Free Acceptable Risk by Candace Blevins Page B

someone was
available to give her a pedicure. They were, and an hour later she
was out the door, her toes a beautiful shade of metallic
purple.
    The guys’ car was still in her driveway when she
got home, but she went inside anyway. It was her damned house.
    “How did ya’ll know I was coming back?” she
asked as she stepped into her den. They’d been watching TV, but
Ranger turned it off and they all focused on her as he said,
“You’re too damned stubborn to let us run you out of your house for
long. It’s one of the things I like about you.”
    Bethany sat in a chair and leaned forward, her
elbows on her knees, her face in her palms, not looking at any of
them.
    “I’m pissed, and hurt, and I feel as if I’ve
been violated.”
    “When I was eleven,” Jonathan told her, “a few
months before my first change , my uncle took me hiking and
raped me. I didn’t tell anyone, and when I was sixteen, I found out
he was planning a hiking trip with my seven year old cousin, and I
killed my uncle. It’s why my family sent me away to be a soldier at
sixteen. I have a high school diploma, but it isn’t a standard
one.”
    “You can’t join the military at sixteen.” There
was so much more she wanted to say, but she started with the
easiest.
    “It was a supernatural force, and not a nice
one. I joined the United States military at eighteen, to get away
from them.”
    She was figuring out what to say next when
Ranger said, “You already know my most traumatic story, being
turned into a werewolf and having to live apart from my family for
years until I gained control of my wolf.”
    “My mom was killed in a car crash during my last
year of college,” Mac said. “My sister is married to my best
friend. He knows I’m a werewolf, but she doesn’t. My dad won’t be
able to know, either. I don’t have any major childhood traumas, but
you know what happened to me just before I was turned, and you know
what I am.”
    They were trying. She was still pissed at Ranger
and Mac, as they seemed to be the ones who’d snooped. Jonathan,
though, she discovered she was no longer angry with.
    He was sitting on the sofa, and she ignored the
other two as she walked to him and sat in his lap facing him, with
a leg on either side and her hands on his shoulders.
    “I’m good, Raggedy. No leftover trauma, and
somehow I escaped the life without becoming a psychopath. I only
told you because I thought it fair you knew my deep dark
secret.”
    “You were turned at eleven?”
    “No, I was born a wereleopard and my first change happened at eleven. I was stronger than a normal
child, but wasn’t superhuman-strong in human form until I was
probably twelve or thirteen.”
    He pulled her close and she relaxed into him.
She wasn’t ready to end up in bed with all of them, though, and
wanted to talk more.
    She opened her eyes, looked at them, and asked,
“Have ya’ll ever played Cards Against Humanity?”
    After four hours of playing games, they went to
bed, but there was only snuggling and talking before everyone went
to sleep. Her guys seemed to understand she wasn’t up for more,
tonight.
    Last night, they’d just fucked. The next time
might be more than mere sex, and the thought terrified Bethany.
     

Chapter Eleven
     
     
    Ranger awoke before everyone else and went to
the kitchen to start breakfast. They’d already learned Mac couldn’t
cook for shit, and Jonathan could only cook meat and fish. He did a
damned good job with it, but Ranger had turned into their main
cook.
    Bethany didn’t have to work today, and Ranger
planned to woo her with adventures and keep her mind off the fact
the four of them were growing close.
    Her mom had chosen men badly, and so had Bethany
while she was young. She hadn’t let anyone get close to her in
years, the best Ranger could tell. She’d decided she was better on
her own than with a man, and they were going to have to convince
her she could trust them.
    Ranger chopped and cut onions,