Only to find herself looking into the sleeping face of an entirely different man. His black eyebrows were drawn down as though, even in sleep, grave matters weighed on him, his black beard framing a wide but thoughtful mouth. His arm lay just beneath the first man’s arm, so that she was held between both of them.
She lay with two men.
There was something lithe but solid across her legs, as well. Stretching up a little, she beheld the sandy curls of a third man, draped over her legs. His head rested on her thighs, and his hands cupped her arse.
Three men—dear God.
The trio were also completely naked. There was no denying that they made a rather splendid sight, acres of muscle, bodies long and hewn in exceptional form. She’d never beheld a group of men more beautiful.
She herself was mostly dressed, though her bodice had been cut open, and the laces of her stays were undone.
What in the name of the heavens was she doing, asleep on the floor of the forest, entwined with three nude men?
The arrest. Leading three highwaymen through the woods to the Essex road. The full moon…their transformation into…into beings both man and beast. The attack on the carriage. Her employer ordering her murder. Fleeing into the forest. And then…and then…
Even now, there was a throb between her legs. She’d had sex with one of the creatures. Sex that left her body pleasured and depleted yet energized. Her cunt had been filled, well used. As it happened, the two other creatures had watched avidly.
And she’d loved it.
She squeezed her eyes shut. What had she done?
One thing was for certain, she had to go. Where she would go, she’d no idea, but she couldn’t simply lie here in the forest, surrounded by three highwaymen who weren’t ordinary highwaymen. They were werewolves.
An arm around her waist flexed and tensed. Ezra, laying behind her, was awake.
“You needn’t hie off.” His voice was sleep-rough.
“I have to bathe.”
“There’s a creek. I’ll take you to it.”
“I can find it by myself.”
He stretched, his whole body going taut and then releasing. “It’s not safe on your own.”
Awkwardly, she tried to sit up. As she did, Tej and Rhys came awake. They both gazed at her with cautious interest, but said nothing as she attempted to disentangle herself from their heavy bodies.
She tried not to look at them and their naked forms, but they were truly magnificent. Even flaccid, and in their human forms, their cocks lay thick and long between their thighs. Heat crept into her cheeks when both men caught her looking, and she flicked her gaze away. Her hands fumbled at the laces of her stays, and she did them up quickly, though the front of her gown still gaped apart.
Ezra rose behind her, and he padded across the clearing, completely unconcerned by his nudity. That made one of them.
He rifled around in the large, gnarled roots of a giant oak and produced a canvas-wrapped bundle. Striding back to them, he undid the bundle to reveal an armful of clothing.
“We keep these stashed around the forest,” he explained, at Jessica’s curious look. “For after.”
He said this so simply. As if it was a matter of course that men transformed into mythical beasts and prepared for what happened when they reverted to their ordinary forms.
Tej and Rhys sat up and caught the garments Ezra tossed at them. In silence, all three men dressed—breeches, shirts, waistcoats, coats.
“Are you often caught unawares to make these caches necessary?” she asked.
“We feel when the moon is waxing,” Ezra said, “and make ourselves ready for it. But, just in case…”
“Just in case you’re arrested and marched through the forest as the full moon is rising. Yet you knew, the whole time, that my weapons couldn’t harm you.”
“We’re just as susceptible to a bullet as any man. However, when we change…” He shrugged. “Shooting a pea at us would do the same amount of damage.”
“And you knew you’d…change…by the time we reached the road.”
