Shifters with Secrets (An MMF Bisexual Threesome)(10)

Even though he was completely, one hundred percent positive that Janelle was fine, Thomas also knelt by the girl’s head. It wasn’t like he could walk away from someone who was screaming, even if he’d much rather follow Sofia out the door.

“Put this on, it’ll stop the swelling,” the bartender was saying. As a human, she had no idea that Janelle was clearly faking it for the attention of a male shifter — she was just trying to help out.

“Should I call an ambulance or something?” the bartender fretted. “Do you have someone who can take you to the emergency room?”

“We’ll take her.”

That was Gavin, who had also managed to arrange his face into an expression of concern, though Thomas could see straight through it, of course.

Janelle looked from Gavin to Thomas to Monica, and for a moment, her expression changed.

“I don’t think I need to go to the emergency room,” she said, her voice suddenly far less urgent. “Just home is probably fine.”

“Are you sure?” asked the bartender. Right now, she was the most concerned person in the room, at least besides the table of fretting middle-aged librarians. After all, none of them knew what was really happening.

“Yeah,” said Janelle, who then winced dramatically, still holding the ice to her nose. “It might not be broken, it might just be... bruised?”

Slowly, she got to her feet, looking wobbly.

Her biggest problem is just that she’s drunk, thought Thomas.

“Let us take you home,” he said.

Suddenly, Janelle seemed to realize what she’d done: rather than keeping Thomas at the bar with her by pretending to break a bone, now she pretty much had to go home, ending her night before 7 p.m.

Thomas could tell it made her mad, and he smiled to himself.

“Allow me,” he said, holding out his arm and grinning.

They left the bar, arm in arm, Gavin and Monica not far behind.

“Feel better!” shouted the bartender after them.

She, at least, had been genuinely nice.





Chapter Seven





Janelle lived in a small apartment on the back of a much bigger building, only a few blocks from main street. Frankly, Thomas was surprised that she didn’t still live with her parents — Monica, for instance, still did, despite being in her twenties — and a lot of shifters went that route, only moving out when they finally mated and started their own families.

Sometimes, he felt like he was living in 1915, not 2015, even though he had his own place. Modern humans mostly moved out, went to college, lived on their own — why were shifters so tied to the old ways?

‘Thanks for taking me home,” Janelle said. Her nose seemed perfectly fine by now, if a little tender, and she was hanging onto Thomas’s arm. “Want to come in for a nightcap?”

Thomas wasn’t sure where she’d learned that word. Probably from TV, but the sun had just barely set.

“No thanks,” he said.

Behind him, Monica stumbled into Gavin. It was ridiculous, really, how quickly the two girls had gotten drunk. What were they even trying to do? Were they that inexperienced in the ways of seduction, that they thought the right way to go about it was to get as drunk as possible and pour themselves over two men who couldn’t have been less interested?

“Come on,” Monica said. “There’s plenty of sugar inside.”

“I’ve got to get up in the morning for the grape harvest,” Gavin said.

Both girls just blinked at him.

“Sorry,” said Thomas, detaching Janelle’s arm from his own, having to pry her fingers up one by one. He and Gavin began walking away together, back down the quiet side street where Janelle lived.

“I know about you!” the drunk girl called after them.

Thomas and Gavin both froze where they were and looked over their shoulders.

“Everyone knows!” Monica shouted.

“You think you’re so f*cking sneaky,” slurred Janelle, much too loudly. “We know. We all talk about it.”

“Go to bed,” shouted back Thomas. “You’re drunk.”

Then he turned around and walked out of the girls’ sight.





***





Both he had Gavin were dead silent for a few blocks, walking back toward the main drag.

Finally, Gavin spoke up. “You think they do?” he asked.

Thomas just shook his head. “No,” he said. “How could they?”

“It doesn’t seem impossible,” Gavin said.

They kept walking.

“My car’s just around this corner,” said Gavin. “You want a ride back to your place?”

“Sure,” said Thomas.

Something tightened in his stomach.

He knew they should be more careful. He knew that Gavin shouldn’t give him free drinks and he knew he shouldn’t flirt with the other man in public like that, but it was so hard. Along with every other way the pack was stuck in the past, they frowned heavily upon any sex act that wouldn’t produce cubs.


Hell, male members were notorious among women for not even going down on them, something that Thomas really wished he hadn’t heard his mother gossiping about with her friends when he was a teenager.