Leah's Triplet Mates [The Cat Burglars 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 7

  “Forget about them for now. Let’s talk about the jewels. First I’m thinking about a thousand-dollar finder’s fee. That fits with our usual prices.”

  “It does, but it was a very easy recover. It didn’t take us long, and the house was easy to get into. I bet Lutterworth has other people’s stuff as well. He had that stamp album and the jewels. He seems to be a complete conman. If only we knew it, I’m sure there would have been other things we could have retrieved as well and made even more money,” said Hardy.

  “I’d have paid the owners of the jewels a thousand dollars because we found Leah there. Our mate. Our one perfect woman.”

  Saxon liked Leah a lot and had been very much drawn into her life and her family, but he wasn’t ready to claim her as their mate yet.

  “Calling her our mate is a big deal. We need to be very sure before we do that. There’s no such thing as divorce, and we can’t afford to get it wrong.”

  “I know that. But no one has ever aroused me the way she does. Admit it, Saxon. There’s not one woman any of us has ever met who appeals to us as much as Leah does.”

  Bram was right. Just thinking about her made his dick leap with hope that they’d be able to see her again soon. Although six a.m. wasn’t really the kind of time he had in mind, and a church wasn’t the place either. The dungeon or the bedroom would be better.

  “We need to find a way to accompany her to sell the stamp albums. At least that’ll get her alone with us for a few hours.”

  “You’re forgetting that it’s Maia who’s done all the work with that. Maia will be with her, too.”

  Damn!

  Chapter Five

  Diego Reed, the youngest of the Reed triplets, had always been Bram’s best friend, so he was naturally the one Bram turned to when they needed a ride home.

  “Fuck, Hardy. I saw your car in the basement parking lot at the warehouse. What happened to it?” Diego asked as he pulled up.

  “Shut up.”

  Bram tried hard not to laugh at Hardy’s response, but the entire pack was going to find out about Leah sooner or later, so they might as well tell Diego now.

  “We’ve found her mate, and she’s feisty.”

  “Ah, man, she has to consent. Freely consent. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Of course we know that. Shut up, Bram. You talk too much.” That was Saxon in his usual bossy, oldest brother style.

  “Like the whole pack isn’t going to notice what’s happened to my car,” complained Hardy.

  Bram laughed again. He could hear Leah’s voice in his mind, as clear as anything. “You shouldn’t have locked me in the trunk if you didn’t want me to damage your car.”

  Although it would never have occurred to him in a million years that she’d smash her way out of the car and escape.

  “So where did you meet this feisty mate? And why did she smash your car? Or were in a road accident with her? Wait up. Weren’t you supposed to be out on a job last night?”

  “We were on a job last night, and that’s where we met her. I don’t think the details are any of your business, Diego,” said Saxon dismissively.

  “Uh-huh. Perhaps you’d prefer to walk home. It can’t be much more than ten miles from here.”

  They’d just reached the freeway, and Bram was looking forward to a long nap and a hot shower. Certainly not to walking home. “Loosen up, Saxon. Everyone is going to know about Leah soon anyway. We met her at the job. She was in the way so we put her in the trunk of Hardy’s car.”

  “She escaped,” added Hardy.

  “Trashing your car in the process. I see. But how did your car end up back at the warehouse while you three were all the way back in town.”

  “We wanted to see where she lives,” said Saxon.

  “To learn all about her,” added Hardy.

  Bram nodded. “She’s special.”

  “Does she know we’re shape-shifters?” asked Diego.

  That was a damn good question. He wondered if maybe she did, but how could she? It wasn’t like they’d told her. Hell, they hadn’t really had any proper conversations with her at all. He’d talked more to the people on his table over lunch than to Leah. But with the whole triplet thing, her parents had exchanged looks that made him wonder.

  “We haven’t said anything to her about that,” said Hardy slowly.

  “But?” asked Diego.

  “Her parents exchanged knowing glances when they saw us. They spoke about meeting people with several sets of twins.” Saxon was speaking even more thoughtfully than Hardy had done. Bram knew he was right. They were triplets and shared the same DNA. There were times like this when they all thought very much the same thing, without having discussed it previously.

  “I think her family knows about shape-shifters and has worked with a pack in the past. Maybe panthers, but maybe some other type of shifter. I think they recognized us for what we are. But I don’t know whether Leah herself made the connection.”

  “It’s immaterial anyway. We haven’t made any decisions yet,” said Saxon.

  Maybe not, but Bram knew none of them planned to let Leah go. She was theirs, whether she knew it and Saxon accepted it. Facts were facts, and Leah was a fact.

  When they returned to the warehouse, Hardy moved his car out of the compound onto the roadside before he called the tow truck. In the end, the three of them stayed together. It would be easier to all get in the replacement vehicle and return the jewelry, as they could use the travel time to decide what they were going to do next about Leah.

  The mechanic stared at Hardy’s car and then patted its hood gently. “Poor baby. Let Papa make you all better.”

  Then he turned to Hardy. “What did you do? Park beside a soccer riot or something?”

  “Almost. I get the impression someone didn’t appreciate me,” said Hardy.

  “Yeah, well, stay away from them in future unless you want to fund my kid’s college education. This’ll take a couple of days, okay?”

  “Thank you.”

  The three of them piled into the loaner, with Hardy driving and Bram in the backseat by himself. He stared out the window, not really thinking about returning the jewelry or the tasks he needed to do for the Alpha. Everyone in the pack was expected to contribute, and repossessing misappropriated goods was the most usual way the pack funded themselves.

  The pack worked not just for other shape-shifters, but also for a number of secretive government agencies, tracing and returning items that were lost or stolen. Of course, some jobs took months to complete, but they earned them tens of thousands of dollars.

  Right now he didn’t want to be sent off somewhere on a long-term job, though. He wanted to be nearby to get to know Leah better. But that meant finding some jobs that would earn them decent money. The three of them needed to stay together to woo Leah. They couldn’t do it apart. A ménage mating had to be agreed to by all of them together, and that meant planning BDSM scenes and bedroom scenes that would arouse Leah because there were three of them. Scenes that couldn’t be replicated by a single lover working alone.

  “I don’t suppose we could do the research, find out who else Lutterworth has treated badly, and retrieve their possessions before he gets back from his trip to D.C.?” he asked. Actually it was more a statement than a question. The answer was definitely no.

  Saxon shook his head. “It might be possible to get him out of his house quickly, though, before he has a chance to realize the jewels and the stamp albums are gone. It’s fall. The weather is already starting to get cold. I wonder if someone would invite him somewhere warm for a week or two so we could do the research and reclaim the goods. That would muddy the waters a little bit, too, because it would mean he couldn’t be so sure when the items were repossessed. Let me talk to the Alpha.”

  Bram remained silent, watching Hardy drive the loaner as they made their way across town to return the jewelry. Saxon explained the situation without mentioning Leah, and the Alpha must have said to leave the matter with
him because Saxon closed off the call by saying a simple thank you.

  Hardy drove into the huge multistory parking lot at a large mall, and they walked to the elevators and inside. Their client had an office in the professional suites, and Saxon called him as they waited for the elevator.

  “He said to come on up.”

  Hardy laughed. “It’d be too bad if he hadn’t said that since we’re already here.”

  “He wants them back. He wouldn’t have made us wait too long,” said Bram.

  The man was standing at the open door of his office. “Come in, come in. I’m so glad to see you.”

  Bram followed his brothers inside and stood by the door after he shut it. Not that he thought the client would refuse to pay or anything, but they were always careful not to stand in a close-knit group in situations like this just in case there were bad people around.

  The man looked carefully at the jewelry and then sighed. “Thanks so much. My sister just handed them over to Lutterworth without a thought or a receipt when he said they needed cleaning. Stupid woman. I half expected him to have had them copied and to give her back fakes already. I’m so glad you were able to reclaim them quickly. Now, are you available for other jobs like this?”

  “It would depend on the task.”

  Saxon pocketed the cash the client handed him without a blink while he answered. Bram remained silent, listening carefully. His panther had better hearing than the average human, but he heard no worrying noises as if someone was snooping, and there were no unexpected scents either. As far as he could tell, everything was fine.

  “The reason I was so concerned about Lutterworth is because one of my associates is certain some of the ceramic figurines she inherited from her great-aunt aren’t the ones he sent off for cleaning.”

  “Can you please tell us the full story?” asked Hardy.

  The client looked at his watch and then waved at a group of easy chairs beside a coffee table. “You’d better sit down.”

  Ten minutes later, it seemed the “associate” was a woman the client was friends with, who wasn’t his wife. She’d inherited about twenty figurines from her great-aunt. She’d loved them since she was a child, and she’d held them, played with them, and cherished them for years. One had a tiny chip where she’d knocked it against a shelf once, and she’d been heartbroken at spoiling it. Either the chip had been replaced so perfectly no one could see it, or that figurine wasn’t the original one. There was also another one where the eyes “seemed different,” according to the associate. All in all, it sounded to Bram as though the originals were gone and replicas had been given to the woman.

  “How soon can you get the replacement figurines to us? It might take us a week or two to enact the recovery,” said Saxon.

  “I’ll have them here tomorrow, locked in my safe. Let me know when you need them, and I’ll make sure I’m here to give them to you.”

  Bram, Hardy, and Saxon rose and shook hands with the client.

  “Excellent. We’ll be in touch. You do understand this job will be more expensive than the first one. It might be considerably more complicated to make the switch now,” said Saxon.

  “Absolutely. Shall we say five thousand for a complete exchange?”

  Bram kept a poker face, but that was twice what they usually asked for a local job. If they could get in and out before Lutterworth was aware they’d taken the jewelry it’d be easy. They had to do it before he improved his security, whatever happened. They were cat burglars, not safecrackers.

  “That seems fair.” Saxon shook the client’s hand again, and they all left.

  They headed to the elevator, and Saxon rested his hand over the buttons. “What level did we get on at?” he asked.

  Bram shrugged. He’d been in the backseat, not paying attention.

  Hardy stared at Saxon. “You were shotgun. As navigator, it’s your job to notice that sort of thing.”

  “You drove. Don’t you know which level you parked on?”

  “Of course not. We went up several levels before we found a parking space.”

  Saxon growled at Hardy. “Well, how are we supposed to find the fucking car? Do you even know what the license plate is?”

  “No. Why should I? It’s a white Mazda, and I’ve got the keys.”

  “But you don’t know where you parked it, and half the cars in the parking lot are white.”

  Bram leaned against the wall of the elevator and laughed. His brothers were carrying on like a couple of six-year-olds. Here they were in a huge shopping mall with a loaner car and none of them had a clue where it was. None of them had slept the previous night. They’d all had far too much exercise and drama over the past forty-eight hours, and now they’d lost their borrowed ride. Bram laughed and laughed until tears ran down his cheeks and his belly started to hurt.

  Soon Saxon and Hardy were laughing with him.

  * * * *

  Hardy didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or punch his brother on the nose. Both of his brothers. Saxon standing there like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth and Bram laughing like a moron. Finally, he stared at the elevator buttons. The loaner car wasn’t parked on the top floor of the parking lot. He was certain about that. It also wasn’t the bottom floor and likely not the second from the bottom. He punched the button for the second from top level.

  “We’ll start at the second top level and walk down. At least I know which way to turn when we get out of the elevator.”

  Bram stopped laughing long enough to say, “Besides, walking down is easier than walking up. Jeez I’m tired.”

  Hardy was exhausted as well. There’d been way too much drama in his life in the past two days, although finding Leah had made it all worthwhile. However, how to get her back into their bed was proving harder than he’d expected. That had to happen tonight. He couldn’t wait any longer for her, and ménage sex, real triple-penetration sex. Hell yes. That had to happen and soon. Preferably tonight.

  They marched out from the elevator, heading in the direction all three of them agreed was correct, and then spread out looking for white Mazdas. Hardy hadn’t even noticed which make and model it was, just that it wasn’t old, but it wasn’t new either.

  Whenever one of them found a potential car, Hardy pressed the beeper, but no lights lit up. After they were sure they’d checked that level properly, they took the stairs down to the next level and did it all again.

  By the time they’d checked the third level, Hardy was totally exhausted. He leaned against the wall of the stairwell and groaned. “Fucking hell. We’ve lost the fucking car.”

  “I hear you, brother. Damn, I need a nap,” added Bram.

  “Well it’s not here. We must have left it on the second level,” said Saxon.

  Hardy shook his head. “I’m sure I drove up more than one level. He stared at the car ramp up to the next level.

  “Fuck. That’s it. We looked at the wrong side of the building on the middle level. The stairs and the ramp turn in the other direction. We checked the wrong side of the fucking parking lot.”

  With renewed energy, he headed up the stairs, trailed by his brothers.

  Bram asked, “What do you mean we looked on the wrong side?”

  “The elevator faces the same way every time someone exits it, but the ramps and stairs don’t. We took the elevator up to the professional suites, but we walked down the stairs,” explained Saxon, hurrying after him.

  With their backs to the elevator this time, they headed out through the parking lot, and Bram found the car quite easily.

  They piled in and headed for home. But the only thing Hardy could think of was how to get Leah into their bed.

  “Okay, brothers. How are we going to invite Leah into our bed tonight? Time’s wasting. Tomorrow night, we might be back at Lutterworth’s. Tonight is for Leah.”

  “I’m too tired. I never thought I’d say I was too tired for sex, but I am. All I can think of is sleeping,” said Bram, cracking a huge yawn.

&nb
sp; “It’s not much after four now. We call Leah and make a date. We sleep for two hours, pick her up at maybe seven thirty, take her to dinner. We’ll be in bed with her at nine and return her home at midnight. No problem.”

  “And be up at five to be at the bakery?” asked Saxon.

  “Damn. I hadn’t thought of that.” Hardy groaned as he swung the car up the ramp onto the freeway.

  “Here’s something else I bet you haven’t thought of. We don’t have her cell phone number.” Bram’s voice was flat and deflated.

  “Well, fuck. Now what are we going to do?” asked Hardy.

  “Not fuck, that’s for sure,” answered Bram.

  Just then Saxon’s cell phone beeped, and for one glorious moment, Hardy wondered if Leah had called them. Until he realized she didn’t know their numbers any more than they knew hers.

  Saxon’s quiet, “Yes, sir,” told Hardy their Alpha was the one making the call. He concentrated on driving silently and safely. Maybe the Alpha had already found them some more work to do. If they could pick up several jobs to do at Lutterworth’s all in one night, it’d be excellent.

  Hardy blinked as Saxon hit the speaker on his cell phone.

  “It’s not worth a lot of money, but it has sentimental value because she won it as a prize in elementary school and she’d never won a prize before. That dates back before this modern habit of every kid in the class getting a prize every year.” The Alpha’s voice was tart.

  “What’s the name of the book, sir? And do you have a description of it?” asked Saxon.

  “It has a plain brown leather cover with silver writing. Not a paper cover or dust jacket, just the leather. The title is A Child’s Garden of Verses, and the author is Robert Louis Stevenson. It was published in 1916.”

  Wow. One hundred years ago. I’m sure that’ll be valuable. Maybe not worth thousands, but Lutterworth wouldn’t have stolen it if it wasn’t worth something. Not when he knew the owner would miss it. And that proves he steals things himself from people he visits socially, as well as scamming them.