Page 10 of The Alpha's Autumn Baby Mama (Triple L Ranch Shifters 4)

Levi

She was beautiful, a goddess, and my wolf rumbled in contentment as she took her fur and crawled onto the sleeping bag. I felt a lot of things but contentment didn’t really describe them. Confusion did a lot.

I just mated my best friend. Why is the sight of this woman affecting me like this? How can I…what is wrong with me?

She was pressed against my back, soft and relaxed in sleep when I came awake. Her fur was white as the snow that even now drifted down around the tent. It was better than rain I supposed, although I had to sit up and whack at the top of the tent every so often to avoid buildup.

Owen, my mate, snuggled against my chest, his breath tickling my nipple. This felt far too right for my sense of self. I had a mate. He was male. I was not in the market for a female to replace him.

Mates.If my wolf had been pleased last night, he was even more so now. Which made absolutely no sense. Last night had been a whirlwind of passion, of mating and everything that included. Tonight, we’d not been able to make love because of a female who ran away from home, for reasons she did not explain to us, and who did it without anything as practical as a tent.

Yes, I am with my mate.

Mates. Mates.

What are you going on about?

Silence followed. Wolves didn’t like being asked questions like that, but he’d said mates. Owen and I were mates. A fact we’d just discovered last night. To our great joy. So why didn’t the wolf want us to have another night of passion?

We’d have many, and wolves loved cuddling in their fur with their friends, with pack, but not like this. I was hard as steel, my cock a rod caught between our bodies, but that was just because my mate was there. The woman whose breasts were flattened against my back had nothing to do with that.

It was my mate.

He was against me. Keeping me in a state of arousal I expected to become a way of life over the years.

Skin to skin.

Not fur to fur.

And the woman as well.

The top sleeping bag was pulled up to our chins, and we were all three cuddled together in the tent,, naked and entirely without fur. At least no more than our human bodies offered. It happened again.

Why? How?

Oh hell.

I squeezed my eyes closed, hoping that when I opened them again, I’d be cuddled only with my mate and still in my fur. But as long as plump breasts with diamond-hard nipples were drawing so much of my focus, self-delusion wasn’t going to happen. This situation was real. I was turned on by the woman behind me and the man in front of me. They were both, apparently, still asleep, at least because my state of arousal would have left no doubt what my body wanted me to do. Counting sheep just got my wolf excited. We didn’t hunt them. They had grazed in the fields around our little house in Carson Valley, and if we’d all chased them around, that would have been very inefficient. Also, ranchers had a tendency to take this poorly and shoot predators.

Triple L raised them, too.That’s it, think about sheep. Wooly, fluffy, warm…sleepy. One, two, three.

“Mate, what do we do?” Owen’s voice was low and close to my ear, but we were in a very small space, and if we made any noise or moved at all, we’d wake her. Still, I had to respond. Some mates had a mental connection and could speak to one another without words. Not everyone did, but with our history of friendship blossoming into more, I gave it a try.

Nothing? Stay very still and hope it’s a dream?

Do you really want it to be?

I had never dated a woman. Never really thought about it, but then unlike Owen, I’d had a very light dating history. He primarily went out with men, but since I didn’t meet all his dates, I actually wasn’t sure who all he spent time with when we were apart.

I just don’t want it to be a nightmare.

His mental voice held laughter.For us or for her?

I nipped his ear for his sass.For either of us.

We lay like that for a while, nobody moving, before an indrawn breath drew my attention to the female behind me. Fear…or something else?

“Nova, it’s all right,” I said without turning to face her. “We won’t harm you.”

---