As John growled against her shoulder and his hips pumped, a series of firecrackers snapped through her nervous system-pop, pop, pop. She jerked as if she'd been hit by voltage from a defibrillator and her eyes rolled back in her head. Power surged through her and the wolfman in her arms howled as he came.
Sherrie panted as she came down from her high. Her hair clung to her sweating face. Both she and John were drenched in sweat as they melded together. Even as she gathered her fragmented senses and slowed her breathing, Grant let them know he was no longer content to be a bit player.
Reaching around Sherrie's body, he pushed John off her and turned her to face him. She looked up into the taller man's face. His golden eyes shone like an animal's caught in headlights. He lifted Sherrie in his arms as if she weighed nothing and settled her onto his cock. Her pussy was still pulsing from her orgasm and tender from John's hard ramming. Slippery and soft, it shaped around Grant's probing girth and enveloped him. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she held on as he bounced her up and down on his shaft. Her bobbing breasts rubbed against his lightly furred chest, tickling her sensitive nipples.
Over Grant's shoulder, she saw John watching with narrowed eyes. She wasn't sure if his expression was annoyed or aroused. She smiled at him and reached out a hand, welcoming him to come close. He sidled over, standing beside her and Grant, and slipped his hand around her waist above where Grant clutched her buttocks. Instantly Sherrie felt the connection again, the strange enhancement of her senses that happened whenever the three of them touched simultaneously.
She held onto Grant with one arm, slid the other around John's neck and leaned toward him. She kissed him, tasting the musk of her body on his tongue. The beginnings of a third orgasm began to rumble inside her like distant thunder. Impossible! She'd never managed more than two in a row, tops. Multiple orgasms were an urban legend as far as she was concerned, the stuff of articles in women's magazines that claimed to know the top ten tricks for enhancing your sex life. But then, until yesterday, she hadn't believed in werewolves or panther shifters either.
She couldn't deny the growing thunder that rolled through her. She pulled away from John's mouth to suck in a breath of air and caught a glimpse of Grant's face twisted in a scowl of ecstasy. At the same moment she felt him come inside her, a strong burst of fluid. He snarled like an angry tomcat, and her inner muscles clamped around him as her mounting urgency bloomed into another powerful climax.
This time the power churned through her with unstoppable force. Not a mere bodily reaction but something much more-too big to be contained inside her fragile human body. The energy burst forth from her-from all of them-like an electromagnetic wave. Her hair crackled with electricity, and the wave swept outward from their threesome as if they were ground zero of an atomic bomb. Air rushed away, leaving them in a temporary vacuum that devoured all sound. The ground trembled. Loose stones and rocks tumbled away from them at the force of the wave.
Sherrie's chest compressed, and she couldn't breathe for a moment, but then the air came rushing back in, filling the void. She heard the crash of falling rocks. When she looked toward the wall of rubble that had sealed them into the ravine, it had blown outward from the force of the blast, leaving a gaping hole and air full of swirling dust.
Chapter Seven
As the dust sifted through the air, powdering all of them from head to toe, Sherrie clung to the two shifters and gaped at the destruction of their prison wall.
"That was unexpected," she murmured, and the understatement made her laugh even as the last quakes of her climax shimmered through her.
Grant lifted her off his flagging cock and set her on the ground. John slipped a supporting arm around her waist, which was a good thing because her legs were trembling. All three of them coughed and brushed grit from their eyes.
"We'd better get moving." Grant stooped, picked up Sherrie's jeans and tossed them at her.
John caught the jeans and handed them to her then cupped her cheek and looked into her face with his soulful brown eyes. "Are you okay?"
She nodded, touched at his unrelenting concern for her. She couldn't remember the last time a guy had been so protective and sweet. Maybe Ryan a little, at first, until he'd turned out to be a jerk, ditching her in L.A. in an apartment she couldn't afford with household bills in arrears. She smiled at John.
"I'm fine. Fantastic, actually." Her body felt supercharged, like she was a superhero or a junky on a high. "I feel like I'm ready to take this guy on. The only question is how." She stepped into her underwear and jeans, pulling them up her dust-smeared legs.
"First thing is to find him then we'll figure out how to break him." Grant was already half dressed in jeans and boots. He delved in the backpack and threw them each a bottle of water.
Sherrie guzzled most of hers and used a little to rinse her face. She dressed quickly, but even so the shifters were both waiting for her by the time she'd tied her shoes. She wished she had a moment to process what had just happened, but there was no time. They should leave the ravine before their nemesis realized they were free. Nemesis-not a word she'd ever expected to use in her lifetime. What would be next?
Minions? She shuddered and hoped not.
Grant shouldered the backpack this time and forged ahead. John took Sherrie's hand, helping her climb over the remaining rubble blocking the path. They went back the way they'd come, down the steep slope, as the path leading up had been virtually destroyed. Besides, they could be picked off one by one by anyone watching that pass.
"Now what?" Sherrie panted as she trotted along trying to keep up with John's long, loping gait.
"We'll go around, find another way up."
"And then?"
He shrugged and continued walking fast.
"Could we hold up a minute?" Sherrie called out to Grant, who was yards ahead of them and disappearing into the undergrowth. "Maybe make some kind of plan before we go any farther?" The panther shifter glanced over his shoulder. "Soon. I want to make sure we're safely out of range first."
She took a deep breath, pain lancing through her side, and ran on. Her feet ached from the chafing of her new shoes, and her panties were soaked with come, a sticky, uncomfortable sensation. But other than those discomforts, she was still glowing inside. She wondered if she possessed some powers now. Could she punch a fist through a brick wall? Shift into animal form like her companions? Fly? It was pretty obvious she couldn't suddenly run faster, since she was practically staggering along behind John in her efforts to keep up.
At last Grant led them through a thicket of bushes into a grove of trees and stopped. Sherrie bent over, hands on her knees, and gasped for breath. The men weren't even winded. She sat on the ground, stretching her legs before her and leaning back on her arms. She exhaled a long, ragged breath, wincing at the stitch in her side.
The woods were quiet except for birdsong, the buzz of insects and the rustling of leaves. Sherrie tilted her face up to the shafts of light spearing the canopy overhead. A breeze cooled her sweaty face, making her skin feel stiff from salt and grit.
So, here they were, and somewhere out there was their enemy-a being powerful enough to control peoples' minds and maybe cause an avalanche. Was she now equally powerful? Sherrie reached out a tentative tendril from her mind, willing the leaves to shake. At that precise moment, the breeze rose and the branch she was staring at swayed, causing the leaves to tremble. Coincidence? Maybe.
She looked over at John, who was taking his shoe off and pouring pieces of gravel from it, and at Grant, who paced the perimeter of the clearing, stopping occasionally to listen. She felt a wave of affection for each of them and a sense that she knew them intimately, although they'd been acquainted such a short time. John's caring warmth and Grant's exciting energy were like two sides of a coin-both of them indispensable. You couldn't spend half a coin. She wanted and needed them both.
"Sit," she commanded Grant. "Let's join hands while I try to locate our guy with my mind again." Although she made the offer, Sherrie hoped one of them would think of an alternative. She didn't want to meet this entity again, not in her mind or in person. He had a scary, off-balance vibe she imagined serial killers possessed.
Grant jumped on the suggestion. "That's a good idea. Clearly you gain some power from joining with Walker and me. Use it to try to find our enemy's weakness. If we feed you our strength, maybe you can even take him down with your mind."
Not what she wanted to hear, but even John didn't protest that it was too dangerous. He nodded agreement and scooted closer to take her hand. "Be careful." Grant gracefully dropped down beside them and seized Sherrie and John's hands. The warmth of his big palm engulfing her hand and John's hard, callused grip on the other made Sherrie feel much more secure. Their union was strong. She could do this.