Mold Me [Dungeon Masters 4] (Siren Publishing Menage Everlasting) (2 page)

His gaze went straight to the kitchen counter. “Coconut-pineapple cake. Damn, you have been busy.”

“There are two different kinds of soups chilling in the freezer as well, pumpkin and tomato. I finished updating everything in time for a late lunch and discovered the freezer was almost empty, so I decided to spend the afternoon cooking. I’d like to go for a run after we eat. I haven’t been for a week or so.”

“I’ll come with you. I need the exercise as well.”

Callum handed him a bowl of rice and a second one of curry and he took them across to the table, collecting forks on the way. By the time he got back to the kitchen counter, Callum had set out a couple of bottles of beer.

“You’re right. Beer is much better with curry than coffee.”

“When we get back from our run we can eat the cake and have coffee. We’ll be ready for dessert by then.”

“That’ll be something to look forward to. Likely I won’t want to run for long enough, though. I’ll be ready for the cake instead.”

“No cheating allowed.” Callum laughed and they sat and ate.

Half an hour later Lachlan leaned back in his chair. “I got really lucky meeting up with you. Not everyone has a best friend who can cook as well as you do.”

“Except that you’re more likely to starve when I’m really busy and there’s an animal rights campaign going on.”

“Yeah, there is that.”

Callum stared at him for a moment and said, “There’s something you haven’t told me. Did anything happen at work today?”

“Damn, you’re perceptive. There was this woman, Phoenix. An entrancing witch with dark eyes and long, dark hair.”

“Yeah. That sounds witch-like. Did she have a long nose as well?”

Lachlan laughed. “No. Her face is beautiful and her nose is perfect. She’s got skin with that faint golden tone that will tan perfectly in summer.”

“Aha. And you stripped her to check her skin color?”

“No, but she wanted me to.”

“What the fuck?”

“She asked me to spank her and when I said no she kissed me. My dick was so hard I thought it might break when I walked away from her.”

“If she’s so beautiful, why didn’t you fuck her?”

“Because I want her, and I want you to see her first. I want both of us to be there when we undress her and fuck her together.”

It was only when he said it aloud that Lachlan realized that was true. It was exactly what he did want.

* * * *

Callum stared at his best friend and his dick did a happy little stretch and wave. Their woman. At last. “Our woman? Are you sure? Tell me all about her.”

“I don’t know much more about her except that she’s smart and funny and talks a lot. She works for an erotic romance publisher. That’s why she was visiting the club today. They’re looking for places to take people on a tour when they hold their next convention.”

“How are we going to find her again, though? Which publisher does she work for? Did you get their phone number? Or better yet, her number?”

“None of the above. I was working, remember? There are strict rules about what I can and can’t do. But she’ll be back. She wants to taste BDSM so bad I could smell it. I left her with Juliana at reception. I bet you ten dollars she’ll have made a booking with Dom Lachlan.”

“I won’t take that bet. If you’re so sure you’ll put ten dollars on it, likely you’re right. Let’s go and run.”

Callum dumped the dirty dishes on the sink, and walked out through the mudroom and into the barn. The barn did have a door which could be locked but they almost never closed it. This barn was the perfect place for them to change into their wolf form.

That was the one thing he’d really missed when he left his birth pack to come to the city. The lack of safe places to run. Sure, he could go jogging on the athletics track at the high school, or he could exercise at any one of a dozen different gyms. But it wasn’t the same as running in wolf form. Nothing was as freeing, as fulfilling, as being in his fur, on all four feet, with his greatly enhanced senses of sight, sound, and smell.

Finding this farm had been a real joy to them both. Because it was rundown, the price had been affordable, although they’d be paying off a mortgage for a hell of a long time yet. Each year they
borrowed
a bull from a farmer who lived a couple of miles away. When the calves were born, he got to choose two as his payment, and they sold a few of their oldest cows plus any male calves. They weren’t prize cattle so they didn’t bring in a lot of money, but it stopped their herd from getting either too old, or too big. At the same time it maintained the fiction that they were a
real
farm with some animals on it.

The same with their fruit trees. They picked the apples and peaches, canned some for themselves, and sold the rest at a farmer’s market. As with the cattle, their fruit didn’t bring a high price, but it was the perfect camouflage for their shape-shifter side. All the locals thought they were a couple of town dwellers playing at farming. In a way they were. And having the neighbors treat them as amateurs was a hell of a lot better than having them gunning for them as evil werewolves and shape-shifting nonhuman devils.

Lachlan opened a long drawer under the workbench at the rear of the barn. Both men undressed, placing their clothing inside it, and then Callum closed the drawer. If someone did come to visit with them while they were out running, there was no need to advertise their absence with a pile of clothing dumped on the bench in plain view. Not that anyone ever had visited them unexpectedly but it could happen and they had to remember that.

Callum stretched to his full height, raising his arms high in the air and standing on the balls of his feet. Once his body was fully extended, he held the position for a few seconds, before relaxing again. He became aware of the cooler evening air on his naked skin. It was time to shift. Callum thought, wolf, and then he was in his fur and no longer cold.

Lachlan, now a big black wolf standing beside him, swished his tail and left the barn. Callum’s fur appeared black at night, but was actually a very dark brown, like his hair. Most wolves’ fur color matched their hair color, although that wasn’t invariably true.

Wanting to play, Callum pushed past Lachlan, deliberately knocking into his hips as he ran toward the beginning of their exercise track. This close to the house, it was simply a narrow foot track in the grass, and it led to a very low hill that gave a bit of an outlook over their property. Their five acres was very nearly a rectangle, with an empty farm immediately behind them, and farmers either side of them. Neither of their closest neighbors could see this hill from their property, so Callum felt safe running up it and exposing himself in his wolf form.

The abandoned property was the subject of a disputed will which had been dragging through the courts for years, with no sign of immediate settlement. Once the will was settled they might have to avoid this part of their land until they could plant some trees to shelter them from their neighbors’ eyes. Right now the neighboring property was enclosed from the road it faced with a high barbed wire security fence liberally coated with signs threatening trouble for anyone who entered the land. It had been enough to keep local kids and shooters out, which was all Callum really cared about.

He stared out over his land. His land. It was an amazing feeling to know this soil, this grass, these trees, were his. Well, his and Lachlan’s. They’d grown up on a large farm with their pack, and land was special to them both. He hadn’t really understood just how much he’d missed the link to his roots until he and Lachlan had bought this farm.

And maybe soon there’d be a woman to share with them and at last they’d be a family. He longed for their woman. Far more shape-shifter males were born than females. The Supreme Alpha of North America had established a werewolf genealogy project which was trying to solve the dilemma of why so few girls were born. All they’d learned so far was that when wolves mated humans the ratio returned to about fifty percent males, fifty percent females, so the Alpha permitted inter-species marriages. He also encouraged several males to share a woman since female wolves were scarce and finding a human woman willing to mate a shape-shifter wasn’t particularly easy to accomplish either.

If this Phoenix was their woman, all Callum’s hopes and dreams would come true. But just because she thought Lachlan was sexy and was interested in BDSM wasn’t really all that much to make a decision on. Maybe she didn’t want a ménage. Maybe she hated shape-shifters. Maybe Lachlan had imagined her interest. Callum really needed to remain grounded at this stage. But he couldn’t help a little bubble of hope and happiness bouncing around inside him.

Just then the big black wolf crashed into him, knocking him flat onto his belly. That’s right. They were here to exercise, not to meditate on the unknowable possibilities of the future. He sprang to his feet, and raced down the side of the hill at full speed. Callum skidded around a tree and hid under a bush with branches right to the ground. Of course, it was impossible for them to hide from each other. They knew each other’s scents and habits too well. But it was fun to play and relax in their shifted forms.

He felt the whisper of air that told him Lachlan was about to pounce and managed to escape this time, running full speed for their track. Lachlan was bigger and stronger than him, that extra inch in his legs helping him overtake Callum easily and take the lead.

For the next half hour they ran around their workout track, jumping over small shrubs and bushes and the logs they’d deliberately placed on the track to give them a challenge. First Lachlan led, then Callum, each of them cutting off corners and sprinting through the grass to take the lead in turn. By the time they returned to the barn he was tired yet relaxed and refreshed from the exercise. They’d covered a lot of territory in their run, and there was no sign anyone had been on the land except them and the cattle, which pleased him greatly.

Being nonhuman was both a joy and a worry. So many people believed stupid B-grade movies that made werewolves out to be bad guys. People became a werewolf at conception, when they inherited the gene from their parents, just as they inherited genes for curly hair and long toes and eye color. No matter how many times a werewolf bit someone, even on a full moon, they would never turn furry.

Yet the fear against shape-shifters was very real so a smart werewolf kept his status secret, sharing it only with other shifters he trusted and a few, a very few, sympathetic and understanding humans.

I hope Phoenix is one of them. Lachlan obviously wants her so I hope she likes wolves.

* * * *

When Phoenix was left in the foyer of The Dom’s Dungeon, she turned to the redheaded woman on the desk and said, “He wouldn’t tell me, but he’s a Dom isn’t he?”

“Why do you want to know?”

Dammit, why did people always answer a question with a question? That was one of her own techniques for finding out information. Damn the redhead for using it against her.

“I want to book a session with a Dom and I like the look of him. He seems to me to be the kind of Dom I’d like to meet.”

“Have you ever been with a Dom before? I didn’t recognize you when you arrived although I know you’re a friend of Ryia’s.”

“Ryia and I met at the ‘New Directions in the Adult Industry’ convention. That’s when Asher and Elijah told me about the club. I’ve never been with a Dom before. I’d never even been to a dungeon until today. But it’s very intriguing and I want to come back.”

“I can send through a request but the decision is the Dom’s. Before your appointment, though, you need to fill in one of our questionnaires and sign the Code of Conduct. What’s your e-mail address and I’ll send the paperwork to you now.”

Phoenix gave her e-mail address and arranged a booking for Friday evening. It seemed a long time away from now, but she really did need to concentrate on her job and doing boring things like laundry and shopping for the next few days after being away at a convention for three days.

Friday had snuck up on her so fast her bed was covered with discarded lingerie by the time she’d decided what to wear to the BDSM club.

All the way to the dungeon she pictured herself with the sexy security guard. It was only after she parked her car in the basement parking lot and pressed the button for the elevator that she remembered there’d been no promise he would be her Dom.

Well fuck. He has to be. He’s the one I want. I’ve never met a man I’ve lusted after so much the first time I ever saw him. Well, except maybe Johnny Depp in that first
Pirates of the Caribbean
movie. But no one who’s real. And that was like, ten or eleven years ago when I was only a teenager anyway.

When Phoenix reached the foyer of The Dom’s Dungeon, she walked straight over to the help desk, recognizing the redheaded woman from her previous visit. “Hi there, I’m back. I’m Phoenix Moore. I have a booking. Were you able to make it with that yummy security guard?”

“Hi, Phoenix. You’ll be with Dom Lachlan in Dungeon Two. Here’s your pass for tonight. If you go through to the Stage Lounge and wait there, your Dom will collect you at the right time and take you down to the dungeon. Please remember that if you choose to have more than two standard drinks you won’t be permitted to play tonight.”