The Dragon's Mail Order Mate: A Paranormal Menage Romance (15 page)

Finally, there was the fact that both of these issues came from the fact that Will was the person in this house who had made sure she came here and that she was comfortable when she arrived. He had taken care of her the most and he had made it his plan to see to it that she was in the best of hands. Mike had done none of that and it was something that she couldn’t really hold against Mike, but something that she could really hold in favor of Will.

Sure, Mike was a little skeptical about all of this, but Will had jumped in without even hesitating and that hit her deep. She could have showed up and they could've chained her to a wall and fucked her as a slave and treated her like a dog, but Will had made certain she was happy and comfortable. Heck, it was probably going to be Will who drove her to interviews and made sure that she got the best driving instructor. He was a selfless man who actually cared about her and she knew Mike probably was deep down inside, but he just hadn’t shown it yet.

So there it was, the biggest dilemma of her life.

They were both incomplete and in an ideal world, the perfect man would come complete with all of these positive traits and cancel out all of the negative traits, but she knew this wasn’t the perfect world but the real world. Things were messy, people were complex and faults were a part of life. She was just going to have to think over these and see whom it was that she saw herself actually spending the rest of her life with. It was the hardest thing she could think of and going through them like this had been absolutely no help to her.

She decided it was time to see what they thought about all of this.

She needed their input.

By the time she made it to the bottom of the stairs, she was seriously questioning whether she had made the right decision by ever coming out of her room or if it might have been better suited for the survival of all of them that she just lock herself away and never be seen again. She felt the nerves inside of her stomach coiling and constricting with each step that she took. Listening to the sound of pacing and feeling the thick tension that was in the room, so thick and so potent that it could grab a hold of her and strangle her, she realized that she might have overestimated their ability to remain calm.

At the bottom of the stairs, she saw that the one who was pacing back and forth was Mike and he was clearly not doing well with the twenty four hours away from home. She could see the look in his eye was not good. It was the look that told her he was regretting how he had planned his time and how he had decided that only the evening was what he wanted for them to do something. She knew if he could go back in time or be given a second chance, they would probably end up with a very different date and that made her feel both a little pity and sadness for him.

You couldn’t go back. You couldn’t just pick up and go do things over. He had his chance and he had been overly cocky and reckless with his chances. Sure, she hadn’t decided to go with anyone yet, but she could see that this was the biggest fault in all of Mike’s plans. He was too sure of himself and that was going to inevitably bite him in the ass one day. Maybe that day was a lot sooner than he’d like it to be.

As he paced back and forth, she could practically see the storm cloud hanging over him and so could Will, who was making a sandwich in the kitchen, trying his hardest not to incur the wrath of Mike who was shaking his head and muttering to himself. She knew there was something clearly bothering him and it was the same thing she knew was going to bother all of the Shifters she ever went out on a date with or decided to spend her life with.

Jealousy.

It was hanging over him like a thick fog and he could hardly see out of it. She was surprised that the room didn’t feel like a boiler room because when Shifters got jealous, they got hot. Thankfully, Mike was clearly fighting the urge to blow up and that was something she was both very grateful for and proud of him for doing. But, she knew she was going to have to step lightly here. She was on shaky ground and she knew one wrong word could send Mike transforming into a dragon and destroying this house.

When Mike saw her, he stopped pacing and stood as still as a statue and she thought this was even worse than the angry pacing. It was kind of like he was in pain, using all of his strength to keep his body from walking around and grumbling. He was donning that armor again that she knew she hated so much, but was also drawing her in at the same time. It was a shame she couldn’t just get a peek at what was underneath. Even if that peek was the vocalization that he was jealous and worried about his chances. At least that would make him seem a little more human. It would give him some color and some life that she hadn’t seen in him yet.

“Hey,” he said with a nod of his head, trying to act nonchalant about the whole thing when she clearly saw him freaking out a few seconds ago. It was actually ridiculous to see him acting like this. Why couldn’t he just be normal for one second in his life?

“Hi,” she said with a smile that was both excited and genuinely happy to see him again.

That was the hardest part about all of this. Why couldn’t one of them have totally screwed it up and been terrible. If either of them had sucked at dating or not had sex with her, or even worse, had really terrible sex with her, then this would be an open and closed case. But it wasn’t and she knew there was going to be some emotional connection to whatever it was that she decided. Pain was on the horizon and she was the one holding the scalpel.

“Good morning, Will,” she said, calling into the kitchen.

He looked up from the cutting board and smiled at her. It was a sweet, quiet little smile that didn’t give a hint away at all about what had happened last night. It was apparent right then that Mike was not the only one in this house who knew how to keep a straight face when he needed to. She smiled at the childishness of all of this, but when Will’s eyes darted to Mike, she knew he was also worried. They were both terrified about what was going to happen.

“So, I was thinking maybe we should talk about what’s happened,” she said, walking into the kitchen and sitting down at one of the stools on the island.

She looked at Will, who nodded silently and then glanced over at Mike who was starting to pace back and forth again, but begrudgingly headed over to the island and sat down, leaving a stool between himself and her. She thought this was odd. Was he really that insulted by the fact that she went on a date with Will and slept with him? Did he really think she wasn’t going to sleep with Will after she had slept with him on their first date? That was childish and she didn’t like how ugly it was, too.

“I know this isn’t going to be easy, but I think if we sit down and talk about what we think, it might be easier for me to make my decision in a couple of weeks.”

“A couple of weeks?” Mike said, raising an eyebrow. “No, that’s not what we agreed on. You’re supposed to make your decision today, after we’ve had our dates. You’re supposed to make the decision now and we’ll know who it is without having to drag this whole thing out longer than it needs to be.”

“Will and I decided it would be better in a couple of weeks,” Oksana said, looking at Will who had clearly dropped the ball here.

She was expecting him to talk to Mike about this. She didn’t think this was really her responsibility to relay to Mike. It was their agreement after all.

“When? Last night?” Mike hopped on that one faster than they could even imagine and she shook her head.

“No, it was the first night that she was here,” Will said. “I was going to tell you when you got home, but you were out until, like, three and I went to bed. I woke up in the morning and it slipped my mind. What’s the big deal, anyway?”

“The big deal is that you two are changing the arrangement without my say,” Mike said, looking at Oksana like she’d just plunged a knife into his back and she didn’t know what to say to him. It was like he was blowing this whole thing out of proportion on purpose and she couldn’t possibly understand why. He was sabotaging this for himself. Didn’t he see that?

“I thought that a couple of weeks would help me give a better judgment and have a better chance of making the right decision,” Oksana said, trying to come between the two of them and bring some kind of civility to this whole thing.

She didn’t want them killing each other over the fact that she wasn’t making a decision today. She felt a knot in her stomach growing and was desperately trying to understand how things could've gone this wrong. They shouldn’t have come to this agreement and they shouldn’t have decided this was the course of action they were supposed to take. No. They should've come up with a different plan.

“No way,” Mike said, shaking his head. “The longer you have to think about it, the more Will is going to seem like the better guy. He’s always cleaning and fixing things. He’s going to totally end up buying your affection and you’ll think he’s the more responsible one and the right choice. No way. This is about the dates and that’s it. Dragging this out longer makes it something that it’s not and I don’t want to deal with that. Okay?”

“I’m sorry,” Oksana said to him, shaking her head. “But I don’t think I can come up with a decision at the end of the day. That’s not enough time and you’re putting way too much pressure on me to come to a conclusion for a competition that I didn’t even ask to be a part of. You realize all the other women and men on that site are purchased by one person and they don’t have to go through these twisted games like this? So, the fact that I’m playing along with you should speak volumes about how much I’m willing to help out here.”

“She’s right,” Will said, raising his voice. “But I think Mike also has a fair point. I don’t want there to be any resentment between us once the decision is made. Maybe it’s best that you just go on instinct and you pick the winner in a day, regardless of your analysis or your judgments.”

“Then we might as well flip a coin,” Oksana shook her head. “That’s not the way to handle this.”

“I don’t understand why you’re making this so difficult,” Mike said. “Who was the person that you had the most fun with and who met all of your qualifications for the best date? That’s all you have to do. Once you pick, the other will respectfully bow out and there won’t be a problem.”

“There won’t be a problem?” Oksana laughed. “If I chose Will right now, you’d rip off his head and if I chose you right now, Will would probably pack up his things and vanish for the rest of his life. No, we’re all invested in this and we all have something at stake here, regardless of whether you want to accept it or not. We’re all getting a little emotional and we just need to take a step back and think through all of this. We just need to understand what it is you’re asking me and until you’re both comfortable with the fact that one of you is going to walk away empty handed, I’m not making a decision.”

“That’s not the rules,” Mike said, looking at her with that fiery passion that she loved so much. That willingness to fight and to be assertive was something that she was definitely turned on by, but right now it was standing in their way and she thought that it was the biggest pain in the butt that she had ever experienced. She needed to bring him down and she needed help to do that, but if she turned to Will that would only make things worse. “Oksana, before midnight, you’re going to have to decide or we’re going to have to settle this.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Will said, shaking his head in disbelief at how quickly this had all gotten out of hand.

“You know exactly what that’s supposed to mean,” Mike snapped at him. “You know, this was your stupid idea but now when you know you’re not going to lose, you want to change the rules. Is that it, Will? Have you turned into a cheater?”

“Back off,” Will snapped at him angrily.

Oksana could feel the air suddenly get warmer and knew that bad things were about to happen. She looked around at the nice kitchen and knew there was a back yard they could probably transform into, but it wouldn’t be something normal. When Shifters were given the ability to turn into a dog or a bear, that might get passed off as a strange but possible occurrence, but a pair of dragons was something entirely different. People were going to notice and then bad things were going to happen. As the heat kept rising, she looked down the hallway, past the stairs to the walkway out into the back yard.

“Both of you, outside,” she snapped her fingers at them.

They turned and looked at her, both of them full of fire and rage that she knew was going to make a mess of a lot of things very quickly and very soon. She didn’t want to be around any of that. Shifters were mostly cognizant through the whole time they were in their animal forms, but sometimes, things got primal and out of control. She couldn’t hold that against them, but at the same time, she didn’t want to die and she didn’t want to lose the house that she had come to live and love in the past few days. This was her future and they weren’t going to have the right to destroy that.

“Now!” she shouted at them and shooed them toward the back of the house.

They rushed, shoving and pushing each other violently, to the point that she was actually scared to be around them. When they were outside, she could hear their muffled voices snapping at each other, shouting angrily and then they started their shoving match, which scared her even more. She locked the door and stepped back, watching as they grew more and more physical with each other. She just prayed their dragon forms weren’t too large and that they would be smart enough to lay low and to keep out of sight. She didn’t want them destroying everything and forcing them to move.