STORY EXCERPT

On the first night of the first full moon after her twenty-fifth birthday, they all went out to the glade together. With Kent being the oldest, they’d just all assumed that he was the Alpha, but when they did the ceremony, they’d felt nothing. The sex was hot, but they just instinctively knew that they weren’t Mated. Indeed, if they needed any additional evidence, the mating bites on Penelope’s shoulder hurt. Normally, they would have healed at an accelerated rate because the men’s saliva mixing in her bloodstream but even with their semen mixing inside her, the unbreakable bond didn’t happen.

The sex, of course, had been fantastic. But not Mating-fantastic.

They just shrugged it off and didn’t even try again that cycle. Then they next monthly full moon cycle arrived and they tried again, figuring that this time it was a sure thing, but when it didn’t work, they tried again the next month. And again. And again. They’d tried for a full year, in every possible combination on all three nights each full moon. Penelope’s shoulder where the mating bites needed to be ached with the memory. The bites had taken time to heal, and with three sets of bites, one for every night of the ceremony, by the end, she was really hurting and the healing was slow, the teeth marks leaving small scars.

The men had been horrified when they got a look at her shoulder one day a few months into their mating trials as they took to calling them. Normally things happened in the dark, and Penelope made sure that they never saw her shoulder in the daylight. She was ashamed of the marks because they signified her failure as a woman, a Mate.

She put on a positive front of her men though, and the rest of the town. Not everyone in Harmony was a shifter, but there were plenty of them and they all wanted to know when the five of them would make it official and start popping out pups... It was getting harder and harder to smile and joke and deflect the questions, especially since she owned a café and many of these people were her customers.

After six months of trying, they’d even made the trip to New Harmony to talk to the pack elders. They’d even talked to Lena’s father, who was a vet who specialized in wolf-shifters, to make sure there was nothing physically wrong. They’d talked to Rory McAllister, the elderly Alpha of the Harmony Pack, but he’d never heard of such a thing. The Mating had always worked. They’d tried everything they could think off to make it work. Rory had been able to give them the names of a few shifting experts who might be able to help. Lena’s father had only been able to admonish them for taking so long to ask for help, but even he couldn’t do anything but prescribe some ointment to use on the bites on Penelope’s shoulder after yet another failure.

And something alarming was happening. With every failed attempt at Mating, there was a growing distance between them all, the feeling of failure permeating their every encounter. After the first few months, sex had become a duty more than a pleasure, something they did each month with the attempt to Mate, and each time it didn’t work, it drove them further apart.

Last night had been the first anniversary of the first failed mating, and they all knew without talking about it that it likely wasn’t going to work this time either and that if it didn’t, they weren’t going to try again. They all had talked and talked and talked, and a month ago, after the last failure, they’d decided to try just the one last time. For three nights, they’d do everything they could and if the mating didn’t take, then that would be it. They would still love each other and spend time together and have sex frequently, but they wouldn’t try to Mate again.

Maybe, eventually, they’d even move on and Mate with someone else, they’d said, but Penelope knew in her heart of hearts that she was meant to be with them, and if they found another Mate, then she’d live out her life alone.

And last night was the final night of the full moon. They’d gone back to the glade to try to make it special, but even before they’d started, Penelope had known that it wasn’t going to work, and looking at her men’s faces, she’d known that they knew it, too, and were only going along with it to humor her.

When they’d bitten her shoulder, she’d flinched from the pain. But she’d only cried when they’d all finished and she’d lain there with them knowing they’d failed again. It was only 10:00 p.m., but none of them had the heart to try again, and for once, even her Mates weren’t aroused. She’d never seen them naked and not hard for her. It showed her the depth of their despair that they were as limp as she felt.

In that moment, she resolved not to put them through another Mating Ceremony until she figured out what the problem was. They weren’t going to suffer through another failure again.

She felt Kent and Tucker get up. They never used an alarm. Both had one of those inner clocks that seemed infallible.

“Wake up sleepy head. Want us to get you come coffee?” She felt Tucker brush her hair back and kiss her cheek lightly.

“Yes please. I’ll be down in a minute.”

Kent walked over to her and paused. ‘You okay?”

“Yes, now shoo. I have another ten minutes before I have to get up, and I intend to enjoy every last second of it!” She waited until Kent kissed her cheek and both men headed downstairs before she let the tears start flowing.

“Fuck the ceremony,” Penelope decreed as she sobbed quietly. “Fuck shifter lore and mating ceremonies. I love them. They love me. It will be enough.” Her voice dropped lower. “It has to be,” she almost whispered. “At least until I can find the answer.”

ADULT EXCERPT

Penelope awoke to find herself in her own bed, sandwiched between the hard, naked, aroused male bodies of brothers John and Jack. She looked toward the window and realized that it was still night. She turned and squinted at the clock. It was just after midnight. She must have almost passed out as soon as they got home. She didn’t even remember getting undressed and getting into bed.

She started to sit up, but her movement had awakened the men. And then another movement caught her eye. It was their cousins Tucker and Kent walking toward the bed. They were naked and aroused, as they walked into the room. She could feel her pussy moisten and clench. She didn’t know if all wolf-shifter men were so well endowed, but her four men had huge cocks that would embarrass the men of Playgirl. They were all long and thick and could stay hard for as long as the male wished and could quickly get hard again after ejaculation, if the male became aroused again. She yearned to feel her men inside her, without the pressure of Mating, ceremony be damned.

She wondered if they’d planned out their moves or if there was some kind of unspoken communication between them because once Kent and Tucker entered the room, John and Jack turned her until she was lying lengthwise across the bed with her head hanging off the end.

Once she was situated to their satisfaction, John and Jack were at her sides, latched onto her nipples as if they were starving infants, but no infant had mouths like those, wicked, wicked mouths and lips and tongues and even teeth. She moaned with need as Jack gripped her hard, throbbing nipple between his teeth and tugged lightly just as John suckled so hard that not just her nipple, but her areola and even part of her breast was pulled into his hot, wet mouth.

Their hands weren’t idle, either. They each had one hand wrapped around the breast they were attending to, kneading, squeezing, caressing, and even slapping and pinching occasionally, each touch designed to drive her arousal higher and higher.

Their other hands we also kept busy. They each had one long muscular arm looped under her knees, pulling her legs back and stretching her wide. Her lower lips gaped open, pussy on full display for the enjoyment of Tucker, who now lay between her legs, his face so close she could feel his warm breath on her bare skin.

Removing the tangle of dark curls between her legs had made her even more sensitive, not that she’d done it herself. Her men took turns shaving her bare and seemed to find the act as arousing as she did.

She wanted Tucker to move. Touch her. Lick her. Fuck her. Something! But nothing could ever make Tucker move faster if he wasn’t ready. He moved slowly and deliberately, like he did everything. She moaned and tried to shift, but Jack and John held her tight, their mouths continuing their torment of her breasts, and she could feel Kent, Tucker’s twin, moving beside her, cradling her head against his shoulder as it tipped back off the bed, his breath hot in her ear as he whispered dirty things to her. Kent was Tucker’s opposite. He did everything at top speed. Even sitting on the floor by the bed, he somehow seemed to be in constant motion touching her with his mouth and his fingers and his tongue while never stopping the constant stream of commentary.

“You want to feel my brother’s mouth on your pussy, don’t you, baby? You want his to lick your pussy and maybe fuck it with his tongue?”

“Oh, god, yes!”

“Tucker, she wants you to lick her slit and shove your tongue inside her pussy.”

“Her wish is my command.” Penelope felt his tongue starting low, almost down to her puckered back opening before sliding past her pussy opening, all the way to her clit, which it circled without touching, and then he returned to her pussy, shoving inside once, twice, three times before he pulled out.

During this, John and Jack had stopped their ministrations to her nipples, and she moaned in frustration and tried to thrust her breasts back at their mouths, but they held her in place, laughing at her frustration.

“Our girl’s trying to set the pace. Naughty, naughty.” Jack’s voice was mock stern, but he pinched her nipple sharply to make his point. It he thought that was punishment, he was mistaken as Penelope could feel the zing all the way from her nipple directly to her clit and her pussy, which pulsed with need.

“Hey, Jack” called Tucker from between her legs. “Whatever you did, do it again. The pussy cream just poured out.”

“My turn.” Jack’s twin John pinched her nipple, tugging and twisting it lightly. “Well?”

“Excellent. Do it again.” Tucker lapped up her cream before plunging his tongue back inside her. This time, his fingers strayed to her clit, pinching and tugging it lightly, and she could feel the shudders start, which was always the precursor to an orgasm.

Penelope moaned in frustration as he pulled his mouth away from her pussy again.

“More. More! I was so close.”

“You liked that, did you?” Kent asked. “What about his fingers? Would you like them inside you?”

“Yes!”

“Then ask.”

“Tucker, please put your fingers inside me.”

Tucker slid his fingers inside. Penelope’s pussy clamped down on them as her body anticipated their movement, but nothing else happened. “Move them, damn it!”

“Now, baby, is that any way to talk to the man who holds your orgasm in the palm of his hands, or rather”—Kent laughed—“the tips of his fingers. Tell him exactly what you want. And remember, we want explicit. No euphemisms. No pretty words. Say what you mean or you aren’t going to get it.”

“Please move them, Tucker. Please fuck me with your fingers. And my clit. Suck my clit, please, Tucker. And, John, Jack, please suck on my nipples… tits, I mean, suck on my tits. Hard. Please.” Penelope moaned and twisted under them, waiting, her pussy pulsing with need, the cream flowing out, her nipples so hard they could cut diamonds, but none of the men moved. She knew they were waiting for something, but she all she could think about was how badly she needed to come.

“Please tell me what you want from me! I’ll do anything!”