Adam strode towards the elevator. David was one step behind. His tiger was restless. He sensed Adam’s lion was too. When the elevator’s door slid close, Adam leaned on the panel and took a sniff of the buttons. Adam looked at David. “Looks like first floor.”
“Let’s find out.” David pushed the button.
It was a short ride. The elevator bell chimed. First floor. The door opened. David could practically sense Sam’s scent in the corridor. It lingered where she had passed. He followed it until the scent led them to room 104. He heard muffled screaming behind the door. His tiger growled, trying to claw out. David was able to resist it at the last second. He mustn’t lose his cool headedness.
Adam, on the other hand, couldn’t. The second he heard her crying, his animal jumped out. Adam charged at the door, blasting through it. The lion’s roar reverberated. David lunged in and found Jared on the floor under Adam’s paw. Samantha was sprawled next to the bed, her eyes and lips swollen.
There was blood on her blouse. And drops of blood on the carpet. Suddenly, David couldn’t control his beast any longer. His tiger clawed out. Before he could shift completely, a great black shadow zoomed past him and pounced on the prey. Angry snarls echoed in the room.
Calvin pawed Jared’s pale body from under Adam’s clutches. The female screamed in panic. Jared might have been shitting his pants too.
Pathetic.
David went to Samantha, scenting her. He half-expected her to recoil in fear for having him near her in his beastly form. Surprisingly, Sam lunged and wrapped her arms around his mighty head.
“Oh, David, thank goodness you’ve come.”
David licked her. A salty, coppery tang flooded his palate—her tears.
He knew everything would be all right.
Epilogue
Sam opened the wooden-framed windows of the living room and inhaled the fresh air. It had been raining all morning, but thank God, it had finally stopped. The breeze rushed past her. The scent of earth, leaves and salt water smelt so invigorating. From the window of their condo, she could see the beach without any obstruction. Rain had kept people away, though it was usually jam-packed with sunbathers at this hour. Sam breathed in more fresh air. It was nice to see the beach and the sea in their natural beauty. Hawaii was beautiful. She had spent a month here after the incident with Jared in Colorado. David had a condo in Honolulu and thought she should get away from it all while he, Adam and Calvin sorted everything out. He called it damage control. She preferred to think of it as payback. He and Calvin had arranged some legal mojo that had brought Jared to his knees.
Her lovers had saved her that night. They had argued in the past, but Jared had never manhandled her before. He must have reached an all-time low. Maybe it was the drugs. Or the alcohol. Or the fact that he wasn’t going to get more money from her. Jared had gone berserk. She’d thought he was going to kill her. But Adam had stopped him. And Calvin had scared the hell out of him by nipping and pawing him. The rest of it was rather blurry. She remembered being hauled into an ambulance and a paramedic checking her vitals. There were sirens, bright lights, and plenty of police officers strutting around. They’d asked questions. Weird questions. But Calvin always had answers for them. She didn’t remember how Adam, David and Calvin had shifted back. She recalled they had all been in the motel’s bathrobes when the first officer had responded to the call. And Jared…
That son of a bitch kept screaming his head off, saying a tiger, a lion and a gigantic black cat had attacked him. Of course nobody believed him. Not with drugs and weed in the toilet and his blood alcohol way over the legal limit.
She was glad everything was over.
Besides a restraining order and the whole nine yards of Jared not being allowed to contact her without risking his ass being hauled away by the cops, her ex was now in the Aspen county jail facing assault charges for beating her up. Calvin also charmed the prosecutor into adding drug and blackmailing charges to the rap sheet. And if everything stuck, Jared could face a long time in prison.
She was just glad that Jared was off her back for good. Now she could put everything behind her. She was done with the past. Seven years in a marria
ge from hell. She looked forward to the future. With Adam, David and Calvin. The arrangement was unconventional and she was sure her mother—her adoptive mother—would disapprove if she ever found out about the ménage relationship, but hell, this was what she wanted. Her men were happy and she had never been so content. Her financial woes were over. She would never have to deal with that jackass of an ex-husband again and for the first time in her life, she discovered that it was nice to have someone—in her case, three men—to depend on for a change. With Jared, she had always been the one who shouldered the burden. She thought of going to back to school to get her degree so she could contribute something back into the relationship. Adam told her to take it easy for now. She had been through a lot and he said she deserved a break.
“Has the rain finally stopped?” Adam asked from the couch.
“Yeah. We can do some grilling out today.” Sam went to sit next to him, snuggling. “I bought some excellent steaks from the butcher yesterday. He said it was a special order from Peter Luger.” Her men loved steaks, like carnivores addicted to their meat. Considering what they really were, she wasn’t surprised.
Adam curled an arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. Sam relished his warmth, his body heat. His spicy and musky scent. It made her heady. He found her lips and kissed her. She wanted to melt instantly.
“But I’ll do the grilling. Adam can’t do shit. He always burns the meat.” Calvin threw a smirk at Adam. He had just arrived from Colorado with David this morning after tying up loose ends in Jared’s case. The three had gone back and forth between Aspen and Honolulu. But one of them always stayed with Sam in rotation. Today they were all together for the first time in weeks.
Adam snorted. “You always eat my charred steak anyway.”
“That, my friend,” Calvin wriggled a finger in front of Adam, “is because a growing lawyer needs his vitamins and meat to grow up to be a healthy lawyer.”
“You give ninety-nine per cent of lawyers a bad name.”
“Or one per cent of lawyers a good name.”
“Dick.”
“Jerk.”
David emerged from the bedroom. He looked as if he had just stepped out from the shower. His perfect body was wrapped in a towel. His hair was wet. He padded to the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee. David took his coffee black. He sipped it as he came into the living room. “Are you two already bickering at this hour?”