Inferno (9 page)

“Well, you did say something about wanting to get a cat.” Abe reached over and picked up the furry little creature, holding it up in the air. “I could be mistaken but I’m pretty sure that in a few months this little fur ball will qualify as a cat.”

Danny inhaled sharply then slowly reached for the kitten. “Oh, he’s so soft.”

“She.” Abe shrugged when Danny shot him a curious look. “I took her to a veterinarian after I found her in the park, had her checked over. The vet said she needs a little special care for the next couple of weeks but I have everything she needs downstairs in the truck.”

“Why would you do all of that?”

Abe stood, more uncertain than ever. “You said you wanted a cat.”

Danny’s eyes dropped to the kitten he had cradled to his chest. “I actually wanted someone to miss me if I was gone.”

Abe stared at Danny in utter disbelief. “I would miss you if you were gone.” He’d be destroyed if anything happened to Danny. He just didn’t think Danny was ready to hear that yet. “Ben would, too. We both would.”

Danny’s luminous eyes widened. “Why?”

“Because you’re ours, Danny,” Abe replied, his voice firm, final. “You’ve always been ours.”

When Danny’s mouth dropped open, he knew he had fucked up again.

Damn!

Danny didn’t know what to think of that statement. He had spent a majority of his life feeling unwanted and unloved. Now, suddenly, two of the most handsome men he had ever seen in his life were saying they wanted him.

Both of them!

Lunch with Ben had been wonderful. Danny couldn’t remember a thing of what he had eaten but he remembered laughing more in that couple of hours than he had in the last couple of months. He felt special, like Ben truly wanted to be spending time with him. He even forgot to be clumsy—but just for a little while.

Ben was engaging, humorous. He made Danny forget to be nervous. Abe was a little frightening but only because he seemed so intense, almost like he was always angry about something.

Both men could stop traffic with just one look. Even if one was to overlook just how frigging big they were, there was no missing those luscious muscles that covered their thick arms and wide chests. Danny hadn’t even allowed himself to look below their waistlines. He didn’t think he could handle what he would see.

“We’ve never met,” Danny finally said when he pulled his chaotic thoughts together. “How can I be yours?”

And what exactly did being
theirs
mean?

Abe’s face became pale and pinched. Danny recognized that look. The man was about to panic. “Ben!” Abe shouted.

A moment later, the door flew open and Ben hurried in, searching the room for whatever threat he thought was there. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I messed up.” Abe’s face filled with color, pushing his ashen look away. “Again.”

Danny pressed his lips together when Ben rolled his eyes, the tension draining from the large man’s body. This was obviously something that had happened more than once.

“What did you do this time?” Ben asked as he leaned back against the edge of the doorframe, crossing his arms.

“I told Danny that he belonged to us.”

Ben’s head snapped around, the man’s piercing amber eyes pinning on Danny. He was shocked when Ben’s eyes suddenly filled with fierce sparkling. “And what did you think of that?”

“What did I think of—” Danny’s voice broke off in midsentence. Was Ben serious? Were both of them? He turned slightly, glancing at Abe out of the corner of his eye. Abe’s face was reddening as if the man was holding his breath waiting for Danny’s answer, except Danny didn’t know what his answer was. “I think you’re both insane.”

Danny feared their reaction considering the severity of the question and just how big they were so he was totally thrown for a loop when Ben burst out laughing. Danny was too surprised to do more than stare.

“We’re not insane, Danny, I promise.” The tenderness in Ben’s expression amazed Danny. He didn’t think he had ever seen it in anyone’s face before when directed at him.

“Then you’re joking?” Danny asked. There was no way they could be serious.

Ben shook his head as did Abe. “This is not a joking matter, Danny. We are very serious,” Ben said. “There is a lot going on here that you do not understand or have any knowledge of, but we are very serious about you belonging to us. We’ve known you were ours for years.”

Danny’s mouth dropped. He scooted back, taking the kitten with him. She was an innocent baby animal after all. “You
are
insane.”

“No, but it’s going to take a lot to convince you we’re not once I tell you everything.”

“Maybe I don’t want to know.” Ignorance was starting to sound better and better. It had worked pretty well for him for the last twenty-five years. Why change that now?

Ben walked over and sat on the edge of the mattress. Danny could see that he was trying to be unthreatening but considering the size of the man that was nearly impossible. His shoulders alone had to be as wide as a bus.

“You know Abe and I are twins.”

Danny nodded.

“Did you know that we can talk to each other telepathically?”

Danny’s eyes darted between the two men. “Really?”

“Really.” Ben’s lips twitched with renewed amusement. “Want us to prove it?”

“Yeah.” Although Danny was mighty curious how they were going to do that.

“Abe, go into the other room. Shut the door behind you.”

Abe left the room without question.

“Do you have a piece of paper and a pen?”

Danny nodded and opened his nightstand, pulling out the requested items. He started to hand them to Ben but the man held up his hand.

“Write something on it.”

“What do you want me to write?”

“Something we wouldn’t know.”

Danny’s eyebrows rose but he did as Ben directed, writing down the name of the latest book cover he was designing for a rather well-known author. Danny didn’t often talk about his work simply because his authors needed to keep their lives private. By extension, so did he. He had a
pen name
for his cover work, one that kept his own life private.

“Okay,” Danny said as he looked up. “Now what?”

Ben grinned. “Let me see it.”

Danny held it up.

Ben nodded.

“Secret Desires,” Abe called through the door.

Danny blinked then quickly wrote down another title he had created a cover for. Ben chuckled as Danny held the paper up to him.

“Mating Heat,” Abe called out.

They did this several times, Danny switching to other things to write down after a while. Abe got it every single time.

“Wow,” Danny finally whispered, setting his pen and paper down. “You really can talk to your brother telepathically.”

“I can, and he can talk to me. We’re born with the ability. All the twins in our family have it.”

“There are more of you?”

“My parents had four sets of twins. They are pretty common in my family.”

“That’s like…” Danny blinked. “A lot of siblings.”

“Abe and I are the second to the oldest set of twins. Gabe and Mike are older than us. Sam and Joe are the next set with Mo and Noah the babies of the family.”

“I have three bro—” Danny’s voice faded as he realized he didn’t have any siblings, at least none that he knew of. “I guess I don’t have anyone.”

“And that’s where you would be wrong. You have an entire family waiting to meet you back in Pacific Cove—grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins. Not to mention my entire family. You are not alone, Danny, and you never have been.”

“You say that but where have these people been all my life? If they are so excited to see me then why haven’t they come to see me before now?”

“It wasn’t allowed, Danny.”

Danny looked up at the deep voice to see Abe standing in the doorway. “What wasn’t allowed?”

“When your parents were killed at the lake, several other people were either killed or injured. Things were chaotic for quite a while. People were in a panic, scared. The hunters had gotten away and there was a fear that they would come back and try to finish killing us. Charles decided that you would be safer in the city, away from us and away from our kind, away from more danger.”

Our kind?
Those two words resonated inside of Danny but so did the need to know who had made such life-altering decisions about his life. “Who decided this?”

“In the beginning, it was your grandparents,” Ben answered. “Your parents were dead. Your grandmother had been injured and even now twenty-three years later she has to use a cane to get around.”

“My grandmother was injured in the attack?”

“She was hit by a shotgun blast in the back as she tried to run away.”

A cold shiver rippled through Danny. He clutched the warm soft furry kitten to his chest. “They shot her in the back?”

“We believe that they were just a bunch if hunters that had gone into the mountains to hunt. They never expected to come across a small town in the middle of nowhere. We’re kind of hidden away from the rest of the world. We never knew who they were but we’ve never seen them again so I think they were either scared away by what they saw or trying to hide what they did.”

“That doesn’t explain why they started shooting at everyone!” Danny’s stomach knotted as he started to imagine what had happened to his parents, how they must have suffered before they were so callously murdered by hunters.

“Actually, it kind of does.” Ben’s demeanor grew more somber as he turned to look at his twin. Something seemed to settle about him as he drew in a deep breath and let it out, turning to face Danny. “The people of Pacific Cove aren’t like other people, Danny. We’re different, special.”

“But not in a bad way,” Abe hurried to add.

“No, not in a bad way,” Ben said as he glanced over his shoulder at Abe. “We’re not monsters or anything like that. We’re just different.”

Danny narrowed his gaze, staring intently at the two brothers. “Different how?” Fear punched through Danny’s gut when Ben stood and walked over to stand next to his brother. It wasn’t the two men he was afraid of exactly but more the apprehension he could see on their faces.

That terrified him.

“Wha–what are you doing?” he asked when Abe started undressing. It wasn’t that he had an issue with a gorgeous man stripping in his bedroom but he had kind of been hoping to get some answers first. Danny gulped when Abe’s shirt dropped to the floor.

Of course, getting naked was good, too.

By the time the last item of clothing had hit the floor, Danny was ready to put the kitten in the bathroom and strip off his own clothes. He couldn’t believe he had such a gorgeous man standing in his bedroom, and naked.

And, damn, the man was built. There had to be at least twenty miles of golden tanned skin on Abe’s body. And muscles galore on his arms, his thighs, and across his chest. There were muscles everywhere. The dark hair on the man’s chest, moving down in a trail to his groin was so thick, Danny felt an overwhelming urge to pet it, and then maybe curl up on it.

Danny was pretty sure he was drooling.

“I want you to watch Abe, Danny,” Ben said in a low, soothing voice as he scooted up the bed and sat down behind Danny. A protective embrace wrapped around Danny. “And remember, Abe would never hurt you, no matter what you see.”

Danny’s mouth opened in surprise as the dark cover of brown hair began to thicken, darkening Abe’s skin, first his arms and legs and then along his chest and up to his head. Shivers racked Abe’s body as he dropped down to all fours. His bones cracked as they stretched and reshaped.

Danny screamed as icy fear twisted in his gut. He scrambled up the mattress to get away from the creature sitting on the floor at the end of the bed. Ben was behind him to catch him, keeping Danny from trying to climb the wall to get away.

“Danny, calm down,” Ben said. “It’s okay. You’re perfectly safe.”

“B–b-bear!”

“That went well.” Ben watched Danny’s eyes roll back into his head and then the man went limp in his arms. He felt like banging his head against the wall. He never envisioned that he would have to be the one to tell Danny everything about their kind.

He was supposed to have been taught all of this growing up. He should have been waiting for his mates to come and claim him.
Instead, the man passed out from fear—fear of his mates. That was not the way it was supposed to go.

Abe’s body made the shift back to human in a matter of moments, bones popping back into place as they reformed, fur shrinking back into his pores until all that remained was golden tanned skin with a light furring of hair.

“What are we going to do now?” Abe asked.

“Well, you are going to get dressed before Danny wakes up. He doesn’t need the distraction.” Despite the severity of the situation, Ben couldn’t help but chuckle when Abe’s face flushed and he quickly reached for his clothes.