The Lion's Shared Bride Read online

  The sight of her, neck-deep in the hot water, sent a hot jolt of desire through Aedan’s body as he walked through the open door. Aedan suppressed the groan that pushed up from somewhere in the pit of his stomach and strode across the tile floor, his gaze trailing over Nina’s body. The scent of her filled the small room, adding to the instinctive arousal he was starting to feel coursing through him. “As requested,” Aedan said, bowing slightly towards her. He sank down to sit on the floor next to the bathtub facing her and picked up Nina’s empty glass.

  “You know, it may be the multiple orgasms and the wine speaking, but this is starting to look like a pretty sweet gig.”

  Aedan grinned, pouring wine into the glass and setting it carefully within easy reach. “Two men at your beck and call? I should hope that would make your outlook rosy.” He watched as Nina sat up in the tub, drinking in the sight of her breasts floating just above the water, her damp hair hanging around her face, the flush in her cheeks from the heat. “I think we should talk a little more serious-like.” Nina brought the glass of wine to her lips and sipped, and Aedan clenched one of his hands into a fist. God if I could have met her any other way… I wouldn’t have to share her with Soren. But I didn’t and I do.

  “Go ahead,” Nina said, leaning back again. Aedan licked his lips and glanced at the still-open bottle of wine in his hand. He drank down a heavy slug of the cold, tart white to steady himself.

  “I think you need to understand how things work in the group that Soren and I belong to,” Aedan said, setting the bottle down.

  “It would be nice to know what I’m getting myself into,” Nina said, nodding slightly in agreement. Aedan felt himself smiling. I could devour you right now, love. I could bury my face between your legs and never want to come up for air. He took another gulp of wine.

  “First of all, you can be your own person. You’d be our mate, and yeah, both of us would have certain expectations but if you want to work, you can work. If you want to lounge around the house all day eating sweets, you could do that too, and anything in-between.” Nina raised an eyebrow and the look in her eyes made Aedan wish the bathtub was just a little bit bigger. We should get Soren to put in a hot tub out back. “If you decided to be our mate, both Soren and I would expect you to have at least one child with each of us.” Nina sat up, setting her wine glass down and staring at him.

  “Wait—this… you didn’t mention that before.” Aedan sat up and reached out, pushing Nina gently back into her reclining position in the tub.

  “I’m not saying we’d expect you to do it immediately. But we both need kids. Sort of a feature of the group we belong to.” Aedan paused. “Of course, if you can’t carry, that’s neither here nor there.” Nina blushed from the roots of her hair down to her chest, and Aedan watched in a mixture of amusement and concern as she looked down into the water.

  “I… I am almost definitely fertile.” Aedan made a mental note to ask her more about that later. But for the moment, he decided it would probably be better to leave the subject alone.

  “Another thing: in private, you can run Soren and me around as much as you like, but as a member of the group we belong to, you would have to at least pretend to have some respect and deference for us—Soren in particular, since he’s the leader.” Nina looked up and Aedan found himself smiling once more at the defiant look in her eyes.

  “Just what kind of group is it?” she crossed her arms over her chest, both eyebrows raised, and Aedan once more felt the Alpha urge to take her then and there.

  “There’s a certain hierarchy, that’s all. Women are respected in our group, but you would be coming in at the bottom, just below me.”

  “This is sounding decidedly less appealing now,” Nina said, reaching out and picking up her glass of wine again.

  “Ah, but remember: in private we will be your slaves if that’s the way you want it.” Though I doubt, little love, that you really want it that way. Aedan thought of the way she had reacted to them, the way her pulse had quickened when she had been trapped in his arms, the way she had melted into an eager, almost wanton kind of abandon when Soren and he had brought her to bed. “By the way, you’re bunking with me tonight.”

  Nina’s eyes flashed. “What if I want to sleep alone?”

  Aedan shrugged. “Personally, I don’t think you want to. But if you insist, you can sleep in my bed and I’ll sleep on the floor. But I do think I should remind you that you agreed to give this trial run a fair shake. If you agree to be our mate, you will be sharing a bed with Soren and with me most nights.” Aedan scented the air, taking in the sweet-spicy depths of Nina’s pheromones. He knew, deep down, that Nina was more than a little attuned to him already. He could smell the lingering arousal she was feeling. Time to show her what she’s getting with this arrangement.

  Aedan stood quickly, setting down the bottle of wine and reaching for the towel Soren had brought into the bathroom for their guest. Nina started as he leaned over the bathtub. “Come on, love. I won’t hurt you, but it’s late and you’re tired. And more than a little tipsy.” Nina crossed her arms over her chest and scowled up at him.

  “You just finished telling me that in private I could do just as I pleased and order you and Soren around, and now you’re making demands.”

  Aedan grinned down at her. “You haven’t agreed to be our mate yet, first off. Secondly, I reserve the right to figure out what you really want, despite what your pretty mouth says.” Aedan reached out in a movement too quick for Nina to see and pulled her quickly out of the water, lifting her carefully over the ledge and depositing her on the bath mat inches away from him. He wrapped the towel around her tightly and brought her face up to his, kissing her hungrily.

  In an instant, Nina’s demeanor changed, and Aedan fought back the urge to laugh at her sudden compliance as he plunged his tongue past her lips. “I know you don’t really want two grown men to be your slaves, little love,” Aedan murmured, barely breaking the kiss. “You want your needs filled, not your whims catered to.” He lifted her into his arms, settling her weight against him and chuckling as Nina instinctively wrapped her legs around his waist to hold onto him. He reached down blindly and grabbed the bottle of wine before carrying both it and her out of the bathroom. Aedan could feel his animal essence simmering underneath his skin, driving his desire to greater heights. Soren would have her in the morning, and have plenty of opportunity to give her even more reasons to trust them both. For now, he was going to speak not to her wary brain but her very incautious body. You can’t fool me, love, Aedan thought.

  He kicked the door to his bedroom open and barely closed it behind them before he brought Nina to his bed once more, covering her body with his. “Tell me exactly what you want, little love,” he said, nipping carefully along the column of her throat. “Mind you don’t lie because I’ll know.” Nina writhed underneath him, moaning softly as Aedan lapped at the sweat that had started to form along her jawline, bringing his lips back to hers.

  “You,” she murmured, her voice breathless. “Right now, I want you.”

  *

  Nina stared up at the ceiling of Soren’s bedroom, her heart gradually slowing down from the rapid pounding of moments before. “Okay,” she said, struggling to catch her breath. “Okay. I am officially calling a break for the next hour.” Next to her, Soren chuckled, and Nina felt the bed shift underneath her as he turned over, his arm moving to coil around her waist.

  “Having trouble thinking clearly?” he asked her, his voice playful as he caressed her. Nina shivered, smiling despite herself, unable to find the energy or the desire to be irritated in the face of the bone-deep pleasure zinging through her veins.

  “You’re doing this on purpose,” she said, turning her head to look at him. “It really isn’t fair. How am I supposed to make an objective decision when either you or Aedan is constantly either getting me off, stuffing me with delicious food, or plying me with wine?” She gave him a half-hearted shove.

  Underneat
h her joke, Nina felt a flicker of very real concern. Everything about the two men who had asked her to let them share her was too good to be true. They didn’t expect her to be some kind of domestic slave, they were happy to let her work or not work as she pleased, they were both incredibly good in bed. In twenty-four hours she had had more sex than she’d enjoyed in the previous three months, at least. Her hips ached, but the pain lingering from repeated penetrations was nothing compared to the tingling pleasure she felt all over, all the time.

  Soren had gotten her out of Aedan’s bed in the middle of the morning, waking her up with a kiss that had briefly disoriented her. Oh god, I am constantly going to wake up not knowing who the hell is kissing me if I agree to this. Nina shook her head at the thought, there were definitely worse problems to have, but she wasn’t sure how exactly she felt about constantly hopping from one man’s arms to the other’s. It had surprised her that Aedan, waking up at the sound of her startled cry, hadn’t seemed even a little bit bothered at the fact that Soren was there, or that he was clearly intent on extricating her from the other man’s company.

  Soren had given her long enough to put on one of Aedan’s tee shirts and her panties from the night before. Nina had been startled again when she smelled the scents of a delicious breakfast the moment she walked out of Aedan’s room. Soren had been up early cooking, making good, at least temporarily, on the assertion from the night before that she wouldn’t be expected to take over all kitchen duties. As she sipped coffee, Nina’s concerns from the night before had come flooding into her mind. There were still a number of points she wanted to have clarified before she decided one way or the other.

  It occurred to her more than once as she ate breakfast with Soren that the very fact that she had had sex with both men, that she had gone to bed so contentedly with Aedan and hadn’t fled the house when Soren had awakened her and stole her away, meant that whatever she tried to tell herself, she was already more inclined to agree to the proposition than to walk away. And that was another thing that she wasn’t sure she liked about the situation.

  Nina had to admit the two men were extremely clever; Aedan had kept out of the way while Soren led her around the backyard and through the house. Where Aedan seemed to be using a mixture of charm and sheer strength to overcome her caution, Soren was obviously interested in making sure that she felt safe and secure, that she knew that the two men would respect her boundaries, and that she could trust them both. If you could roll them up into one guy instead of two, I couldn’t possibly come up with a reason not to do it, she thought.

  The crux of the issue, as it occurred to her in the aftermath of yet another orgasm with Soren, was that Nina couldn’t quite believe that two men could share a woman the way that they proposed without getting in each other’s way, and without jealousy coming into play. “Let’s be real for a moment,” she said, turning completely onto her side in Soren’s bed. “You and Aedan are both really masculine men. In a good way, I mean.”

  Soren chuckled. “Yes, that’s true enough.” Nina reached out, almost unbidden, and found herself brushing a strand of Soren’s short, spiky hair off of his sweat-drenched forehead. She shivered at the memory of him inside of her. They had already had sex twice, and it was only the afternoon. Nina was more than a little alarmed at how good it had felt, every bit as good as it had felt with Aedan, though the two men had slightly different styles when it came to seduction and lovemaking.

  “And neither of you is interested in the other one, right?”

  Soren nodded quickly. “Yeah, no, we’re not bi. It’s not a homophobia thing, we’re just not into guys.” Nina took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

  “So how exactly is this going to work? I mean, love triangles are kind of—well, they’re a trope. It never ends well.”

  Soren shrugged. “We know what we’re getting into. Keep in mind, we knew we were going to do this before you did. We’ve hashed out some rules about it that are just between us.”

  Nina pressed her lips together. The fact that Soren and Aedan had apparently discussed their arrangement between them didn’t exactly surprise her, but some part of her vanity was offended that it seemed to have all been decided before she had even arrived.

  “What if I end up loving one of you more?” She turned over onto her stomach. Her legs felt like the bones inside of them were made of jelly, and her arms were still less than real to her. If nothing else, I will be the most sexually pleased woman on the damn planet.

  Soren shrugged. “That’ll be a shame for whichever of us doesn’t make the grade, but as long as you’re doing your part to keep us both happy, neither one of us can exactly complain about it.” He looked at her for a long moment and Nina saw a flash of something she couldn’t quite identify flickering through his eyes. “I think you’ll be surprised though. Off the top of your head, right now, which one of us do you like better?”

  Nina frowned. The question was impossible. She hadn’t known either of them long enough to form a definitive preference. On top of that, Nina couldn’t actually say that one man or the other had been less trustworthy, or more confidence-inspiring than the other. They were very different—but in some way, Soren and Aedan’s personalities were complementary.

  “You’re both jerks,” she said playfully. “I mean, you trick me into meeting one of you without knowing there’s another one waiting in the wings, you practically keep me captive, and you’re apparently planning on spending the entire weekend making it impossible for me to actually dislike either of you.”

  Soren laughed. “Well, we did warn you that we were going to try and convince you. I don’t remember you giving the stipulation that we had to make you miserable in the process.”

  Nina rolled her eyes. “But it’s not going to be like this if and when I decide to go along with your plan. I mean… you’re not going to spend every waking minute catering to my needs and desires. You both have lives.”

  Soren leaned in and kissed her lightly on the lips. “One of your desires—or, if you’re going to be honest, one of your needs—is probably to have some time to yourself, right? Your own personal space, a little independence? So Aedan and me having lives of our own should be a good thing.”

  Nina groaned in frustration, burying her face against the pillows. “It’s not fair! You can’t be right all the time. It gets on my nerves.” Soren laughed and Nina felt his arms coil around her waist tightly, drawing her body against his. “Hey—hey! I called an hour-long break. You can’t…” her words were silenced by Soren’s lips descending on hers, sealing them against any further comment. Nina tried to break free in a fit of irritation, but Soren was stronger than she could have guessed by his wiry, lean frame. He deepened the kiss, holding her body tightly. She began to relax against him as she realized that he wasn’t making a move to seduce her once more, that he was—at least for the moment—keeping his intentions more or less pure.

  His hold on her loosened and then his arms fell away as they were interrupted by the sound of a knock at the bedroom door. “Soren, I hate to interrupt, but we have a situation going on in the backyard.”

  In an instant, Soren had slipped out from underneath her, and Nina fell onto the bed, startled as she saw the man who a moment before was entirely focused on her slipping into a pair of jeans and then pulling a dress shirt on, buttoning it quickly. He padded across the bedroom floor and pulled the door open so fast that Nina couldn’t follow his movements. She remembered how quickly he had intercepted her the night before, how fast Aedan had been as well.

  “Best you stay here, Nina-love,” Aedan said, his lips curving in a not-quite-smile. “It has to do with the group we belong to, nothing for you to worry about.” The two men were gone from the doorway, and for a moment, Nina lay there, confused and bewildered. The way that Soren had moved so quickly to respond to Aedan’s summons indicated that there was some kind of serious issue going on. The fact that Aedan had told her it was nothing for her to worry about actually increased her
anxiety because whenever anyone had said that to her in the past, it always turned out to be something that would affect her.

  Irritated, curious, and anxious in equal measures, Nina pulled herself up and slipped out of the bed in direct contradiction to Aedan’s suggestion, looking around for something she could put on. Something to do with the group they belong to, huh? Nina pulled the tee shirt she had borrowed from Aedan over her head and stepped into her uncomfortably damp panties. She knew she wasn’t technically in any kind of state to meet anyone, but surely a peek at what was going on in the backyard wouldn’t be a problem; no one needed to see her.

  Nina moved as quietly as possible, stepping through the bedroom door and walking down the hall. She heard Aedan’s voice, though she couldn’t make out what he was saying, and then the higher-pitched tone of Soren’s reply, before she heard the sound of a door closing. Nina continued towards the back door, slipping into the kitchen silently and taking an indirect path to the window there.

  She looked outside, into the backyard, and for a moment, Nina was convinced that she had to be hallucinating. Ranged around the backyard, she saw a group of enormous lions—bigger than any she had seen at the zoo or on TV—standing in obvious challenge. Laid on the grass in front of them, a woman was sprawled, her head turned at an unnatural angle, obviously dead. As her shock deepened, Nina’s gaze sought out Aedan and Soren. She spotted Aedan first, standing off to the side, watching the proceedings as if he was completely unsurprised by the sight of a pride of lions in Soren’s back yard. What the hell is this? Lions? What does this have to do with their group? While questions swirled around in her mind, Nina looked for Soren. She spotted him moving towards the group of lions, absolutely fearless.

  Nina stared in horror and fascination as Soren fell to the ground. The air seemed to shimmer around him, making him indistinct, blurring the lines of his body. Tawny yellow and brown fur began to somehow rise to the surface of Soren’s body as he grew larger, and his short, spiky hair lengthened into a mane. As the transformation completed, Nina realized that she had just watched a man that she had had sex with multiple times turn into a lion and that he was facing a group of lions. Aedan said… fuck. Oh shit. God. Shit. Her knees weakened underneath her. Nina decided abruptly that she couldn’t watch for even a moment longer.