STEAM
Tasty Treats 7
Tymber Dalton
MENAGE AMOUR
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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[email protected] A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Amour
STEAM
Copyright © 2010 by Tymber Dalton
E-book ISBN: 1-60601-695-4
First E-book Publication: January 2010
Cover design by Jinger Heaston
All cover art and logo copyright © 2010 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter to Readers
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DEDICATION
For my husband, who’s my princess Prozac.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
While standalone, this story is the sequel to Boiling Point (available in the Tasty Treats Vol. 3 anthology). It is also a prequel to Trouble Comes in Threes, the first book in the Triple Trouble shape-shifter series. The events in this story take place immediately following Boiling Point, but a couple of years before Trouble Comes in Threes. If you’d like to read more about Ain, Brodey, and Cail Lyall, and Micah Donovan, you can pick up the Triple Trouble shape-shifter series from Siren-BookStrand.
STEAM
Tasty Treats 7
TYMBER DALTON
Copyright © 2010
Prologue
Brodey Lyall stood in front of the sliders and looked out at the backyard. A late March weather front had passed through earlier that afternoon. Rain fell in sheets, rippling the pool, casting the woods beyond in a greyish green hue. An hour before sunset, he didn’t even feel like a Friday night run.
He didn’t feel like anything except shit.
He wished he could erase Kimberlie’s voice from his mind, the image of tears sliding down her cheeks, her hazel eyes red from crying.
The sound of her voice as she pleaded with him to change his mind. The sound of her sobbing as he turned his back on her and drove away in his truck.
Closing his eyes, he took another long pull of his beer. His third in fifteen minutes, not nearly enough to numb the pain—yet. The three cases he’d stocked in the fridge might be enough to put him into a damn good drunk that night.
Worse, he could still smell her on his shirt, and he didn’t have the heart to take it off, or to shower.
His younger brother, Cailean, walked into the living room. “Brod, you okay?” he quietly asked.
The eldest of the triplet shape-shifters, Prime Alpha Aindreas, apparently had enough sense to stay the hell away.
“No, Cail. I’m not. Fucking. Okay.”
After a few minutes, Cail stepped closer. “You’re not alone, you know.”
Brodey didn’t respond.
“I’m sorry,” Cail said.
Brodey tried to ignore him.
“We tried, Brod. You know we did. I’m sorry.”
Brodey finished the beer, crushed the can, and dropped it to the floor where it joined the other two empties. He picked up another he’d left sitting on the end table, popped the tab, and took a long swallow. “Where is the fucking Prime prick anyway? Too chickenshit to come home?”
“That’s not fair, and you know it.”
In a movement almost faster than Cail could follow, Brodey turned and launched the nearly-full can at him. A stream of foam arced across the living room behind it. Only the fact that the alcohol slowed Brodey’s reflexes allowed Cail to step out of the way.
“Fuck you!” Brodey screamed. “You assholes didn’t have to do the dirty work!”
Cail’s jaw clenched. “April 20, 1937. Bangor, Maine, asshole. Celeste.” He crossed the room in four strides and grabbed the front of Brodey’s shirt. “Fuck. You. You’re not the only one who’s had to give up love because she wasn’t our One, and you damn well know it. The problem is, now it’s you having to deal with it. Fucking sucks, don’t it?”
Brodey shoved him. Cail was ready for it and threw him to the hardwood floor where he loomed over Brodey. Cail’s brown eyes darkened to nearly black in his anger. “You think you’re hurting now, two hours later?” he snarled. “Try waking up each morning and lying in bed every night thinking about her for nearly seventy fucking years, asshole, and then get back to me. Try that shit with Ain, he won’t show you an ounce of pity. Been over a hundred years for him. At least your girl is still alive. Ours have been in their graves for decades or longer.”
He stormed out the front door, slamming it behind him. One of the fan-shaped windows set into the heavy oak cracked from the force.
Brodey stared at the front door as Cail’s words rang in his ears. He dropped his head to the floor and sobbed.
Chapter One
Lina sat at the table and blearily watched Zack and Kael, who were bent over one of the prophecies. Already on her second cup of coffee, she’d climbed out of bed fifteen minutes earlier after extricating herself from between her men.
Jan and Rick Alexandr, her mates, were still upstairs, sound asleep in their huge bed.
Zack looked up and winked. She blushed. Last night, after a wild and woolly roll in the hay with Rick and Jan to celebrate their first official night in their new home, more new powers had cropped up to screw with her mind.
Life with dragon shifters. Welcome to Hell’s Happy Acres.
&n
bsp; Zack reached across the table and wrapped his fingers around her hand. Barely dawn on a Saturday morning and he was wide awake. When she knocked on his door a little after six, he’d already been up nearly an hour.
“You doing all right, Goddess?”
“Don’t call me that,” she groused.
“She’s not awake, Z,” Kael chided him, not looking up from the prophecy scroll. “You of all people should know better than to bust her balls before she’s awake.” Kael glanced across the table and smiled. She really liked him despite envying the fact that he was now Zack’s mate. Being handsome must be a dragon shifter trait. Brown hair and green eyes a different shade than her own, with a sculpted body. A cousin to her mates, he would get to spend the rest of his life in Zack’s bed.
Something that, up until eight months ago, Lina assumed she’d be doing.
“Sorry, sweetie,” Zack apologized. He sat back in his chair. “There’s nothing in this prophecy about sudden funky new powers. This is the next prophecy in the timeline. I mean, we know you’re going to gain a lot of powers, but we don’t know what or when. We’re flying blind in that respect.” He took her coffee cup and refilled it for her.
“Terrific. What the hell am I supposed to do?”
Kael shrugged. “We’ll figure it out. Oh, I talked to Uncle Andel this morning. They’re expecting us for the big Gathering next week.”
Lina hadn’t met the mysterious Uncle Andel yet, although she’d heard her men talk about him quite a lot. “Is being an early riser a dragon thing?”
“Obviously not,” Zack snarked. “Not with those two bozos still asleep upstairs.”
Kael ignored Zack’s quip. “He’s in Yugoslavia right now. Time difference.”
“Oh.” Lina wrapped both hands around her steaming coffee mug. “What Gathering?”
“Out in Yellowstone. I need to tell Jan and Rick about it.”
“Tell us about what?” Jan mumbled as he entered the kitchen and made a beeline for the coffee pot.
Lina’s heart fluttered at the sight of her dragon shifter mate. Wavy blond hair, ice blue eyes, pale skin, and a drool-worthy bod. Janek Svarog Alexandr formed the ice and earth half of the Elemental twin brothers. Usually the calmer and more level-headed brother, his temperament fitted his elements. He poured himself a mug of coffee, then leaned in and brushed a cool kiss along the back of Lina’s neck.
“Good morning, lovely,” he murmured, sliding into the chair next to her.
“There’s a Gathering next week,” Kael informed him.
Jan leaned forward and rested his forehead on the table. “Nooo.”
Kael smirked. “Oh, yes.”
“What’s wrong?” Lina asked.
Kael grinned. “You want to tell her?”
Jan shook his head without lifting it. “I don’t need this shit right now.” He finally sat up and looked at her. “I know you’ve been wanting to meet our family, but I was hoping for a less…”
“Overwhelming?” Kael helped out.
Jan shot him a dirty look. “Busy venue.”
Lina felt a surge of agitation wash through her. She clamped down on it. Until she knew what havoc her newest batch of powers could wreak, it was best she not get upset. “Answers, please.”
Kael didn’t speak. Jan sighed and turned to Lina, lacing his fingers through hers. His touch, as usual, felt comfortably cool. “A Gathering is like a business meeting, family reunion, political summit, and sometimes a speed-dating session all rolled into one.”
“Then what’s the big deal?”
“It’s all shifters. Not only dragon shifters. Canines, felines—everyone. Most of the shifter races will send representatives.”
“Whoa.” She tried to absorb that information. Before now, she’d specifically told them not to overwhelm her with too many shifter details over the past eight months. Especially since she’d taken over Callaway and Associates following her former boss Edgar’s impalement at the bottom of her pool after he tried to kill all three of her men. Zack being one of “her men” as far as she was concerned. “Canines? You mean…werewolves?”
Kael cleared his throat. Jan shot him a dirty look. “No, not werewolves. Don’t call a wolf shifter that, they’re liable to go batshit on you. Werewolves are totally different.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay, back to the topic at hand. I have to drop everything and traipse out to Yellowstone for this Gathering? Why can’t you guys go? We’ve got five huge commercial jobs right now.” Callaway and Associates was the architectural design firm where the Alexandr brothers met Lina when they went for a consultation on building their house.
“Goddess has to go,” Zack snarked. “You’re sort of going to be the dragon shifters’ star attraction.”
“Zack!” Kael and Jan sharply scolded him.
Lina’s jaw clenched. “Don’t. Call me. That.” She didn’t care what the stupid prophecies and Baba Yaga said, she didn’t feel like a friggin’ goddess.
She felt like a woman about to lose her mind.
Rick appeared in the kitchen doorway. “What’d Zack do this time?” He leaned in and kissed Lina with lips that felt scorching hot on his way to pour himself a cup of coffee. Jarek Stribog Alexandr’s straight black hair, warm amber eyes and tan skin set him drastically apart from his twin brother. The fire and air half of the Elemental twins, his hot, quick temper matched his hot, hard body. Yet for Lina, he would turn himself inside out to make her happy. Both brothers would.
“He’s busting Lina’s chops before she’s had a full pot of coffee,” Kael said.
Rick laughed. “Dude, that’s seriously asking for trouble.” He sat on Lina’s other side. “What’s going on?”
Kael filled them all in. A huge shifter Gathering, to be held at Yellowstone National Park that week. The Elders of their dragon shifter flagyer decreed attendance was mandatory.
“They want to meet Lina,” Kael said. “And perform your binding Ceremony.”
Lina sat up. “Our what?”
“It’s like a—” Kael was drowned out by the other three men suddenly being struck by coughing fits.
She glared at Jan, then Rick. “What did you say, Kael?”
Rick, a man she’d never seen scared, looked horrified. “Nothing.”
“Right, nothing,” Jan agreed.
The fact that the two brothers readily agreed to anything other than the fact that they loved her heart and soul made her immediately suspicious. She looked at Kael. “It’s like a what?”
“Wedding.”
“WHAT?” The dragon shifter men eased their chairs away from the table in preparation to run.
Only Zack held his ground. “Sweetie, it’s a dragon thing.”
“I don’t give a shit what the hell it is, nobody’s marrying me off just because some old fart dragons say so!”
This had been a major point of contention for Lina throughout her unconventional relationship with the brothers. The State of Florida decreed only one man and one woman could be married. Knowing her two men, they would kill each other before giving ground and voluntarily allowing the other to become Mr. Pavlina Zaria. Therefore, she’d decided neither would marry her. She hyphenated their last name to hers, and they’d each given her a beautiful ring—she’d made them draw straws for which ring would go on which hand so it was totally fair—but that’s as far as she’d go. She didn’t need a wedding certificate to prove her love for her men, or theirs for her.
“It’s not really a wedding,” Zack insisted as the dragons stood. As Lina’s Watcher and life-long friend, he was the only one with the gift to calm her. She’d accidentally set fire to a tree two weeks earlier when she waded into an argument between Jan and Rick over what kind of car to buy her. They’d managed to piss her off. Before she knew it, the men were running for hoses.
Since that little pyrotechnic display, the men were very careful about not upsetting her. Especially since she had no idea how she’d done it.
?
??What is it if it’s not a wedding?”
Zack’s face grew serious as he stood and slowly rounded the table. The other men backed away to the safety of the kitchen doorway. “It’s like a commitment ceremony, babe.” Zack reached out and took her hands, prompted her to stand. “Sort of like a dragon hand-fasting ceremony. For all three of you.”
Lina felt her anger bubbling close to the surface and focused on Zack’s calming brown eyes. He backed them toward the door leading outside to the patio. She let him lead her.
“Why do we have to do it? Don’t I get a say in it?”
He didn’t break contact with her gaze. He released one of her hands and turned the knob, pushed the door open, and led her to the brick patio, recapturing the hand he’d released along the way.
“Of course you get a say, sweetie. No one said you don’t.”
She tried to focus on his calm, steady voice. “But they’re ordering us to do it, aren’t they?”
“Well, they want to have it when everyone will be there to witness it. Sort of a two for one.”
Wrong thing to say. Anger took over again. “So, they want to make it convenient on them? Fuck them!”
“Shh, sweetheart, calm down. It’s okay. That’s not it. It’s a special thing. You’ll be the guest of honor. They’re doing it because you’ll be there. I know it’s short notice, but otherwise they’d have to wait until nearly winter, when the summer tourist season winds down. Right now it’s March. They’ve got special pull there. They want to welcome you to the family.”
Lina stared into Zack’s sweet brown eyes. Last night, when her newest powers took hold, she’d had an out-of-body experience and travelled downstairs into Zack and Kael’s bedroom.