Chasing Cristabel (Ashland Pride Six) (6 page)

Chapter 5

“I wasn’t sure what you liked so I brought
you a sampler basket,” Dylan said, breaking her attention from the
email she was reading from her mother. A red, plastic basket lined
with white paper sat in front of her, containing mozzarella sticks,
chicken wings, jalapeño poppers, and french fries.

She looked up at him. He was too freaking
adorable for his own good. He had full lips that begged to be
kissed, a straight nose, and impossibly thick eyelashes surrounding
jade-green eyes. His dark brown hair was cut short. He was well
built but not as big as Hunter. She’d felt the lean, hard muscles
under his shirt when she’d touched him.

“It’s perfect, thanks.” She smiled, and he
grinned, ducking his head and kissing her cheek before promising to
return in a little while.

She looked over to the bar and found Chase
watching her. Smiling, she lifted her soda in a salute, and he
grinned. Hunter was looking at her as well when she found him at
the door checking IDs, and he smiled at her in a slow way that,
even from a distance, made her body tingle.

Turning her attention to the appetizer
basket, she plucked a mozzarella stick out and took a bite. She
closed her mother’s email, deciding it was better to leave the
response until the next day when she wasn’t thinking about what her
guys looked like naked.
Her guys
. Yeah. They really
were.

Sending a text to Lily, she thanked her for
making her go to the bar and for being such a great friend.

How did you know I’d find my mates at the
bar?

Because they came in looking for you. I don’t
know what you smell like, but you’re the only shifter who came into
the diner the other day who wasn’t mated.

Cris laughed.
You’re the best.

I’m going to spend the night at my grandma’s
so you can have the apartment.

Cris’s brows rose in surprise. She hadn’t
even thought about where they were going to go after they were done
working for the night.
Thank you!

You can thank me with something chocolate
tomorrow.

After an hour, Dylan came out and said,
“Would you like to hang out in the kitchen with me? It’s not all
that fun, but at least you wouldn’t be sitting by yourself. I’m
sorry we can’t leave any earlier.”

“Sure, that sounds fun. I don’t mind
staying.”

He picked up her empty basket, and she
carried her drink as she followed him into the kitchen. The kitchen
had white tile on the floor and beige painted walls. The walls had
a dingy tint to them, and she suspected it was from all the greasy
food that had been fried there over the years. Dylan pulled a chair
away from one wall and brought it near one of the counters where a
bag of frozen mozzarella sticks sat.

“How long have you worked here?” she asked as
he cut open the bag and counted out a few orders of the breaded
cheese sticks, before carefully dropping them into the hot oil
fryer.

“We’ve been working here for a little over a
year, since we came to Ashland.”

“Where did you live before?”

“King, Pennsylvania.”

“Do you still have family there?”

“Yes. Our dads are still there.”

“What about your moms?”

He paused for a moment, a cheese stick
hovering over the oil that snapped and bubbled in the fryer. He
placed the stick into the oil and then turned to her. “Our people
don’t mate together.”

“What?”

“I mean,” he shook his head, “that female
mountain lions don’t crave relationships. They’re very aloof and
uninterested in being mated. They only have sex for
procreation.”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing. Why are
they like that?”

“Would you believe me if I said that we
recently found out through ancient texts that the reason our kind
aren’t meant to mate together is because of a goddess’s curse?”

Cris stared at her cute mate for a long
moment. “Does that mean you don’t mate at all?”

He snarled. “No! Damn it, I can’t say
anything right.” He moved to her and knelt in front of her, taking
both her hands in his. “The males of our kind have always craved
relationships. Family is so important to us. For as long as any of
us can remember, it’s always been this way. The males want the
relationship, but the females don’t. The goddess cursed the
females. They actually poison the young females, and it suppresses
their nurturing nature.”

“If it’s a curse, then it can be broken,
right?”

“By truemates sharing blood. But we didn’t
know about that until one of the young females shared blood with
two panther males during a kiss, and it broke the curse. She
remembered being poisoned as a child and how it changed her
behavior and made her hate the males.”

“That’s so sad. Why would a goddess curse her
own people?”

“Because the females were jealous, and it
made her angry. The males aren’t affected by the curse, only the
females. But we lived together in King with the females, and the
males raised the cubs alone. The females would steal the girls away
when they were little and slowly transform them, and then the
poisoned females would leave home when they were old enough to
shift and continue the cycle. So our males started to look
elsewhere for mates, and some of us came to Ashland to settle.”

“How many pride members are in Ashland?”

“Seventeen males, ten kids, and six mates.
Most of us live in a boarding house in town.” He stood up and
turned to the fryers, pulling out the mozzarella sticks and dumping
them onto a rack. He filled three baskets and set them on a
pass-through, which rang a bell that alerted a waitress to the
pickup.

“I need a basket of fries,” the waitress said
as she pulled the baskets onto a tray.

Dylan nodded and moved to a large metal door
that led to a walk-in freezer.

“Do you like working here?” Cris asked after
he returned from the freezer.

“I like cooking, and the hours aren’t bad. We
only work late on Friday and Saturday nights. What did you do
before you came here to interview at the were-clinic?”

“I was a receptionist at a dental office. I
liked it a lot. The staff was so friendly; I was sad to leave.”

“I hope you’re glad you did, now, though.” He
smiled at her, his eyes glinting with happiness.

“Definitely.”

When the frozen french fries were frying, he
turned to face her, leaning against the counter. “You’re taking
this very well.”

“What?”

“Having three mates.”

“It feels right,” she said. “But, actually, I
haven’t given it a whole lot of thought. Things happened fast.”

It had been the strangest thing. She’d walked
into the bar, feeling kind of strange to be going in alone, and
then she’d found herself staring at three guys, her cat purring in
recognition. She’d planned to walk to them and…well, she wasn’t
sure, but she was going to do
something
, and then she’d
slipped on an ice cube. When Hunter picked her up seconds before
she hit the ground, she’d known instantly who he was to her – who
all
of them were to her.

“Did you know you’d share a mate with your
cousins?”

He shook his head. “The first multiple mating
only happened a few years ago, with twin lions named Ethan and
Eryx, and a she-wolf named Callie. They have three kids now and a
fourth on the way. Everyone in King thought that it was a fluke
that they’d found a female to share them, but then it happened with
another set of brothers after the family moved to Ashland. There
are lions in King who don’t think that our kind are meant to find
truemates or to share. Some of them are very pro-lion.”

She grimaced. “I know what that’s like.” At
his curious gaze, she explained about her pride and her parents’
wishes that she follow suit with their traditions.

“Will they disown you for choosing us?”

“I don’t know.” The idea filled her with
sadness, but she shook it off. “It doesn’t really matter, though. I
told my parents that I wanted to live my life for myself, by
my
rules and not theirs. That I found you, Chase, and Hunter
just tells me that I made the right choice.”

The night passed quickly. Hunter and Chase
checked on her frequently, inviting her into the bar to spend time
with them when they had breaks. Before their shift was over at
eleven, she excused herself to the bathroom. After using the
facilities, she washed her hands and looked at herself in the
mirror. The smile that seemed permanently etched on her face and
the bright eyes belonged to a woman who had found the perfect mate.
In her case, the perfect
mates
.

When she walked out of the bathroom, Hunter
was leaning against the wall across from the door, his thick arms
folded across his chest. She stood in front of him in the narrow
hallway and looked up into his hazel eyes.

“You ready to go, sweetheart?”

Her heart rate spiked. “Where to?”

He laced his fingers with hers. “We can go to
the boarding house. Our rooms are on the third floor, and it’s
pretty private up there. Or we can go to your place, unless you
think Lily would rather we didn’t.”

“She texted me earlier to say she was staying
at her grandma’s for the night, so we can go to the apartment and
have the place to ourselves.”

His lips slid apart slowly in a smile that
was almost predatory, until two dimples ruined the effect and made
him look more cute than dangerous.

“Let’s get my cousins, and we can head
out.”

They moved down the dark, paneled hallway.
“You, Dylan, and Chase are only children or do any of you have
brothers or sisters?”

“Our dads only had one son each. We were
raised in the same house. I think of them as my brothers, even
though they’re technically not.”

She tugged on his hand, and he stopped,
looking down at her. “Is this…are you guys…oh hell.” She stumbled
over her words because her brain couldn’t form the words to let her
ask if they were all okay coming back to her bedroom and ravaging
her.

Hunter faced her, moving close and pressing
her against the wall. His voice was low and sexy, making her skin
goose bump. “We’ve never been in a situation like this before,
Cris. Whatever happens tonight, it’s just the beginning for
us.”

Relief swept over her like a warm tide. His
eyes focused on her lips, and he lowered his head. When their lips
were a hair’s breadth apart, a door opened, and Dylan said, “We’re
ready if you are.”

She and Hunter both smiled and separated.
Chase was waiting at the bar, and the four of them walked out into
the frigid night. The guys had driven together. Chase offered to
ride with her, and Hunter and Dylan followed them to the apartment.
On the short drive, her mind raced. She wondered if other matings
were like this – one look and that was it.

Hunter parked next to her car in the guest
parking area, and she and Chase led the way to the apartment. Her
beast was purring and rubbing around in her brain, happy to have
found her mates. She let them into the apartment and locked the
door. Dylan tugged off her coat and tossed it over the couch, along
with the others’ jackets. “Is anyone hungry? Or thirsty?” she
asked.

Hunter caught her around the waist and pulled
her close, pressing her against the hard planes of his big body.
His lips found her neck, and he stroked his tongue across her
flesh. “Just hungry for you, sweetheart,” he murmured.

Hunter’s mouth moved on her neck as he walked
her through the living room. A door creaked, and she opened her
eyes and saw into Lily’s bedroom. “Other side,” she murmured. Dylan
closed Lily’s door, and they moved to the other side of the living
room where a short hallway contained her bedroom and the bathroom
she shared with Lily.

She was having a hard time thinking with
Hunter’s lips on her neck, the soft rasp of his teeth making things
tighten low in her belly. He sat down on the edge of her bed after
one more kiss to her neck and ran his hands down her arms until he
captured her hands in his.

Dylan and Chase sat down on either side of
Hunter, and they looked at each other in silence for a long moment.
Then Hunter cleared his throat. “Cris, we’re not looking for just
one night. We want to have all your nights and your days. When I
said this is just the beginning for us, I meant,” he glanced at his
cousins for a brief moment and then said, “we don’t have to do
anything tonight at all. Just staying here with you, even if all we
do is sleep, is enough for us.”

Chase ran his fingertip over her wrist. “We
don’t want you to feel pressured into doing anything. We know that
you’re our mate, and we’re just happy to be with you.”

Dylan looped his finger through the belt loop
of her mini skirt. “I don’t know what to say except that I’m so
glad we’re here with you.”

She squeezed Hunter’s hands and then slowly
untwined their fingers. “I’m glad you’re here with me, too.” Her
mind wanted to postulate on what a ménage relationship was going to
be like in the light of day, when they faced the reality of their
multiple-mating and what that meant for all of them. But her beast
just wanted to touch them. Hold them. Caress every inch of their
flesh and learn their bodies by memory.

Grabbing the hem of her top, she lifted it
over her head and tossed it aside. “Make love to me,” she said, her
voice husky with desire.

Three growls rumbled from them as Hunter
tugged her close with his hands on her waist and kissed the swell
of one breast. Chase stood and moved behind her, his hands sliding
around her hips as he kissed the crux of her neck. Dylan stood and
cradled her face with his warm hands, tilting his head and pressing
his lips to hers. His tongue swiped across the seam of her mouth,
and she parted them on a sigh as his tongue touched hers
tentatively.