Arielle and the Three Wolves (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (22 page)

She checked her watch. It was after eight in the morning. She had called Bethany each morning while she had been a guest at the Wildback ranch. She should have called her ten minutes ago. Now that her sister was pregnant, she seemed to worry about everything. Arielle didn’t want to be the cause of one more worry.

“Do you have a phone on you?” she asked Luke. “I need to give my sister a call. And as you know I left so quickly last night I forgot to bring mine with me.”

Luke kneeled before her on the ground. He hammered the stake of the tent in with his fist. He looked up at her with a crooked grin. “I don’t own a phone.”

Arielle just shrugged. Somehow it didn’t surprise her. Luke wasn’t exactly in the twenty-first century yet. “Fantastic,” she said sarcastically and leaned against a tree to watch him finish the setup.

“If you miss calling your sister for a day or two, will she really be that worried about you?”

“You don’t know my sister.”

He looked back up at her, sweat rolling off his brow, a curious look on his face. “I wonder if she’s like you.”

“She’s my sister so I guess we’re a little alike.”

“I don’t think you’d go all crazy with worry over something stupid.”

“I might. You don’t really know me, Luke.”

“No. I don’t think you would. I think you go with the flow.”

She laughed. “What gives you that idea?”

“When I abducted you for sex last night a normal woman would have started screaming and probably wouldn’t have come with me unless I tied her up and threw her over the back of my horse. But you came willingly.”

“Is that why you brought me up here? Sex?”

Another crooked smile. This one bigger than the last. “Sure is, Dr. Banks.”

She realized this should have scared her, but it didn’t. When it came to the Wildback brothers, she didn’t think anything scared her anymore. Maybe he was right about her and how she had learned to simply go with things and take them for what they were. She was pretty certain she had not always been like this. She had probably been more like Bethany before. But with the Wildback brothers one had to learn to adapt.

“Do Jason and Kyle know we’re up here?”

“They sure don’t.” He paused to give her another dangerous smile.

“Won’t they be mad when they find out?”

“They’ll probably want to kill me.”

“Doesn’t that worry you?”

He secured the last stake and stood up. His naked chest was covered in sweat. “I don’t care about that,” he told her, and she could tell he really meant it, too.

He walked up to her. She pushed herself off the tree she leaned against. He stood close to her. Close enough for her to smell the sweat on his body and see the fine blonde hairs that grew beneath his navel and led down into the concealment of his jeans.

She put her arms around herself and looked across at the two tents in the clearing. “Good job,” she told him. “Want to go fishing now?”

“I do, but first sit back down over here.” He grabbed her hand and took her back over to the fallen tree. Just a slight push from his huge muscled body and she was back down on her butt on top of the log. “Your legs are real pretty,” he told her. The wicked and oh so dangerous smile had never left his face.

“Thank you,” she responded to his compliment.

“Too pretty to get bug bites all over them, which is exactly what’s going to happen if you don’t put on some of this.” He came back to her with a tube of bug repellent and knelt in front of her. He squeezed out a large dab onto his palm. “This is strong stuff, but it’ll keep the bugs off you for forty-eight hours.”

He pulled out her right leg and started at her calf. When the ointment touched her skin, it was ice-cold and made her wince. She tensed up for a moment until she got used to the feel of the cold liquid and his palm rubbing her skin.

When he ran his fingers behind her knee, she wanted to laugh. She was ticklish there. She gave him a smile. “That feels good.”

“It’s not supposed to feel good. It’s just supposed to keep the bugs off you.”

She cleared her throat. “That’s what I meant. It feels good to have the bugs off my skin.”

He looked up from her leg and had never looked more dangerous. She blushed and wiped some hair back out off of her face. He returned to her right foot and sat it across his leg as he removed her sneaker.

“My feet, too?” she asked him.

“This will stop the ants from getting in your shoes.”

He gave her a foot rub, and it felt good. The cold liquid had now become a luxury as he spread it along her skin. She wished she had a back rest on the fallen tree she sat atop of so she could lean back and enjoy, but unfortunately she had to keep herself propped upright with her hands. It didn’t matter. He still gave a glorious foot massage. By the time he moved to take off her left sneaker, she felt relaxed.

“Do you always give a foot rub on the first date?” she asked him playfully.

“I don’t date,” he told her as a matter of fact.

“What do you do, then?”

“I fuck women.”

“Well, what do you call this camping trip you’ve taken me on? I know you said we’re going to have sex, but I mean we could have done that at home. How do you classify this trip?”

He kept her foot in his hands and made her muscles roll under his touch, and he thought about her question. It was a while before he answered. By the time he did answer, he had started to work his way back up her leg again.

“I don’t know what to call this,” he finally told her. “I’ve never had a mate before, so I just don’t know how to act or what to do. Bringing you out here was the only thing I could think of. I wanted to be alone with you.”

“Well, we couldn’t get much more alone than this.”

“That’s why I brought us here.”

She wanted to talk to him about what his idea of a mate really was. That would be important to the decisions she made in the very near future. However, he had moved up her leg with the delicious, cold bug repellent and had moved onto her thighs. Suddenly she realized the shorts she had worn were just too damn short. She had trouble concentrating with his hands so close to her sex. But fortunately he moved on quickly.

“Take off my shirt,” he told her. He had finished with her feet and legs and sat down beside her on the log.

“You want your shirt back?” she knew she asked this a bit wistfully since he looked so good without it.

“The bug repellent is sticky if it gets on your clothes,” he told her.

“It’s gotten warm out. I don’t really need it anymore,” she said, and lifted her arms above her head and removed his shirt.

He was quick to lift up her bare arms and start rubbing bug repellent on them. Once more he took his time, and the cool liquid as applied by his fingers to her skin felt like magic. Then he rubbed her shoulders and lifted the straps of her halter to get the skin beneath. She raised her chin for him, and he got her neck. When he moved to the back of her neck, he moved her hair out of the way. The cold liquid made her squirm each time it was applied to a new area of her body. The touch of his fingers made her shift uncomfortably on the log.

“That should take care of you for a couple of days,” he said as he finished up.

“So you want us to spend two days out here camping?”

“I’m not for sure yet. As long as it takes.”

“As long as it takes for what, Luke?”

“For you and I to get to know each other.”

She sighed. “Okay. I’m game to go along with you. But what happens if we get to know each other and then decide we don’t like each other?”

He shrugged. “It’s a possibility. I’ve known a lot of people I haven’t liked before.” He put his shirt back on. She felt disappointed when he did this. Then he held out his hand to her. “Ready to go fishing?”

“Lead the way, sir,” she told him after he helped her up from the log. He went back to the duffle bags and brought out two monofilament lines with tiny hooks on the end. He also took a box of what must have been bait. Then he took her by the hand, and they started off.

He knew a shortcut down the side of the hill. It didn’t take long before the forest had pulled back to reveal a small but perfect pond. The water was blue and still and reflected the mountain peaks.

A bubbling brook led into the pond, and Luke pushed some brush out of the way and helped Arielle climb down a gully. The crackle of the water as it flowed echoed off the walls of the gully and the heavy brush overhead shielded them from the sun in peaceful shadows. He handed her the line and began to unfold his own. He started to show her how it was done.

She held up a hand. “I know how to fish as well as the next person,” she told him proudly. “Just hand me some bait, and we’ll see who catches the most.”

They began and were quiet as they waited for the fish. Already Arielle saw several swim past and others jump out of the water out in the middle. It looked like a good spot to catch them.

“How serious are you?” he asked her after they had spent an hour at the water. Already each of them had caught a fish.

His question took her by surprise. “Serious about what?” she asked.

“About becoming our mate?”

This was a tough one, and no easy answer came to mind. Arielle waited and watched the gurgling water for a while before she was ready to give an answer. This was as good of a spot as any to have this conversation and maybe better than most. The great outdoors seemed to demand honesty from a person, and the serenity of the spot they stood and fished in seemed to help with that notion.

“The idea of getting married to three men is something I don’t think I’ll ever be able to deal with,” she finally told him. Her voice was quiet so the fish wouldn’t get scared, but also she suspected because she felt ashamed that it had taken her this long to face up to the truth of her relationships with the men.

“We’re not talking about marriage,” he reminded her. “Shifters mate. It’s for life.”

“But it’s pretty much the same thing as marriage, isn’t it?”

“I suppose.” He became quiet, too. Again she didn’t think it was out of respect for the fish. “So you never were serious then?” She felt like he chastised her with his words, and she realized she probably deserved it.

“When I met Jason I was at a bad spot in my life,” she attempted to explain herself. “I was lonely, and life didn’t seem to matter. I had no direction. I just went to work six days a week and came home and made myself dinner, did the laundry, and read a book. Then I got up and did it all over again the next day. The funny thing is I had already gotten over my ex-fiancé cheating on me. That no longer mattered to me, and I was happy I got rid of the bastard. But it was like nothing mattered to me, and I couldn’t ever see my life changing whether I stayed in Wolf Creek or moved back home to St. Louis. I felt like my life was always going to be the same. I felt old before my time.”

“But when you met Jason you thought he was a wolf. And when you met Kyle and me, I don’t think you liked us very well at first.”

“True,” she said and laughed as she thought back on the memory. “But the wolf and I became close. I knew something was different about that wolf. Although, I never would have guessed how different he really was. Then he became this wonderful, strong man, and I felt like I was living in a fairy tale. Jason taught me things I didn’t know about myself.”

“He taught you that you were a submissive.”

She gave him a suspicious look. “Did he discuss this with you?”

“No, but I know Jason, and I’m starting to get an idea about who you are. The pieces fit together.”

“Well, you’re right. He did make me realize that I have a need to please the man I’m with. I also have a need for the man I’m with to be stronger than I am.”

“You want him to tell you what to do?”

Arielle had to pause and think about this for a minute. It sounded so lame if she said she wanted someone to tell her what to do. It made her seem like a child or a moron, and she didn’t want to be either. But then the freedom of the vast forest caught her up again and demanded total honesty. She nodded and had to catch herself. Some tears threatened at the corners of her eyes. She angrily wiped at them.

“Yes, I do what Jason tells me to do,” she admitted. “I don’t have to, but I do it willingly.”

“Why?”

“Because I guess I’m in love with him. That’s my way of expressing love. His way is to be in charge and take care of me when we’re together.”

“He told you to come up here and have sex with Kyle and me?”

“Yes.”

“And you did it for him?”

“At first that was the only reason I did it. He is a shifter, and he had you two, and that made things real complicated.” She laughed at herself as she thought about it. “You don’t know how much I wished the two of you didn’t exist at that time. I wanted Jason all for myself. I guess I was jealous of his love for you.” She looked down at the running water. She saw a fish nibbling at the bait on the end of her line. She had a minute to think, and ignored the fish that would get to live for another day. “The decision to come up here and submit to a sexual relationship with two men who I barely knew was painful. I didn’t want to lose Jason, but I felt like his price was to make me into some kind of slut or tramp. I don’t like to feel that way.”