Chapter 6
The chatter of birds started Jessica awake.
She lay in a daze, trying to make sense of why the birds sounded so loud, and why their cries came from directly overhead. She kept her eyes closed against the sunlight, far too bright for a room at an inn, and certainly too much brilliance for her dim London rooms.
Something warm and heavy lay across her waist. Eyes still shut, she reached down and felt hair-dusted skin.
A man’s forearm, with a thick but articulate wrist bone, and then a large hand splayed over her abdomen in a careful, protective hold.
Someone’s breath brushed across the nape of her neck.
A man curled behind her, her body snug against his much larger form.
Her eyes flew open.
Only to find herself looking into the sleeping face of an entirely different man.
His black eyebrows were drawn down as though, even in sleep, grave matters weighed on him, his black beard framing a wide but thoughtful mouth.
His arm lay just beneath the first man’s arm, so that she was held between both of them.
She lay with two men.
There was something lithe but solid across her legs, as well. Stretching up a little, she beheld the sandy curls of a third man, draped over her legs. His head rested on her thighs, and his hands cupped her arse.
Three men—dear God.
The trio were also completely naked. There was no denying that they made a rather splendid sight, acres of muscle, bodies long and hewn in exceptional form. She’d never beheld a group of men more beautiful.
She herself was mostly dressed, though her bodice had been cut open, and the laces of her stays were undone.
What in the name of the heavens was she doing, asleep on the floor of the forest, entwined with three nude men?
The arrest. Leading three highwaymen through the woods to the Essex road. The full moon…their transformation into…into beings both man and beast. The attack on the carriage. Her employer ordering her murder. Fleeing into the forest. And then…and then…
Even now, there was a throb between her legs. She’d had sex with one of the creatures. Sex that left her body pleasured and depleted yet energized. Her cunt had been filled, well used. As it happened, the two other creatures had watched avidly.
And she’d loved it.
She squeezed her eyes shut. What had she done?
One thing was for certain, she had to go. Where she would go, she’d no idea, but she couldn’t simply lie here in the forest, surrounded by three highwaymen who weren’t ordinary highwaymen. They were werewolves.
An arm around her waist flexed and tensed. Ezra, laying behind her, was awake.
“You needn’t hie off.” His voice was sleep-rough.
“I have to bathe.”
“There’s a creek. I’ll take you to it.”
“I can find it by myself.”
He stretched, his whole body going taut and then releasing. “It’s not safe on your own.”
Awkwardly, she tried to sit up. As she did, Tej and Rhys came awake. They both gazed at her with cautious interest, but said nothing as she attempted to disentangle herself from their heavy bodies.
She tried not to look at them and their naked forms, but they were truly magnificent.
Even flaccid, and in their human forms, their cocks lay thick and long between their thighs.
Heat crept into her cheeks when both men caught her looking, and she flicked her gaze away.
Her hands fumbled at the laces of her stays, and she did them up quickly, though the front of her gown still gaped apart.
Ezra rose behind her, and he padded across the clearing, completely unconcerned by his nudity. That made one of them.
He rifled around in the large, gnarled roots of a giant oak and produced a canvas-wrapped bundle. Striding back to them, he undid the bundle to reveal an armful of clothing.
“We keep these stashed around the forest,” he explained, at Jessica’s curious look. “For after.”
He said this so simply. As if it was a matter of course that men transformed into mythical beasts and prepared for what happened when they reverted to their ordinary forms.
Tej and Rhys sat up and caught the garments Ezra tossed at them. In silence, all three men dressed—breeches, shirts, waistcoats, coats.
“Are you often caught unawares to make these caches necessary?” she asked.
“We feel when the moon is waxing,” Ezra said, “and make ourselves ready for it. But, just in case…”
“Just in case you’re arrested and marched through the forest as the full moon is rising. Yet you knew, the whole time, that my weapons couldn’t harm you.”
“We’re just as susceptible to a bullet as any man. However, when we change…” He shrugged. “Shooting a pea at us would do the same amount of damage.”
“And you knew you’d…change…by the time we reached the road.”
His beard had come in even more this morning, so that his smile flashed with a special brilliance.
“What a fool you must think me,” she muttered.
His smile vanished, and his mist-gray eyes grew serious. “Never that.”
They regarded each other for a long moment, and his gaze flicked over her.
Heat pulsed through Jessica—in his wolfish incarnation, he’d lapped at her breasts and her cunt.
He’d fucked all caution from her with his strange and remarkable cock.
Its size…the knot…lodged inside of her, locking them together.
“I don’t suppose there are any women’s garments in that stash of yours.” She clutched at the remains of her bodice.
“Just this.” He brandished a caraco jacket made of olive silk embroidered with twining vines.
“Do you often have women out here with you?” She arched a brow at him.
“We took this from a carriage we robbed. Hadn’t gotten around to selling it yet.”
She struggled to get to her feet, then started when both Tej and Rhys flanked her, gently helping her to stand. Despite their solicitousness, she pulled away from them. Both men edged back, yet their focus remained on her as she snatched the long jacket from Ezra.
“I still want to bathe.” Her voice came out distant, strained.
“This way.” Ezra gestured to the creek behind him.
“Privacy would be welcome,” she said tightly, when the trio of men continued to regard her.
“I’ll trap us some breakfast,” Rhys murmured.
“It should be safe to start a fire,” Tej added.
Both of them moved off to their different tasks. Yet Ezra remained.
“As I said, we need to keep you safe. Especially if the Guardians are still about.”
“Wouldn’t you be able to…I don’t know…smell them?”
Ezra’s lips twisted. “They wear leather to disguise their scent, and train their horses to keep us from hearing their approach. Thus, the need for caution.” He gestured again toward the creek tumbling several dozen yards away. “My Lady Vixen.”
“Don’t call me that,” she clipped.
“You seemed to enjoy it before.”
More heat raced through her. Not shame, exactly. Awareness, mixed with a disbelief of who she’d become in the past twenty-four hours.
“‘Jessica’ will do for now.”
“Very well…Jessica.” Yet even the way he said her name was like a caress across her bare skin.
She started toward the creek, clutching the caraco to her chest. He was immediately at her side, shortening his long strides to keep pace with her.
“I’ve never done anything like that before,” she muttered.
“Nor I.”
An inelegant snort burst from her. “Surely you’ve swived many other women.”
“Indeed, I have. But I never…not when I was in my other form.”
Her steps stuttered to a stop. “Never?”
Though his cheeks darkened, his gaze held hers. “Not once. Nor, I think, have Tej and Ezra done so.”
“I cannot believe it.”
“You think it an easy matter to expose ourselves like that? There are many who would find us terrifying, and others who would hate us, and seek to destroy us.”
“You were…vulnerable.”
He did look away then. This brash highwayman could not meet her gaze, and he didn’t speak.
Her heart contracted. The trust he’d given her, that all three of them had bestowed upon her, when only an hour earlier that night, she’d had them at the end of her pistol…
“You humble me,” she murmured.
“I don’t want your humility.” His regard returned to her face, and she felt it all the way through her body. “That’s not what drew me to you. Not when we held up the carriage and not afterwards.”
“I’m a very ordinary woman.”
“If you believe that about yourself, then I do have to wonder about your judgment. For in the whole of my six and thirty years, I have yet to meet anyone like you.”
Her lips parted, yet no words came from her. Beneath the fabric of the caraco held to her chest, the beating of her heart thundered.
“Come.” He tilted his chin toward the creek, ten yards away. “You desired to bathe, so let’s get you that bath.”
They continued the short distance in silence. The creek itself was about six feet across. If she waded into it, the water would come only to her knees. Reaching down, she touched the surface of the stream, then pulled back with a hiss at the cold.
“There are no copper tubs filled with heated water out here in the forest.” He chuckled.
She shot him a glance. “Luxury isn’t something I’m used to, but this will freeze me on the spot.”
“Consider it the height of refreshment. Besides, you’re hot-blooded enough to withstand the temperature.”
After sending him a glare, she started undoing her stays, but her hands stilled at the lacings. “I did ask for privacy.”
He rolled his eyes, but turned his back and folded his arms across his chest.
As quickly as she could, she divested herself of her garments. It was a shame that the bodice of her dress was torn, but she had some skill with a needle and could find a creative means of repairing it so the tear wasn’t too noticeable. A new stomacher would hide most of the damage.
How would she pay for the stomacher? Mowbray had given her half her fee upon taking the assignment, yet the other half was supposed to be delivered upon its completion.