Trained by Three Panthers [Caves of Correction 3] (2 page)

But all three men were laughing at her.

“Rowing and paddling are not the same at all. Here, let’s get you started.”

It was Declan speaking. He and Asher paddled their kayak really close beside the one she was in, and they began showing her how to hold the paddle, how to dip it into the water, how to balance on her seat, and a million other things. At first she was more confused than anything else, but after a while she understood what she was supposed to be doing, and then she caught the rhythm and found she was actually moving herself along without any help from Colter who was sitting behind her.

Admittedly Colter did most of the work, but by midday they’d paddled a long way around the island, showing her high cliffs and beautiful rock formations, and now they paddled up a tiny, narrow inlet to an almost hidden, miniscule beach with scarcely enough sand to park both kayaks on it.

It had to be a place people came to regularly because at the back of the beach, there was a circle of big stones, blackened by smoke. Asher disappeared for ten minutes, then returned with an armful of kindling and lit the fire. Declan pulled out meat and began barbecuing it over the fire, and Asher disappeared and returned with more, bigger logs of wood. It wasn’t cut in even sizes. Well, it wasn’t cut at all, so she knew it was deadfall he’d collected, rather than stored there ready to use.

While the food was cooking, Asher and Colter took her to the water and Asher said, “Let’s swim.”

Kenz could swim. It was one thing she did know how to do, although likely people who lived surrounded by water as these men did would consider her abilities rather minimal.

“I’m not really into physical activities,” she said, hedging.

“I guessed that when you didn’t want to walk or paddle the kayak. But don’t worry. We won’t let you drown,” Asher said.

She was hot and sweaty, so she pulled off her T-shirt, hat, and flip-flops and set them on a nearby pile of rocks. She waded into the water until it was up to her waist. It wasn’t cold, but it was cool and refreshing after sitting in the kayak for hours. She eased forward until she was almost floating and swam a few strokes.

The two men swam on the ocean side of her, and she understood it was their way of giving her space while still looking after her. She splashed around for a while and then swam back again before walking out of the water to the very edge of the sand. She crouched down and looked for shells or pretty rocks, but the sand was clean and bare.

She walked back to her hat, dried the water off her glasses, and climbed onto the rocks, wandering around there for a while. There were plenty of things to look at and the island was so quiet and peaceful. It exuded serenity and harmony—so different from her everyday life, with all its noise, stress, and tensions. Maybe that was why she wanted to try BDSM—to find the peace that was supposed to come when a Dom took charge of a sub’s life.

Kenz shrugged. Well, she was here, and during this week she’d find out. She’d been looking for another job for months and not found one she liked that paid anything as well as her current job. But maybe if she found peace and relaxation in the dungeon she wouldn’t find her work so draining and stressful.

“Lunchtime,” Declan called out.

Kenz’s tummy rumbled, and she realized she’d been smelling the barbecue cooking and was unconsciously looking forward to eating. She walked across the tiny beach to the fire and sat on the sand. Asher pulled some skewers out of his backpack and threaded a steak on one, handing it to her. Once she was holding it he held up a bottle of ketchup, but she shook her head.

“No thank you. My blood pressure is high enough without added salt.”

“Why is your blood pressure high? Do you take medication for it?” Asher asked.

She shook her head twice, watching the steam rise off her lunch. It smelled amazing but likely it was too hot to eat just yet.

“Stressful job. I’ve been looking around to find something less stressful but that pays as well. So far without success.”

“Big credit card debt?” Colter asked.

She thought he sounded a little cross or maybe worried, and she hurried to reassure him that he wouldn’t lose money on having her here this week. “No, nothing like that. No debts, just a desire to keep things that way. My grandmother, my father’s mother, was a teenage single mom, and my dad instilled in me the need to find a good job and save a cushion of money in case anything went wrong.”

“Damn good advice,” Asher said, nodding wisely.

“What do you do?” Declan asked.

“Shift supervisor at a call center. And no, before you can ask, we do not treat our staff like slaves. They’re allowed proper bathroom breaks and to have items on their desks.”

Kenz had read all sorts of news reports about pregnant call center staff being refused bathroom breaks or being made to work back late to make up the two minutes they took over their allocated break time. Then there was another case where workers had their family photographs thrown in the trash because their desks were considered unprofessional or some such bullshit. The company she worked for expected staff to work damn hard, but management wasn’t unreasonable.

Asher grinned at her. “So if you aren’t standing outside the bathroom with a stopwatch timing people on break, what do you do?”

She shook her head. “Answering their calls while they’re in the bathroom, mostly.”

Asher and Declan both laughed. Colter frowned.

“Seriously, I do answer calls when all the lines are busy. I also take the difficult calls that are beyond the scope of the staff to answer. And I spend far too much time in meetings trying to explain to management that if there are twenty staff and one hundred calls there will inevitably be someone on hold, and I have no way of telling if that person is important or not.”

“That’s easy. You need to add to the on-hold instructions. ‘Press nine if your call is very important. Press eight if it is moderately important. Press seven if you are very important. Press…’”

Mackenzie laughed at Declan. He seemed to have a sense of humor that she could relate to.

The meal the men had prepared was absolutely delicious, every bit as delicious as the men themselves. By the time the meal was over Kenz knew she liked them all as people, not just as the guides who’d be looking after her this week.

“When you’re not teaching guests to paddle a kayak, what do you do?” she asked them, suddenly wondering what their everyday lives were like.

* * * *

Colter Lang stared at Mackenzie. He hadn’t expected her to ask that question. He couldn’t decide what she was really like. She seemed fun and smart, yet she made it quite clear she wasn’t interested in hiking, or rock climbing, or anything physical. He wasn’t sure how they could teach her about BDSM and entertain her for a week just sitting on their asses. And now she was asking questions that were going to be difficult to answer without giving away the island’s secrets.

He and his brothers, like most residents of the island, were panther shape-shifters. Their ancestors had purchased the island so the pack could run free and be themselves without the human world knowing about them. Here they could shape-shift whenever they wanted to without needing to worry about being seen.

Sure, there were various precautions in place to preserve their privacy, but their chief protection was their distance from the mainland and the fact that the very few tourists here were never allowed anywhere unaccompanied.

That was part of the entire Caves of Correction methodology. There were only ever two or three people here at a time, and each one was isolated in a cottage on the island under the care of a family of shape-shifters. This week was the first time they’d had four women at once, and that was only because the four came as a package deal. They’d wanted to be together.

Colter and his brothers hoped like hell that this woman would prove to be their mate. Panthers mated for life, and sharing a mate was essential, given how few female shape-shifters were born. Of course, Mackenzie was a human, but interspecies matings were permitted.

That made it more difficult for him, though, because he couldn’t tell her they were shape-shifters. That secret would only be revealed when he and his brothers were completely certain she was the one woman they would mate.

But answering her question was even trickier than that because all the publicity for the BDSM resort emphasized that telecommunications were poor because of their distance from the mainland. That was not true. They were poor over the island because they were deliberately blocked to protect the panthers.

The only place where telecommunications were freely available was in the big house, where the Alpha lived and the offices were. Here, the panthers came to work, and most of their work was online, maintaining and upgrading websites, teaching and marking online courses, and doing similar tasks. And right now, if he said that, it made a lie out of the fact she couldn’t have cell phone reception in case she uploaded a picture or updated her Facebook status that might give away one of their secrets.

“Most of the people on the island are involved in the Caves of Correction resort in one way or another. The cottage you’re staying in has just been renovated. We’ve been working on that recently,” he said. That was true and answered her question, although it wasn’t a complete answer.

“Awesome. Thank you. It’s a lovely cottage and so comfortable.”

Before she could think of any more difficult questions to ask them, he stood up. “It’s time to continue circumnavigating the island. There’s still a lot of it you haven’t seen yet.”

Actually, he had no intention of showing her some of it, such as the main beach by the big house. That was a private panther-only zone. But he was sure he could distract her from that fact as he took her back to the place where they’d collected her, which was the closest piece of coastline to her cottage.

Because the cottages had originally all been built over the caves, of which there were many on the island, they tended to be dotted here and there, instead of gathered together in one place. Her cottage, which had only just been finished in time for her arrival, hadn’t been lived in for many years. It had been the home of a couple of very elderly panthers who hadn’t been able to keep maintaining it properly. But they hadn’t wanted to move to the mainland, so some of the middle-aged women had more or less adopted them, bringing them home-cooked meals and keeping the cottage clean until they’d passed on.

The outside was okay, but it’d needed all new kitchen and bathroom fittings and a complete repainting, as well as new furnishings.

Turning it into a client cottage had saved them the cost of redoing the kitchen because one wasn’t needed. They’d simply torn the old one out and incorporated that space into a much larger bathroom, with room for a tub as well as a stand-alone shower. However, the refit had taken quite a while, and he and his brothers, knowing they would be guides to one of the women coming to the island, had worked damn hard to ensure it was ready on time.

Colter watched Mackenzie. He was pleased that her paddling was smooth and that she kept in time with his strokes, although she wasn’t nearly as strong as him, but she’d picked up the basic idea quickly, especially for someone one who objected to physical activity.

He wondered if she really disliked it, or if it was more that she preferred doing other things instead. It certainly wasn’t that she was clumsy and uncoordinated. She was quite graceful with her smooth, steady movements.

Colter and his brothers had planned their little tour very carefully, not taking her too close to the main beach and using a little diversion up and down a few inlets to cut through a segment of the island to backtrack on themselves, he hoped more or less invisibly, and dogleg around an area ending up back at the place they’d begun having avoided one corner of the island.

She made no comment, but she’d put her paddle back in the kayak and was watching the scenery. He hoped she wasn’t too tired. They still had to walk back to her cottage yet. It wasn’t far, but it was uphill.

They guided her up the cliff and to her cottage. As before, they didn’t go by the most direct route, circling around slightly to change direction.

Colter unlocked the door for her. “Your supper will be delivered at seven tonight, and your breakfast at seven tomorrow morning. We’ll be back tomorrow at eight to take you out again.

“First, thank you very much for a wonderful day. I really enjoyed seeing the island, and the beach, and the cookout, and everything. But second, I thought you said you’d teach me about BDSM tonight?”

Fuck! She was smarter than he’d thought. She’d remembered his throwaway line. “It is not for the sub to question any of the Masters. That will happen in good time, when the Masters are ready and not beforehand.”

“So you aren’t going to tell me that schedule? Okay, supper at seven, breakfast at seven, be ready at eight. Do I need swimwear again tomorrow or not?”

“Jeans and walking shoes,” he said, watching her face. Just as he’d expected she crinkled her cute little nose.

“If you expect me to walk miles and miles, Declan had better bring his wheelbarrow,” she said, stepping past him and into her cottage.

He checked the door was locked behind her, and he and his brothers headed back to the beach. “We need to finish planning her first scene. She’s definitely ready for it.”

“So where will we take her first? To the lake?” Asher asked.

That had been their original plan. Colter thought it would still work. “Yes, I’ll write it on the whiteboard in the office, unless someone else has already booked it for tomorrow.

They paddled around to the main beach, and Declan and Asher put away the kayaks, which were community property, while Colter went into the office and checked the whiteboard. The panthers had a map of the island drawn on a whiteboard, and everyone was free to put their name on any area they wanted to use privately. There was a small beach commonly known as “the client beach” that the locals left for the use of the guests. Most of the panthers preferred the main beach anyway, which was much larger and where the community tended to congregate out front of the big house.