The Lion's Shared Bride (12 page)

Soren laughed out loud, shaking his head.

“Maybe we’ll invent it,” he said, relieved that she had come to the right decision, on more than one level; there would be no need to push her, the support around Alex would evaporate, and he would have the woman he had already decided was his. “We’ll need it, I think,” he added, raising his bottle to the other two in salutation.

*

Aedan pushed down his feelings of apprehension as the car approached Nina’s apartment. She had agreed to stay with them; that fact made it impossible for them to deny her the freedom to gather her things—at least those things she particularly wanted—from her place. He could understand her desire to want her own clothes, even if he and Soren had privately decided between themselves that they would encourage her to be naked as often as humanly possible. When she had proposed the trip, suggesting that she could go by herself, Soren had given Aedan a look; he had scented Elise’s pheromones at the perimeter of the yard, around the house. It was reasonable to assume that the Pride members who had risen against Soren were watching them. If they let Nina leave alone, she might be attacked. The last thing Alex would want would be for Soren and Aedan to both have a mate—if they could get rid of Nina or hold her hostage, they would.

And so he and Soren had agreed to let her go and gather her things; but only if they accompanied her. It had only taken a small amount of persuasion to get Nina to understand that it was safest. “And besides, we can haul more of your stuff out between the three of us than you’d manage alone,” Aedan had pointed out.

Now that she had decided to stay with them—of her own accord, though Aedan thought with a slightly guilty pang that he and Soren had been working to their utmost to persuade her, not exactly using the most straightforward means—Aedan thought that the sooner she was moved in, settled with them formally, the better. Soren had explained that he would buy out her apartment lease, and once the worst of the drama in the Pride had settled down, Nina could—within reason—explain her situation to any friends or family she wished to tell about it.

“That… I probably won’t actually tell anyone any specifics any time soon,” she said, smiling wryly.

Aedan could well imagine the complicated nature of such a disclosure; while she couldn’t tell anyone he and Soren were lions, just the fact that she was being shared by two men would raise eyebrows.
Maybe we work out a system where one of us is the “official” partner for friends and family,
Aedan thought as Nina pulled into her parking spot. Though if it came down to it, that would be likely to do little more than create tension where—thus far—there was none. It would have to be the same man amongst everyone Nina knew; and whoever wasn’t chosen would resent being parted from her for dates or evenings with the parents.

Nina pulled into her parking spot and Aedan looked around. He couldn’t see any obvious signs that they had been followed, or that any of the Pride had, using Nina’s scent, tracked back to her apartment. That didn’t mean that they hadn’t—or that they wouldn’t. The more of Nina’s stuff that they could get out, at least of things she really wanted, the better it would be.

Aedan had thought that he would be prepared for the fact that her space would smell like her; intellectually he had known it, reminded himself of it at every point along the road between Soren’s house and the patch of land that held the tiny, one-bedroom space. But the impact of walking through the door and breathing in the rich, warm, spicy scent of her everywhere—on the couch, radiating from a desk chair, trailed along the carpet—was something else. There was nothing of his and Soren’s scent here; it was purely Nina, and Aedan closed his eyes, breathing slowly, sampling it as if he could taste it, as if it were visible in the air around him.

Opening his eyes once more, Aedan glanced at the Alpha. Soren was obviously as bowled over as he was, visibly almost-trembling to restrain the instinct to rub himself against every corner, every surface in the place, to mark it. Nina had stopped short, turning to look at them both. “Okay, right now you look like feral cats,” she said, her voice half-joking and half-worried. Aedan shook the animal instinct out of his mind, suppressing it, pushing down the shifting tumble and morass of thoughts until he had full control of himself once more.

“Sorry, love,” he said, giving her a smile. “Scent is a big thing for us, you know.” He saw Soren give himself a shake as well, and the other man exhaled sharply.

“We’re not going to start humping the furniture, don’t worry. We’re civilized.”

Nina’s worried glance became sardonic and she laughed.

“You know, you both keep coming up with these scenarios that are way more out there than anything I’m actually thinking.” She shook her head, a smile lingering on her lips. “There are some boxes in the closet left over from when I moved in; I think I’ve got a big suitcase in my room. If we’re going to do this, we might as well get down to it.”

Aedan nodded. He wanted Nina back home; preferably in either his room or hers, fully naked once more. Or maybe bent over the kitchen table, or sprawled on the living room couch.

They went to work, quickly packing away the things that Nina absolutely couldn’t bear to part with; without either of them telling her, she seemed to have apprehended that she might not get another opportunity to gather her belongings. Aedan sorted through her drawers eagerly, piling folded clothes into the suitcase starting from the bottom—he knew that between himself and Soren, they had more than enough income to completely replace her wardrobe if need be, but the comfort of her own things, well-worn, couldn’t be denied her.
There’s a damn sight little we’d deny her anymore, other than leaving,
Aedan thought as they moved up towards the top drawer. He glanced at Nina. She was already blushing; that must mean that they were coming to what he was really interested in, the real reason he had volunteered to help her with this particular task.

Aedan opened the drawer to reveal a tightly organized collection of lingerie that any enthusiast would appreciate; stockings, panties, bras, a few delicate negligees, lacy confections he had no words in his vocabulary to name. The scent of lavender and roses met his nose—a sachet tucked somewhere in the depths of the drawer. “Ah, now this is all you’d actually need to bring with you,” Aedan told Nina, grinning at her. “As it is, Soren and I are discussing ways to keep you naked as much as possible.” Nina rolled her eyes, giving him a playful shove. The impact of her fear-filled, angry,
“I hate you,”
hadn’t quite left him—it would take a long time before it dwindled out of his memory—but the fact that she had come around, that she had agreed to be with him, that she touched him voluntarily and melted into his seductions readily, gave Aedan some relief.

“Just because there’s a lion majority doesn’t mean I don’t call the shots sometimes,” she told him archly.

“Oh, absolutely,” Aedan said, leaning in closer to her, dropping his lips to the line of her neck. “You can demand to be on top or bottom—or in the middle, you can turn us down if you really don’t feel like being fucked mindless… but what’s the point in being so god-lovely sexy if you’re going to hide it from our delighted eyes all the time?” Nina shivered, tilting her head, giving into him minutely, and Aedan had to once more suppress the urge to strip her clothes off. Her bed—full of her scent, and Aedan caught enough to know that some of her fluids marked the sheets—was only a few feet away.

“Books are done,” Soren called from the living room. Aedan pulled back from Nina, getting hold of himself once more.
It has to pall after a while,
he thought, taking a deep breath and determinedly not letting his nose pick up the scent of her arousal.
There is no way any of us is going to function if Soren and I can’t keep our cocks under control around her.

“Come on in here then,” Nina called back. Aedan began to scoop up her underwear, depositing it carefully in the suitcase. They had decided to take care of her books, her clothes, and the most precious heirlooms and decorations in this trip; assuming that they had the chance later, she could come back for whatever else she decided she needed. Aedan had seen a few things around the house that his practiced eye knew were valuable to her—whatever their nominal value was.

On the way to the apartment, Nina had discarded the idea of bringing any of her furniture with her outright. “I mean, it’s nice—and if I was moving to an empty place, I’d take it with me, obviously. But the bedroom at your house is already furnished, and it’s not like you need another sofa. As long as I have the important things, the rest of it…” she had shrugged. “I mean, ultimately it’s just stuff.”

Soren came into the room and Aedan half-flinched under his glance; the Alpha would have scented the combined arousal pheromones immediately. There was no hiding the fact that he’d teased Nina. But she was in control—this was her space, and instinctively, Aedan and Soren both reacted to that; while it made their lust perk up, it also was a situation that any lion would respond to with at least a token amount of deference. “None of my sheets would fit the bed at your place,” she said, glancing from Aedan to Soren. “No point in packing those.”

They gave her as much time as the situation would allow, helping her—putting things carefully into boxes, wrapping up what was fragile. There was a crystal bowl that had been given to her as a birthday present when she was young, an old fashioned wooden nutcracker that she had taken from her Grandmother’s house at the woman’s passing, and a jewelry box, which Aedan had peeked into and decided privately that he and Soren would contribute to as soon as she was settled into life as their mate, and was willing to take such gifts from them. Nina carefully wrapped a decanter set, passed down from previous generations, and gently packed a teddy bear that played a lullaby when prompted by the turning of a crank in its back.

By the time they were finished, there were two cartons of books, a box and a half of odds and ends, a suitcase, and a few non-boxed but necessary items—most of them framed pictures or prints—loaded into Nina’s car and into Soren’s. Aedan watched as the woman he loved looked around her apartment with slightly sad eyes; as if she knew that she wouldn’t be back, and wanted to make sure that she hadn’t missed out on anything she would regret losing. “I know the feeling, love,” Aedan said, giving her a sympathetic smile.

Nina blinked, stirring herself out of her thoughts, and looked at him.

“Yeah,” she said. “I suppose you would. You’ve had to move around a lot.” She took a deep breath and exhaled it in a gusty sigh. “I just… keep having this feeling that there’s something here that… if I remember it later, if it becomes too late…” She shook her head. “But most of it is just stuff. How much am I really going to miss the couch, or the coffee table?”

“Take as long as you need,” Soren said, coming back into the apartment from loading the last of the items downstairs. “I can hope that you’ll have a chance to come back if you find you’ve forgotten something but…” He grimaced, and Aedan knew that their mate’s resignation, her worry and sadness, were affecting them both. “I can’t promise that the members of the Pride who are against me won’t try and track you here, or try and retaliate.”

“I know,” Nina said, worrying at her bottom lip. “Even if that wasn’t a problem, there’s only so much stuff I can take with me.” Aedan saw the shimmer of a tear forming in her eye. “I guess part of it is that this makes it sort of… final.” Nina took a deep breath and threw herself with haphazard grace onto the couch, wincing slightly as the movement rippled through muscles that Aedan knew must be sore from the sexual acrobatics of the past few days. “I’m being ridiculous. If something is important to me, if I really want to keep it with me forever, it should have occurred to me by now, shouldn’t it?”

Aedan sank down, sitting on the surprisingly solid coffee table.
How did she even get it up here? Certainly not on her own.

“Don’t stress it too much, love. Walk around, let your eye go over everything, and if nothing cries out to you, accept that it’s just not that important to you—no matter if it was in the past.” He watched as she weighed his words, pressed her lips together in decision, and stood.

By silent agreement, he and Soren let her range around the apartment on her own; in the small space, if someone broke in, they would know about it possibly before she even would, their sensitive ears on alert for the slightest unusual noise. Aedan looked at his fellow lion, smiling in wry sympathy. It was difficult for them all—though a very different kind of difficulty for himself and for Soren. Hopefully, Aedan thought as he followed the soft sounds of Nina’s feet through the carpeted rooms, she would bounce back from it quickly. They could distract her from her misgivings, soothe her, and then everything would be right with the world, and she would settle into the day-to-day life of being their mate.
One of us is going to have to tell her that she can’t go to work tomorrow either. Or the next day. Not until everything is decided.
Aedan pressed his lips together.
I’ll leave that for Soren.

*

Nina looked around her room in Soren’s house; it was a rare moment of quiet, of space between herself and her two lovers. She had asked for—and they had, thankfully, granted—some time to organize the things she had hauled from her apartment. Her clothes were put away, most of them; tucked into drawers, hung in the closet. Her boxes of books would await new shelves. Staring into a container with the odd assortment of knickknacks and heirlooms she had gathered up in a frenzy, Nina had to ask herself an important question:
Am I making a huge mistake?