"One more hand?" Sam suggested, running a hand around the waistband of his boxers, as if he were itching to get rid of them. Her nipples tightened at the sight, and she felt the curious urge to feel both men pressed against her.
Her fox hormones were going wild with two seductive men at hand. Instead of picking between them or leaning one way or another…she wanted both. Both hot, nearly naked bodies pressed against her own. Sandwiching her between them. Both mouths and four hands roaming over her needy body. A shiver rushed through her.
"One last hand," she agreed.
"Winner take all," Jeremiah said in a low voice, and that sent a bolt of heat through her. What was there to take? Other than their bodies. A visual of her pinned between them, one feeding his cock into her mouth as the other rammed her from behind – rolled through her mind like a hurricane.
The three of them stood around her small dining room table, watching with strangely tense faces as Sam slowly dealt three more hands, and Miko turned her hand over. Three aces. He’d obviously given her the winning hand this round. She laid the cards out on the table and glanced over at Sam. "So, how many rounds were really dealt?"
His mouth lifted at the corners and he gave a little shrug. "Were we not supposed to cheat?"
She didn’t know whether to be annoyed or amused. "So how am I supposed to know if this was just an excuse to see me naked?"
"Are you going to tell me you’re not even slightly interested in seeing my cock?" He gestured at Jeremiah. "Or his?"
She didn’t like how Sam was trying to take control of the situation. Or rather, she liked it, but she knew that if she wanted to keep them in control, she needed to take charge once more. So she slid over to Jeremiah and cupped his straining cock. "I have a feeling that if I wanted to see this, we wouldn’t have to play games. All I need to do is ask."
Jeremiah brushed his fingers along her jaw, a look of longing on his face.
"However," she said softly, "that won’t be tonight. I want to be the one to call the shots. Understand? My body, my house, my rules."
With that, she left the room.
The next day, she avoided the two men. Partly because she wanted them to understand that she had the upper hand in their relationship, and partly because she needed to get her head back in her work. She had a deadline, and she was going to miss it if she didn’t pay attention and start producing some pages. So she locked herself in her studio and worked. About midday, there was a knock at the door, and she answered it, only to see a sandwich and soda had been left for her. The deliverer was nowhere in sight.
It was nice to have someone fixing her lunch. The men seemed to respect her boundaries. And she could have sworn that a short while later, she heard the vacuum running.
After she’d gotten her daily allotment of panels drawn (and then some, she’d been on an artistic tear), she emerged from her study.
Her house had been cleaned, top to bottom. Floors swept, rugs vacuumed, and her shelves gleamed as if they’d been dusted. Even the burned out lightbulbs on her track lighting had been replaced. Miko knew she was a pretty terrible housekeeper – when the urge to draw came upon her, she tended to ignore everything else, and since it was just her in the house, it didn’t matter if a few lightbulbs went unchanged or an inch of dust piled up. But seeing that someone else had cleaned her house for her? That was…nice.
She could get used to having the guys around. Putter around the house, fix her leaky faucets…satisfy her needs. Ugh. Surely she wasn’t thinking relationship? Or worse, relationships. They’d barely even gotten past the flirting.
Still, she found she couldn’t shake the thought.
A head poked out of her kitchen. Sam looked over, grinning, and waved a spatula. "Hey, dinner’s almost ready. How do you like your steak?”
"Rare," she replied automatically. "I’m a fox, remember?" She liked a fresh kill as much as any other were-creature.
"Oh, I remember." He winked at her and again the spatula waved. "Everything about you is tattooed into my brain."
"Only your brain?"
“For now.” He grinned, the look so boyish and appealing that it was hard to resist.
She found herself smiling back. "Where’s Jere?"
"Upstairs. Working."
She nodded, realizing that she didn’t know what either one of them did for a living, other than working as hired muscle for other shifters. She gestured at the stairs. "I’ll tell him that dinner’s ready."
Sam nodded and disappeared back into the kitchen, and she could have sworn she heard whistling.
It was odd. Her kind either avoided men or embraced a promiscuous lifestyle. Her mother had done the latter – lover after lover entering and leaving the house during Miko’s childhood. The fox hormones made it a lifestyle choice that few could resist.
Miko had resisted, though. After seeing her mother’s relationships dissolve over and over again and her mother’s liveliness turn to bitter unhappiness, Miko had resolved to have better for herself. Her father had been a nice blond country boy from Montana, and he’d been unused to her mother’s were-fox ways, or her Japanese customs. They’d broken apart when Miko was very small, and she rarely ever saw him. After that, Yui went through lover after lover, discarding them like used tissue. Every break-up was filled with drama, and it taught Miko a valuable lesson: a simple, monogamous relationship wasn’t right for a were-fox.
So she avoided them like the plague. Miko’d had the occasional lover, but when she grew restless, she knew the cause. One man wasn’t enough to suit a were-fox’s needs, and so she’d quietly break off the relationship. Her job offered her a lot of flexibility; she could live in the countryside by herself. Didn’t need to be around others, male or female. She didn’t need anyone, she didn’t depend on anyone, and without the opposite sex around, she didn’t feel the need to be promiscuous. It was lovely and freeing. It was…kind of lonely, too, if she admitted it to herself. But she usually didn’t.
Miko knocked on Jeremiah’s door and then entered a moment later, hoping to catch him off guard. He glanced up from the computer screen and gave her the slow, thoughtful smile that she’d learned to associate with him. "Miko," he said in greeting. "I hope you don’t mind if we cleaned up a little. It’s the least we could do since we’re staying in your house."
She shrugged, moving over to his side and peering at his laptop screen. "I don’t have much of a choice since my mother sent you to stay with me."
He looked pained at her words. "I hope we’re not too much bother."
Oh, you bother me, she thought. On a whole new level. That’s the problem. "What are you working on?"
He scratched the back of his head, ruffling his thick brown hair. "Just retrieving some files off a server." He gave her a quick look. "I do network security when I’m not tied up in…other things.”
"And Sam?"
"Sam’s a plumber."
She’d have thought they’d have matching jobs to go with everything else they did. "A plumber and a computer geek? What makes the two of you team up?"
He shrugged. "Sam was my roommate in college. He dropped out, I didn’t, but we remained friends. We’re still roommates. We work well together, and he’s a good wing-man on the X-box."
How very…dorky. Still, at least they were normal. She could live with that. "I don’t have an X-box."
His shoulders lifted in a shrug. "We weren’t staying here long, remember? Just until the fox hunters go away."
"Right," she agreed, but it sounded hollow. Already she wasn’t looking forward to their leaving. How sad was that? "Dinner’s ready," she said, and left the room.
The steaks were terrific. For some reason, that depressed her. Better yet, it made her antsy. She needed a good shift and run through the wilderness. But she couldn’t, because she was trapped here. Stuck with two handsome, sexy men that she knew were terrible for her easy, quiet life but she wanted them anyhow.