs about the rightness of what her family was doing, but really, she’d
already begun to doubt. That started when she began chatting online with Birk.

Shiya
climbed off the bed and walked over to the window. She pulled the curtain back
and stared out at the snow with the beautiful mountains in the distance. If she
could, she would never leave this cabin. She’d keep Birk and Kotori close, but
who would protect the others? What if her family found out about the rest?

“Kotori.”
She spun around to face him. “Is your grandmother safe? I mean, she can’t be
used to . . .”

He rose and
came to her, tugging her into his arms. His big hand cupped her neck, and she
tilted her head back to receive his hungry kiss.

Oh no, I want to be with him and Birk
forever, but they’re not offering that, and how can I? They can’t trust me. I’m
a Keith.

Kotori
raised his head, and the gentleness in his eyes robbed her of the ability to
speak. She had expected lust or any number of emotions close to the surface in
his readiness to take her. What looked like love scared the hell out of her.
She closed her eyes, deciding it was wishful thinking.

Besides,
she’d just shared with them about her mother’s death. If anything, she should
feel hate, shouldn’t she? Rage? That’s what Kasen wanted her to experience when
he showed her the picture. Yet, she knew she could never hate these two men.
Something about Birk and Kotori had gotten deep inside of her, and she didn’t
know whether they were unique or just like every other shifter out there in the
world. What she did believe was that they were not vicious or evil.

“My people
are fine,” Kotori assured her. “I made arrangements for them before Birk and I
brought you here.”

Her eyes
widened, and she dug her nails into his arms without meaning to. “Do you plan
to kill me?”

Birk strode
over and stood behind her. He stroked her hips and pressed in tight to her ass.
She went up to her bare toes and stuck her ass out to him. Birk moaned. He
raised his hands to her breasts and gave them a firm squeeze. “We couldn’t kill
you without cutting out something vital to our existence.”

Totally
unsexy declaration of love, but she would take it. Shiya dipped her head and
hid a grin. There was no telling how a relationship between the three of them
could work out long term, but right now was not the time to figure it out.

“I need to
work off my breakfast.”

Kotori
growled low in his throat. “Is that right?”

“Yes.” She
looked up at him and tilted her head a little in challenge. “You know how I can
do that?”

“Definitely!”

Birk
reached from behind her and unbuttoned her pants. He had them around her ankles
in seconds. Even as he yanked her panties down with one hand, his other one
cupped her pussy. Her jaw went slack, and she covered Birk’s hand with hers.

“Yes, that
feels so good, Birk. I want to come so bad.”

“Easy,
baby. You will. You want to please Kotori?”

“Mm,” she
murmured.

Birk raised
her legs and pulled them apart. He took her full weight on his forearms and
held her in readiness for Kotori. Her second lover undid his pants and shoved
them low over his hips. Kotori’s hunger was such that he didn’t wait to get
fully undressed. He stepped forward, grasped her hips, and thrust hard into her
pussy. Shiya cried out in both pain and ecstasy. She took all of Kotori’s fat
cock and arched her hips to drive him deeper. They pounded together, withdrew,
and ground in again. Birk stood like a brick wall. No matter how hard Kotori
pushed, he provided a staying power to keep her in place while his partner
slaked his lust.

“Mine now,”
Birk said in a clipped tone, and he tossed Shiya into Kotori’s arms.

Kotori
pulled out of her wetness only long enough for Birk to moisten his fingers in
her dripping come. Birk dampened her ass, thrusting first one finger in and
then another. He worked them in and out until she whimpered, dropping her
forehead to Kotori’s shoulder.

When her
anus muscles loosened, Kotori raised her a bit higher so Birk could guide his
cock into her pussy. She cried out his name, but he didn’t stay there long. He
wet his cock with her juices, and then switched to her rear entrance. He took
it slow, easing in one inch at a time. Shiya shuddered with the powerful
sensations. She collapsed against Kotori’s chest, unable to do anything, but he
held her up until Birk seated his cock to the hilt. Then Kotori thrust his dick
into her once again.

For the
first time, two men filled her. The squeeze overwhelmed her mental faculties.
She didn’t move or make a sound other than to moan just a little.

Birk’s
cheek touched hers. “Okay, baby? It’s not too much?”

“No.” Her
voice came out a whisper.

She hung
between the two men as they began moving in and out of her body. As one, they
took her, their thrusts going from gentle to rough. Kotori was the wilder of
the two. Because her pussy had taken his sexual beating, and his best friend’s,
many rounds before, he didn’t hesitate to pound into her, driving his hips
forward. Because he wasn’t as long as Birk, he didn’t have to worry about how
deep he could go. He let loose, raising her thighs higher and grinding until
she thought she’d lose her mind.