Leah's Triplet Mates [The Cat Burglars 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read online

  Rounding a corner, he saw her getting into a car outside a boarded-up minimart. Immediately, he memorized the license plate as he moved behind some bushes and padded closer to her on his four silent paws. “Dark green Ford, maybe a 2005 or 2006 model,” he told himself. With that information plus the license plate, they could find her. She’d smashed up his car and fled the scene. He had a legal reason to demand her address, although he wouldn’t go to the authorities if he could locate her himself.

  She drove past him, and he raced after her, cutting across the road and running through gardens to take a more direct line to the intersection. She turned left, and he was right behind her. He had to admire the calm way she drove. Her movements were self-assured, with no jerky stops or starts. Considering she’d been tied up and left in the trunk of a car, he was surprised she wasn’t lying on the ground in a fetal position having hysterics. Instead, she was making a determined getaway. Maybe she was a professional cat burglar after all. Not like his panther clan. They called themselves The Cat Burglars, but it was as much a pun on their species as a declaration of what they did.

  Through the surface of the ground, he sensed a vehicle coming behind him. It was the first car that’d passed him since he and his brothers had left Lutterworth’s house. Instantly, he froze under a shrub, hoping his black fur would blend into the surrounding darkness.

  The car, which was running with no lights, drifted to a stop beside him, and he heaved a sigh of relief when he recognized it as his car. Although driving at night without lights was just as likely to get them into trouble as driving with headlamps and no taillights. He supposed his brothers were hoping no one would see them until it was too late to look for the license plate. The back door of his car opened, and he ran over to it and jumped in.

  Instantly, it took off, and he realized half the backseat was still out of position. That made it tricky to lie down below window level as he transformed back to a human. But after he’d done that, it was very easy to reach into the trunk and grab his clothing and shoes.

  Hastily, he pulled his briefs and jeans on and then replaced the backseat so he could sit properly to finish getting dressed.

  Bram was driving cautiously, staying well behind the woman, only moving faster after she’d turned a corner and was out of sight.

  “Likely she won’t know we’re here at all. If she looks in her rearview mirror, she mightn’t even see us at this distance,” said Saxon.

  “Well, we haven’t frightened her at any rate. She’s not taking evasive action,” said Bram.

  “I agree she probably doesn’t know we’re behind her, but I also don’t think she’s the kind of person who scares easily. She wasn’t huddled in the trunk crying, remember? She’d fucking smashed her way out of my car,” said Hardy, remembering again that he was going to have a costly repair bill ahead of him.

  “We need to catch her again and interrogate her properly. We need to know why she was at Lutterworth’s house. When she stops her car, Bram, you and Hardy capture her and put her in her own trunk, then we’ll drive both cars back to the warehouse and beat the facts out of her.”

  “Are your balls still hurting, Saxon?” teased Hardy.

  “Not as much as your credit card will be hurting at the smash repairers tomorrow.”

  Fuck! He was right.

  * * * *

  Saxon pulled the almost defrosted packet of corn out of his jeans and waggled his dick and nuts. The pain was virtually gone now, although his balls felt a little bit swollen. “Why did you get frozen corn? Peas would have cupped the shape of my equipment better,” he grumbled.

  “They were two dollars. I was in and out of the minimart in no time at all because I didn’t have to wait for change or a receipt. Likely they had peas and beans and all sorts of other vegetables, but I didn’t have time to go shopping right then,” said Hardy.

  Saxon just grunted. Hardy would have problems of his own explaining what had happened to the car. No collision specialist was going to think two disemboweled taillights had happened by accident.

  Bram turned yet another corner and drifted into the side of the road. The green Ford had turned into the parking lot of a church. “What the fuck now?” he asked.

  The car stopped in the corner of the lot, and the woman jumped out, snatching up the mesh bag and opening the trunk. She pulled out an armload of what seemed to be clothing and walked around toward the back of the building.

  “Either she’s about to drop off some clothing for their thrift store or—”

  Saxon wrenched open the car door and cut across Hardy. “Don’t be stupid. She’s seen us. This is a church. She’s going to claim sanctuary and escape us. Get her now!”

  He landed on the balls of his feet and sprinted flat-out after her, pouring all his power into his legs to reach her before she entered the building. He wasn’t one hundred percent sure about the laws of sanctuary, but he had an idea she’d be protected from them anywhere inside the church building, so they had to prevent her from opening a door.

  Fortunately, she was walking around the back. Saxon was grateful it was so late the front doors were shut and presumably locked. If this had been in the afternoon, instead of the early hours of the morning, likely she’d be inside now, and they’d be shit out of luck.

  He leaped for her, snatching her body against his and wrapping one leg around both of hers so she couldn’t knee him in the nuts again. He absolutely wasn’t going to suffer the pain and ignominy of that kind of attack ever again.

  She wiggled and fought as they immediately fell to the ground, both of them off balance, and Saxon was tempted to let her land face-first. But he was brought up better than that and took the fall himself on his back, protecting her.

  Bram was right there with them, snatching a length of fabric from the woman’s hands and wrapping it tightly over her mouth and face.

  A scarf he supposed. Meanwhile Hardy arrived with the ropes and tied her hands, and her feet as well this time.

  Her brown eyes were huge and round, flashing fire at him, and she was chomping on the scarf trying to free her mouth. Saxon picked up some other clothing that had been dropped in the fight. It was a coat. He wrapped it over her head and shoulders, blocking her vision and further muffling any noise she might make. He picked her up in his arms. Bram grabbed the rest of the things off the ground, and Hardy was already heading back to his car.

  Bram felt in her jeans pockets, causing her to wiggle and kick wildly, but he found the keys to her car and unlocked the trunk. Saxon tipped her inside, and Bram dropped her possessions in on top of her and then climbed into the driver’s seat while Saxon locked the trunk. Hardy returned to his own car, and Saxon sat in the Ford with Bram.

  “Back to the warehouse. We’ll take her straight to the dungeon and have a little chat with her.”

  “I like the way you think. I can’t wait to see her naked and spread out for me. Damn I want to fuck her.”

  Saxon stared at Bram. “Naked? Fuck her? Are you insane? We need to interrogate her about why she robbed Lutterworth. This is business not pleasure.”

  Bram shook his head as he maneuvered the Ford out of the parking lot and back onto the road.

  “No, it’s you who isn’t thinking clearly. We’re thirty-five years old. By now we should be mated with a couple of cubs. Instead,, we’re running around the countryside playing cops and robbers trying to sort out panther business. We don’t have a home of our own, we don’t have a woman of our own, and none of has a real job.”

  “So what’s your point?” Saxon knew Bram had one. Bram always had a point. It was just that he was taking way too long to get to it.

  Bram caught the end of the green light and turned onto the freeway accelerating hard. “Jeez, I hope no police are out here tonight, or Hardy’s gonna lose that car.”

  “Your point?” Saxon reminded him, feeling nervous and edgy. They had a woman tied up in the trunk, and that wouldn’t go down well if the police stopped them either. Not to
mention they were driving a car they’d effectively stolen.

  “A beautiful, sexy woman has fallen into our arms. This chick isn’t some airhead type who can’t think past which color nail polish to use. She was burgling a house for fuck’s sake. Then she escaped from the trunk of a car. This is a woman with strength and smarts who’d make us a perfect mate.”

  Saxon opened his mouth to tear Bram’s argument to shreds, but his brother was correct. Absolutely correct. This woman was fit, strong, and smart. She hadn’t fallen to pieces in a crisis. In that way she was perfect mate material. There was just one problem. “What makes you think she’d consider mating triplet panther shape-shifters? Triplet panther shape-shifters, as you just pointed out, who have no legal means of supporting themselves.”

  “Yeah. There is that. So let’s fuck her first, give her a passel of orgasms, and then mention the bit about being panthers and unemployed.”

  Bram was talking bullshit of course. But Saxon’s dick stretched and hardened at the thought of fucking the woman he’d held in his arms so very briefly.

  * * * *

  As soon as she’d been thrown in the trunk of her own car, Leah had started wiggling and pushing to get the coat off her face. She’d already used her teeth to pull the scarf mostly out of her mouth. The men hadn’t tied the scarf or coat on her, but they had knotted a rope around her feet this time, as well as her hands, damn them.

  With the clothing off her head, Leah found she could hear what the two men were saying. They hadn’t turned the radio on, and they made no attempt to talk quietly. They must have forgotten she was right here. She stuck her head almost under the backseat and listened to them.

  When one of them mentioned seeing her naked, she opened her mouth to scream at him and then shut it with a snap. By staying silent she could learn far more than she’d ever find out if they knew she was listening to them.

  The word mate confused her. Wasn’t that a word the British used to mean friend? Why would they want her to be their friend? To work in their crime ring with them maybe?

  And then they said they were shape-shifting panthers. Leah rolled onto her back and stared at the lid of the trunk not far above her head. She ignored the discomfort of her body weight resting on her bound wrists and tried hard to think.

  Her parents had known some shape-shifters a long time ago. When she and her sisters were young children. They’d played with the children of the shape-shifters though, she was certain. Leah closed her eyes and remembered. Not triplets, but twins. Twin boys the same age as her youngest sister, Maia, three years younger than her. Leah would have been maybe eight at the time. Nine perhaps. Where were they living then?

  For years Leah’s father had been an itinerant Baptist preacher moving around the United States wherever he was called to go and work. Her mother had cared for the three girls full-time, packing up their household and moving with monotonous regularity from parsonage to parsonage, and state to state, wherever the Reverend John-Paul Crawford had been sent. Sometimes they’d lived in luxurious manses or vicarages. One, she remembered fondly, had an entire attic playroom filled with children’s toys. Once they’d stayed in a trailer park for a year using public washrooms because their trailer didn’t have a bathroom.

  When she was eight or nine, they’d been in Texas, she remembered, and her father had been working among a community of shape-shifters. Not that anyone had actually said that. But where they lived the children all played together, and the twin boys had turned into big black cats in front of them many times. So had some of the other children. All of which meant that yes, she knew about shape-shifters. And now three panthers had captured her. Triplet panthers, one of whom wanted to fuck her.

  A shard of lust raced through Leah. Fucking would be better than murder. Certainly the men who’d held her had been big and strong, and the one who’d been talking had promised orgasms…

  Leah shook her body harshly. I’m insane. I don’t know them. They’re criminals. I’m not so desperate for sex that I’ll let them fuck me when we haven’t even met properly.

  But her libido wasn’t listening to her brain. Their itinerant lifestyle, and, more recently, their increased poverty, had meant there was no time for fun, dates, boyfriends, or sex. She and her sisters spent most of their time helping in the neighborhood, running a shelter for women and children fleeing from domestic violence, organizing a daily food kitchen for the hungry, and trying in vain to prevent their father from giving away every cent he earned to people more needy than him.

  Some days the only food in the parsonage was the meals they’d held back from the poor so they could eat themselves. Her middle sister, Zoe, had gotten a job a year ago in the hope of bringing an added income into the family, but it hadn’t worked out. Leah and Maia had soon been completely exhausted trying to run the church programs by themselves. So, reluctantly, Zoe had quit her job and rejoined them.

  Leah’d spent years wishing her father would stop giving all their possessions and money to the poor. But she knew now that was who he was. It was an innate part of his character. And besides, it was his open, free, unendingly generous giving that encouraged people who could afford to contribute goods and food to the ministry to give as well.

  Hastily Leah dragged her mind back to her situation. Her arms were aching so she wiggled and rocked until she could turn onto her side and stop leaning on them.

  I need to concentrate on getting free again. But kicking out the taillights hadn’t really helped her, and this was her car, so moving the backseat wasn’t going to be possible either. It wasn’t that kind of car, dammit.

  The car stopped, and the engine was switched off. Leah tried to position her body so she could jump out of the trunk when the lid was opened, but she couldn’t get her legs underneath her properly. All that would happen was that she’d likely fall flat on her face.

  But she would escape sooner or later. That was a given. It just wasn’t going to be quite now.

  Even if she had managed to launch herself from the trunk of the car, she wouldn’t have gotten anywhere. Three large men surrounded it as the lid was raised very slowly. One of them wrapped the coat over her head again, and another one picked her up, holding her firmly against his rock-hard chest. Once again, her libido raised its head in anticipation. These three captors were taut and toned. There was no denying it, but also they were criminals, dammit. Shape-shifting panther criminals.

  And if I said that out aloud, I’d be the one taken away for a mental health assessment, not them.

  They’d grabbed her so fast she hadn’t even been able to see where they were. They’d accelerated, which indicated they’d traveled on a freeway, but she had been too busy eavesdropping and then thinking to have any idea of how long they’d been driving. Not an enormously long time though, she thought. Not an hour. But it might have been fifteen minutes or it might have been fifty, so that was no help to work out where she was.

  She heard boots marching on concrete and then the distinct sound of her car engine. Where are they taking my car? That’s the only car we have. Zoe and Maia will need to use it tomorrow.

  Suddenly Leah realized she had bigger issues than having been kidnapped. Her sisters needed her help, her car, and the stamp albums. Unless they could sell those stamps to a trustworthy collector, her family wouldn’t be able to pay the utilities bills next month. And without the car they couldn’t collect the food donations and feed the homeless people who relied on them. She was going to have to convince these men to let her go with her car and her father’s stamp albums. And if that meant fucking them, she’d do it.

  Actually fucking them would likely be a whole lot easier than retrieving the stamps and the car.

  Chapter Three

  Bram led the way into the dungeon. Hardy was parking his car in the basement, and then he’d put the woman’s car there as well. The panthers’ warehouse home occupied an entire block, and was hidden behind a very high wire security fence and protected with a multitude of high t
ech devices, but anyone could look through the wire at the parking lot, so the basement was the safest place for both vehicles right now.

  Saxon carried the woman into the dungeon, and Bram opened the equipment drawer, taking out a ball gag and a blindfold hood. Saxon nodded. Bram couldn’t wait to get his hands on her and strip her naked. Then he’d chain her up and feast his eyes on her body. He knew she’d be beautiful. The glimpses he’d had of her face, and just watching her walk and move so confidently and gracefully, told him she was going to be everything he needed to set his dick alight with need.

  He just hoped he could convince Hardy and Saxon of that. All his instincts told him she was their mate, a smart, beautiful woman who’d fallen right into their arms. How could she not be everything they desired?

  Saxon lifted the coat off the woman’s head, and instantly, Bram pushed the ball gag into her mouth, tightened the straps at the back of her head, and dropped the blindfold hood over her head. The woman’s body was quivering, and it was clear she wanted to speak to them, but Bram was certain it wasn’t fear driving her. It was anger. The brief glimpse he’d gotten of her eyes had shown him they were flashing with anger, not full of tears or fear. He grinned at Saxon. That was amazing. It proved how strong and feisty she was. Perfect for them.

  Bram kneeled down and untied her feet, carefully keeping his balls away from any possible kicking she might do. And that was her first reaction as he’d expected. Although after he’d unzipped her jeans her thrashing around actually helped him, strip them off her legs. He removed her skintight black boots and plain black socks. He left her little panties on, although he would have much preferred to take them off as well. He did take the time to smooth his palm over her long, slender legs, loving the soft touch of her skin. Cautiously he trailed her fingers over to the softer, more sensitive inner skin of her thighs, stroking her there delicately.