Halloween In Paradise (3 page)

And she had no intention of breaking that promise if they were who they said they were, and now, she supposed she would know as soon as the mating heat set in—if it set in.

Vincent lowered his mouth to hers. As heated as Corbin’s kiss had been, Vincent’s was just as gentle. His lips brushed against hers as soft as butterfly wings. Tilting her head back, he gently coaxed her mouth open, his tongue slipping between her lips to tangle with hers.

His hands cupped her rear, pressing her against his thick erection and they both groaned. For a moment, Gabby was tempted to throw caution to the wind and skip her talk with the sheriff—but only for a moment.

They were both panting when Vincent set her on her feet. He held her shoulders for a bit, until she gathered her bearings and stopped swaying back and forth.

“Go now,” Vincent said against her lips. “Before we can’t bear to let you go.” He sighed as he set her from him. “We are much older than most other shifters we have met. As you may or may not know, the heat is much stronger in older shifters.” He stared at her as though trying to convey his meaning. “We are
much
older than we look. Every minute away from us will cause us pain. Soon it will cause
you
pain. Please keep that in mind if you decide to run.”

“Really, you two, I do
not
plan to run.”
I only plan to talk to the sheriff so he will know who to hunt down and kill if someone finds my mutilated body in a ditch.

“That won’t happen, sweetheart. We can’t harm you. You are our life.”

“Wait just a damned minute here. Did you just read my mind?”

Holy crap! No one told me about that!

Corbin watched as the color drained from his mate’s face. “There’s nothing to be alarmed about, sweetheart. A mental link is a normal and intimate thing.”

“Can anyone else read my mind, or only you two?” she asked as she bent over, rested her hands on her knees and took several deep breaths.

“Just the two of us can read your mind. We couldn’t until we kissed you, though. We needed the beginning of the mating link to do so.”

“Oh.” She pressed her fingers to her lips. “So that’s why you both kissed me. You wanted to see if I was lying to you.”

“We knew you were lying to us. To a shifter, lying has a smell. To you—“

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Us lowly humans can’t smell anything with this tiny bulb in the middle of our faces.”

“I wasn’t about to say that.”

“Then what
were
you about to say?”

“I was just going to say that it has no scent to humans. It’s not because you’re inferior. It’s because we have all evolved differently. Humans evolved to use their brains, eyes, ears and strength more than their sense of smell. According to our scientists, even your sense of taste is less pronounced.”

“Great, so we’re inferior all the way around.” She shot him a thumbs-up. “Thanks for telling me. I don’t think I could have lived another moment ignorant of that fact.”

“Your sarcasm is misplaced. You do not have to don it and wear it like a cloak that protects you from injury. I merely wanted to convey the fact that we shifters are different. Not only did our brains evolve, but we somehow were able to keep the good parts of the previous evolution. Our animal sides need the sense of smell and the superior hearing for the hunt.”

“Yeah, whatever.” She waved her arm. “I’m not really offended. I’ve seen the men here act the same way. The only thing that I don’t understand is how it works to change a human into one of you.”

She bit her lip and his stomach clenched. Gods he wanted her. He wanted to feel those lips and that delicate pink tongue all over his body, and damn it all, he wanted to map her body with his own tongue. In fact, his mouth practically watered to taste her. He couldn’t wait to push her down on a bed, any bed, and ravage the succulent pink flesh of her pussy with his lips and tongue.

“Hurry back, love,” he said as he cupped her cheek and ran the pad of his thumb over her full bottom lip. “I’m not sure how long we can wait.”

They both watched her walk down the sidewalk, climb onto a bike and ride away. His beast roared with anger that he’d let her go. Fisting his hands at his sides, he opened the door to the SUV. “Let’s go get that damned room and pray that she doesn’t run.”

The heat already seared Corbin’s insides. It moved slowly through his blood, burning him from the inside out. It was a silent, insidious thing that he knew would only get worse as the day or days wore on. He’d seen men lose their minds because of the heat. He didn’t want to be one of those men.

“We need to go get our room and then seek out the enforcers of this town. Something tells me that our mate is thinking of leading us on a merry chase and we’ll need to insure that we don’t go mad and harm her or someone else.”

“You’re right.” When Vince climbed in next to him, he inserted the key into the ignition and started the engine. “We can’t risk going feral. We could kill her or someone else. No one has seen the likes of us in a very long time. We need to keep it that way.”

Both of them became Caspian tigers when they shifted. As far as anyone knew, their animal species had gone extinct roughly fifty years ago. Since it should be impossible for them to exist, it was imperative for them to keep their heads.

Even the shifter community thought them extinct, and Vincent didn’t know if their council wanted others told that they were alive and well living in the northwest. After all, they had already seen their full animal counterparts hunted to extinction. No one wanted to see that happen to their clan.

Unlike their full animal counterparts, his people enjoyed living in close-knit communities. Never having been fond of the human penchant to call a group of tigers a streak or ambush, they called their small community a clan. It was what they were. A clan of people doing what they must to survive.

Usually, they lived in their small town, keeping to themselves. Occasionally, though, they would retreat to the Cascade, where they could shift and hunt without worry of discovery.

The Cascade was a space within a space, not unlike Paradise. The only difference was that humans managed to stumble into Paradise, some of them finding their mates. Not so with the Cascade. One must have permission to enter and even then, a shaman from their clan must open the gate. The trip through the gate felt as though one fell through a waterfall into the community that housed those who could never live in the ordinary human dimension.

Some of those destined to live out their lives in the Cascade had been damaged during the great hunt in Mother Russia. The humans hunted the Caspian tiger to extinction, and if grievously injured during a shift, such as losing a body part, the individual was left with the inability to shift back into their full human form. Some of the elders were stuck mid-shift and consigned to forever living in the Cascade with no hope of ever finding a mate. Unlike other shifters who could shift willy-nilly, their species couldn’t shift under duress.

Vincent glanced at Corbin. “Where to? Do we get a room first, or talk to the sheriff?”

“I think we can get the room. The sheriff can wait. I doubt that we’ll go feral in the thirty minutes or so it will take us to rent a room at the local inn.”

“You have a point,” Vincent said with a chuckle. “I was just deferring to your good judgment.”

“
Right.
” Corbin shifted into reverse and backed out of the spot. “Now where did she say that inn was located?”

Gabby entered the police station and smiled at the decorations. A family of goofy-looking moose dressed in Halloween costumes dressed the far corner while electric Jack-O-Lanterns decorated the floor next to the sheriff’s desk. Black and orange streamers crisscrossed the ceiling and spider webs covered the window behind him. It seemed as though the sheriff’s wife had been here asserting her wifely rights upon his office. She knocked on the open door.

Merrick sat behind his desk frowning at a stack of papers in front of him. She could see why Gemma was so enamored of her two husbands. What wasn’t there to like about tall, dark, and handsome? “Can I talk to you for a minute, Sheriff?”

Merrick Hunter glanced up from the pile of papers on his desk and smiled. His eyes crinkled a bit at the corners. At least the man knew how to laugh, and it showed. “Of course.” He stood when she entered the room. “Have a seat.” He gestured to the chair in front of his desk. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“I—uh…yes.” Gabby felt her face heat as she accepted his invitation and sat down. Knowing her complexion, she was probably as red as the exit sign. “I met a couple of men—shifters—at the diner and they claim that I’m their mate.” She fisted her hands when she noticed that she was twisting her fingers together.

“That’s wonderful!” He smiled, and then sobered when she didn’t smile back. “I take it that it’s not what you wanted.”

“That’s the thing, Sheriff. I
do
want it. More than anything.” How could she explain how she felt? How could she make him understand that she wanted two men in her life—that the arrangement he had with his own wife and friend was something she dreamed of nightly? “It’s just that they aren’t from Paradise. They rolled into town today and—“

Merrick held up his hand. “Say no more. You want us to check them out, don’t you?” He reached for a pen in a cup on the edge of his desk and pulled a blank sheet of paper out from beneath the scattered pile in front of him. “Did they tell you their names?”

“Of course.” What did he think she was, desperate? Well, maybe she
was
a little anxious to find shifter mates, but she wasn’t
that
reckless. She stared down at her feet, her face burning with mortification.

“They introduced themselves as Corbin Lyon and Vincent Rouchue. I have no idea how to spell their names.”

“Any idea where they’re from?”

“They said they’re form a town somewhere in Oregon.” She shrugged. Other than that, I have no idea. I
did
send them over to get a room at the lodge. Maybe you can get some information there. They’ll have to give their address and license number, won’t they?” He should be able to do something with that much information at his fingertips. He and his mates owned the lodge, so he shouldn’t have a difficult time getting the hotel staff to tell him what he wanted.

“I’ll check them out.” He sat back, tapping his finger to his lips. “In the mean time, stay away from them.” He reached for his phone. “I’ll call Gemma. You two can go to Mason.” He smiled. “She’s wanted to go shopping for decorations for the last few days, but Matt and I have been so busy, we couldn’t take her, and she really shouldn’t be driving in her condition.”

“I would think she couldn’t reach the steering wheel, in her condition,” Gabby said with a smile. Gemma was eight and a half months pregnant with twins and looked like a watermelon standing on two pencils, but Gabby would never say that to her or her mates.

“That has been my point exactly.” He punched a key. “Hey, there, Mel. Can you come into my office and escort Gabby over to the lodge to pick up my wife and take them into Mason to shop?” He paused as he listened. “No. I know you’re not a babysitter. You’re escorting Gabby for her safety. She needs me to check out a couple of strangers who just rolled into town. I need you to guard her, just in case. She’ll be out in a moment.”

“He didn’t sound happy.”

“Mel never sounds happy. He’s getting antsy staying here in Paradise. It will do him good to get out of town.” He glanced down at the paper in front of him. “I should have the answers you need before you get back. If it looks as though these two are up to no good, we’ll have them out of town before you get back.”

He didn’t say that they would most likely have to kill the other two men if they
were
up to no good, and Gabby was glad. She didn’t think she could live with knowing that much.

“Thank you, Sheriff.”

“It’s Merrick, Gabby. How many times to I have to tell you to call me
Merrick
? We don’t stand on ceremony here in Paradise, unless the feds are hanging around breathing down our necks.”

All hell broke loose when the feds arrived, from what Gabby could understand. They didn’t allow outside reporters into Paradise, which was understandable. It wouldn’t do to have some outside news crew film someone shifting into a big cat or wolf or something.

“Okay,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll try to remember. Thank you for all of your help, Merrick. I do appreciate it, more than you know.”

Corbin stared out through the large picture window in their room. “Do you think she’ll come to us?” He watched as a car pulled into the lot and parked near the door. He didn’t realize it was a police car until the uniformed officer got out of the driver’s side of the vehicle. The only telling mark on the vehicle was a spotlight on the door, and many people around here had them. Apparently, the town always had a rash of thefts during the cooler months. It had something to do with some old woman’s sculptures.

“Scratch that last question. I think it’s more than likely that she went to the local police. A car just pulled in and an officer got out of the car.”

Vincent joined him to look down at the vehicle and man in question.

“You’re too late. He’s already in the building.”

“Maybe he’s here for lunch. According to the brochure, they have a killer menu.” He sighed. “It even had pictures. It almost makes me wish I’d waited to eat here.”

“Stop thinking about your stomach.” Corbin scowled at him. “What if she
did
go to the police?”

“So what if she did? We have nothing to hide. Neither of us has a record and they won’t find out anything about you other than you’re filthy rich.” He grinned. “
That
should ease their minds a bit, don’t you think?”

Corbin didn’t dignify that with an answer, he just snorted.

He wasn’t surprised when someone knocked on the door. In fact, he’d expected it. He wasn’t sure if he could respect the leader of a pack or clan who didn’t investigate strangers who drove into town and accosted lone females.