Chapter Three

Amara

T he next evening, Amara was wandering around the stacks, reshelving a cart-load of books that had been left out throughout the day. It had been another busy day at the shop, which had helped to keep her mind occupied. However, now that the day was over, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking about everything that had occurred the night before and the predicament she now found herself in. She had been up all night thinking about it too and was no closer to figuring out what she was going to do.

The first rogue shifters she had ever met personally had killed someone right in front of her. For her, no less. They had ended his life solely because he had been a threat to her, and she found it surprising that it didn’t bother her as much as it should have. Her father had always told her that rogues were vicious and cruel, and yet, she didn’t see too much of that in them. She knew the reason for that, but she had thought that watching them kill a man in cold blood would have changed things. In truth, she had seen more death and murder within her own pack, so what the guys had done barely fazed her.

What did concern her though was the whole fated mate thing. Not only had she never expected to find her fated mate, but the fact that she was mated to three men, three rogues, meant that it would never work even if she wanted it to. And she was pretty sure she wanted it to work. After all, who wouldn’t want to find their fated mate? But the fact that they were rogue shifters meant that the bond between them was doomed from the start.

Amara was a pack shifter, and pack shifters were forbidden from associating with rogue shifters for the most part. Especially those in her pack. Her father hated rogues with a passion, and if he found out that she was mated to three of them…

She paused in picking up a book to shudder at the thought. Unfortunately, Zeke and Knox didn’t seem to realize just how big of an issue this was. Drake did though. He was the only one, apart from her, who understood the severity of their situation. She just hoped that he would be able to convince the other two.

Zeke and Knox were not making it easy for her either as they had been texting her all night. Zeke wanted to know everything there was to know about her while Knox continued to send her dirty pictures and messages describing all the things he wanted to do to her.

She would be lying if she said that it wasn’t intriguing, and she found herself wondering more than a few times if she could handle all three guys at once. The thought of it had her doing exactly what Knox had said she would and touching herself. Though, she’d never tell him that because she would never hear the end of it.

That morning, she had gone to work exhausted, confused, and hornier than she had ever been, despite getting herself off several times the night before, thanks to Knox’s dirty mouth.

She continued putting the book on the shelf. As hard as it was to do, Amara eventually made the decision to keep her distance from them. No good could come of the bond between the four of them, and she did not want to be the cause of any problems because they were obviously well-established in their little town. Her father would never approve of the bond they shared and would end up making their lives a living hell. It was better for her and everyone if she just stayed away. At least, that was what she kept telling herself.

Her dress snagged on a screw from the cart as she stood on her toes to put a book up on one of the shelves. With a sigh, she gently pulled the fabric free and grabbed the cart, pushing down the next aisle. She then positioned the short ladder before picking up the small stack of books that belonged on the very top shelf, one that was way too high for her to reach without help.

Just as she reached the top, the cheery little bell above the front door dinged, indicating that she had customers. “I’ll be right with you!” she called out.

It was really close to closing time, and the fact that someone had come in this late was a little irritating, but thankfully, she managed to keep that irritation out of her voice. She had become very adept at hiding her emotions as she had to do it a lot. Especially when it came to her father. She could put on a mask of professionalism while still being upset that her night was going to drag on even longer due to the late arrival.

A few moments later, a warm, calloused hand slid up her thigh and cupped her ass, taking her by surprise. She gasped and spun around, nearly toppling off the ladder she was standing on, and the books she had been holding clattered loudly to the floor. Knox was standing below her at the bottom of the ladder, a cocky smirk on his face that pinched the scar along his cheek.

Amara rolled her eyes, silently chastising herself for not smelling him when he came into the shop, as she attempted to calm her now sputtering heart. Just the sight of him was enough to make her mouth water, and that wasn’t a good thing considering she had just decided to deny this thing between them.

“Jesus, you scared me. You ass.”

“Speaking of asses,” Knox replied smoothly. “If you come down a step, I can bite yours.”

“Not a chance,” she muttered with a shake of her head. “What are you doing here?”

Knox didn’t reply. Instead, he attempted to lift the skirt of her dress, but she batted him away. He just chuckled in response, which was mildly irritating.

Zeke came around the side of the shelves then, making her realize just how bad she was at this. She was a shifter, for crying out loud, and they were her fated mates. She should have been able to tell when they were near. Then again, she had been trying to push them from her mind, so maybe that was why she hadn’t sensed them when they arrived.

“We came to see you,” Zeke stated casually as he stepped up next to Knox.

Amara sighed heavily and began to descend the ladder, careful to keep her dress tucked lest Knox get any more bright ideas. “Look, like I told you guys last night, this isn’t going to work out. There’s too much stacked against us.”

“That sounds like a dare,” Knox replied, giving her the distinct impression that he was never one to turn down a dare.

“Not a dare, just being realistic.” She picked the books up off the floor and set them back on the cart. She would have to take care of them later when Knox wasn’t around to mess with her while she was vulnerable. She then brushed her hands and turned to face them once more, this time with far more confidence now that she had regained some sense of her composure. “Be honest here, how do you guys even see this working? With my being pack and you being rogues.”

Zeke shrugged his massive shoulders and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Honestly, I don’t know. But I do know that, if I don’t try, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”

His blunt yet honest response caused her to pause. She didn’t expect that kind of blatant honesty from guys like them. It went against everything she thought she knew about rogue shifters, and she wasn’t sure how to respond.

Zeke must have sensed how caught off guard she felt because he smiled softly. “That never occurred to you, did it?”

She shook her head. Since he had been honest with her, it was only fair that she did the same. “No, it hadn’t. I’ve been so focused on why it can’t work that I haven’t really thought about the ramifications if we didn’t even try,” she admitted. “But even so, what’s the point? All that’s going to do is get us attached, and then, when it all inevitably falls apart, it’s going to hurt even more. It’s just a recipe for disaster.”

“We can’t predict the future, Princesa. We don’t know that it’s going to fall apart,” Zeke replied. “I am willing to take that chance. And I know Knox here would agree if he wasn’t too busy staring at your tits.”

Amara’s gaze flicked over to Knox just as he glanced up at Zeke and chuckled dryly. The look in his eyes told her that he had a list a mile long of things he’d like to do to her apart from staring.

Instinctively, she looked down at her chest and then quickly folded her arms in an attempt to hide them. She wished she had worn something that covered a bit more, but she hadn’t expected the guys to just show up at her shop.

“Look, you guys don’t even know me. You don’t know if we are even compatible.”

It was a lame excuse, even to her, but she was beginning to run out of reasons to give them for why this thing between them wouldn’t work. They didn’t seem to care about the risks, and the longer she was around them, the more her wolf tried to convince her that it was worth it.

Zeke’s eyebrows rose as he folded his own arms across his chest. “That’s how fated mates work, and you know that. We’re compatible in every way. Part of us, if not all, is fit to be yours. Just like you are fit to be ours.”

“If you’d like, we can show you just how compatible we are,” Knox added. The implication was clear in his voice, and it didn’t take much to figure out what he meant.

“This is my place of business, Knox,” she reminded him with another eye roll. However, she couldn’t hide the small smile that played across her lips. It had been a long time since someone had been this playful with her, and she wasn’t going to lie – she had missed it.

Knox shrugged. “I can always lock the door.”

“I’m not fucking you in my bookstore,” she replied bluntly, despite the heat that was beginning to form in her lower belly.

He took a step toward her, forcing her to tilt her head back to maintain eye contact. “That sounds like another dare. I don’t think you know how fucking much I accept the challenge.”

“Knox,” Zeke warned with a soft laugh of his own. However, he didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence because his cell phone started ringing. He pulled it from his back pocket and looked at the screen. “Shit. I have to take this. It’s work.” He looked pointedly at Knox as he hit the accept button on the screen. “Behave.”

Pressing the phone to his ear, Zeke strode from the bookstore and back out onto the sidewalk. Amara watched him go for several moments, realizing that he had just left her alone with Knox.

The moment he was gone, Knox moved, pinning her against the hard wooden shelves behind her. He was chest-to-chest with her in a matter of seconds, and the hungry look in his eyes sent a quiver down her spine. She knew what that look meant, what he planned to do, and she couldn’t let it happen. This was the exact opposite of what Zeke had just told him to do.

On instinct, Amara reached for the first thing she could find to defend herself; a box cutter, which had been sitting on a stack of boxes to the right of her. She immediately held it up, hoping to deter Knox from what he had planned.

“Don’t,” she warned as firmly as she could.

Unfortunately, instead of deterring him as she had hoped, Knox suddenly gripped her ass and lifted her into his arms, positioning her legs around his waist as her back hit the shelf again. To any normal person, she’d be too heavy to do such a thing, but to Knox, she was lifted as if she weighed no more than a feather.

She squealed loudly and then moved the box cutter to the side of his throat. His chest rumbled as he leaned closer to her, his lips parted. “Do it,” he murmured, taking her by surprise.

“What?” she gasped. Surely, he wasn’t serious. He didn’t really want her to cut him, did he?

“Pain will only turn me on, little bunny. Do it. Cut me.”

She wanted to call him out on his bluff, but she couldn’t. The evidence behind the truth of his words was the erection that was pressing against her core, making her think all manner of dirty and inappropriate thoughts. Meanwhile, her wolf practically purred in appreciation as if she were in heat and in dire need of a good lay.

This was exactly what she had been worried about. She’d heard the stories about how hard it was to resist one's fated mate, and she hadn’t wanted to find herself in this position. Yet, here she was. Completely and utterly helpless.

Her hand began to tremble, her eyes searching his. He must have seen the questions swirling behind them because he grinned at her menacingly as he pressed the side of his neck against the blade, drawing blood. The moment she spotted the blood dripping down his skin, the box cutter dropped from her hand and clattered to the ground.

“You’re deranged,” she whispered, not trusting her voice to speak any louder than that.

Knox leaned closer to her so that their lips were almost touching. “I like what I like, and I think there’s a part of you that likes it too. Wanna see what else we have in common?”

“What makes you think I like it?” she challenged. She knew she was only pouring gasoline into an already intense flame, but she couldn’t help it. She didn’t like feeling so out of control of her own body.

He grinned at her, his nose wrinkling a bit. “The fact that I can feel how wet you are right now and how strong the scent of your arousal is.” He ran his nose along the side of her neck, causing goosebumps to erupt all over her body. “You wore this dress just for me, didn’t you? To give me easy access to what’s mine.”

She shook her head the best she could. She needed to get out of this somehow. If Knox decided to take things any further, she didn’t think she’d be able to resist, and then they would all be in some trouble. “No, I didn’t.”

“Liar,” he chuckled, grinding into her at the same time he took her mouth.

For a moment, Amara was unsure of what to do, but that quickly changed when Knox nipped her lip, making her gasp again. He used that moment to deepen the kiss, the feel of his tongue intoxicating and sensual. It was wrong but in all the right ways, and Amara quickly found herself kissing him back, despite her better judgment.

Her fingers moved to his hair and tugged on the strands while his fingers dug into her ass. He ground his hips into her again, the friction it caused nearly making her moan. “Do you like that, little bunny?” he growled. His voice was more animal than human at that point, and it turned her on more than it should. “Do you want my cock to fill that tight little pussy?”

“What I want and what’s right are two different things,” she somehow managed to say while trying to catch her breath at the same time.

“You and I both know that what we want and what is right is me fucking you until you scream my name.”

“That’s if you can even make me scream.” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop herself. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but she wasn’t exactly thinking clearly.

“Another dare,” he said with a grin. “When can I start cashing in? And what would you do if I pulled your panties aside and fucked you right here?”

Her eyes widened though her thighs clenched, torn between being worried about him following through on that threat and hoping he did at the same time. “You wouldn’t. We are in public, Knox.”

He dipped his head to the side of her neck, running his tongue along her sensitive flesh, before he nipped at her jaw. “Good. If someone walks in, they’ll know that you’re mine. Are you going to deny that, too?”

Amara used to think that she hated the possessive guys, the ones who believed they owned women. However, Knox’s possessiveness was strangely hot. At this rate, her vibrator was going to have to put in a lot of work when she got home that night.

Shaking her head, Amara swallowed hard. She needed to put a stop to this before it went any further. She needed to keep a clear head and be smart about this before they did something there was no going back from. “I’m not yours,” she said firmly. “Not until you mark me, and that’s not happening. So, put me down.”

For a moment, she wondered if he was going to listen to her. Thankfully, he lowered her to her feet, but a smirk was still firmly planted on his lips. “Oh, it’ll happen, little bunny. I’ll see to that.”

Before she could respond to that obvious threat, the bell above the door dinged as Zeke reentered and took in the scene before him – Knox’s smirk and her messed-up hair and dress. With a heavy sigh, he glared at Knox. “You just had to go there, didn’t you?”

“Couldn’t resist,” was all Knox said.

Zeke looked back at Amara and gave her an apologetic smile. Not that he had anything to apologize for. “What would you say to a drink?”

“I’d say thanks for the invite, but I don’t think that’s the best idea,” she responded as she quickly straightened her dress and attempted to fix her hair.

There was no way she could trust herself to be alone with the two of them. It was clear that she could barely control herself sober around Knox. Get alcohol in her, and, with both of them around, who knew what was going to happen?

“Come on, just one drink,” Knox pushed, running his hand along her lower back and over her ass.

“We don’t bite,” Zeke added hopefully.

That made Knox laugh. “Liar.”

Amara pinched the bridge of her nose, already feeling her resolve wavering. She hated that they could sway her so easily, and she wished she were stronger. That would make it easier to resist their charms. “You guys aren’t going to give up, are you?”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Zeke said with a panty-melting grin.

“As if she had a choice anyway.”

“Fine,” Amara relented with a sigh. “You win. One drink. But only one.”

She was probably going to regret every bit of this, but she could really use a drink, and maybe then she would be able to convince these guys that the bond between them was a fluke and nothing more.