Deuces Wild

Her heart is wild, but can she handle two mates for the price of one?

Jeff and Marlon are men on a mission. Highly-trained special operatives with a hidden talent for telepathy, they’re infiltrating an illegal high-stakes poker tournament in order to gather intelligence on the other players.

Maya has been invited to the tournament to help guard an ancient vampire. She’s a bear shifter, who has never found her mate. When fate introduces her to two men who make her inner bear turn into a hussy, she’s not sure what to make of it. Can she really have two mates? It doesn’t seem likely, but the more she’s around them, the more she wants to keep them...both...forever.

When terrorists attack the mansion where they’re all staying, the boys will have to swing into action, to save the day. Will they be able to handle Maya’s secret dual nature, or will the bear frighten them off? And, will they all survive the battle to discover if they are meant to spend the rest of their lives together, or will they never get the chance?

*Author’s Note: This story more firmly establishes the connection between the Gemini Project and Grizzly Cove, Jaguar Island, and all the rest of my paranormal series. Yes, they are all set in the same world - just different parts of it.

Marlon suspected something was up when Jeff was silent for so long. Usually, his partner would be giving him updates on everything he was observing in real time during an op. If there’d been anything to report other than the impossibility of accessing the perimeter wall and the occasional stray chipmunk, Marlon would have been doing the same. The whole reason for cultivating their ability to speak mind-to-mind had been to share intel and work as a team.
Right now, they might as well have been any other two regular guys on vacation in a mansion filled with the world’s elite. And that just wouldn’t do.
“Sit rep,” Marlon demanded as he made his way back to the mansion along the wooded path.
“Uh…” It took a lot to make Jeff Shera incoherent. Marlon wondered what it was this time.
Once before, he’d been completely stymied when a bunch of children had surrounded them in a foreign land. They’d been fully armed and covered in the enemy’s blood, yet these frightened children had clung to them, seeing them not as a threat, but as saviors. That had left both of them speechless, if Marlon was honest. Not just Jeff.
“Come on, man. What’s going on with you?” Maybe coaxing would work.
“There’s this girl…” Jeff seemed at a loss for words but forged ahead. “Woman, really. She’s… She’s…”
“A pretty girl has you acting like a teenager with his first hard on?” Marlon shook his head.
Jeff hadn’t had sex in a while. Hell, neither had Marlon. They’d discovered—much to their chagrin—that being joined at the brain didn’t shut down when they wanted some alone time with a willing member of the opposite sex. It had caused them a bit of…discomfort, so they’d avoided the whole issue for the past few months.
Things were coming to a crisis point, though, if Jeff’s response to a beautiful woman was this bad. Was she some sort of femme fatale? A Mata Hari intent on learning all of Jeff’s secrets and spitting him out after she’d chewed him up real good? Marlon wasn’t sure what kind of woman would make Jeff this unintelligible, but she had to be something special. Jeff was a hardened operative. He wasn’t some green boy to be trailing after anything in a skirt.
Marlon quickened his pace. He wanted to get a look at the woman for himself. He decided to detour through the pool area on his way back to the house. A quick turn onto a path that led to the formal garden and the pool suited his purposes.
When he arrived at the pool, coming in through the side gate, he noticed that there were some knockout women in bikinis sunning themselves in the large lounge area, complete with bar, two bartenders, and a number of wait staff. The women were beautiful, but most had their eyes closed and were soaking up the late-season sun. The few who were watching anything were either fussing with their own appearance or had their eyes glued to the two in the pool, swimming laps. Marlon recognized Jeff’s clean strokes at once, but the person swimming beside him…
Holy cow. That was a woman keeping pace with his swim buddy. A voluptuous, tall woman with curves and muscles. She wasn’t straining, but she was easily keeping pace with Jeff. No wonder he was impressed. It took effort to keep up with Jeff, as Marlon well knew.
“Who’s the mermaid?” Marlon sent to his swim buddy telepathically.
“Maya,” Jeff answered, swimming on automatic while his mind was still dazed.
“Pretty name. Impressive form. She been swimming with you the whole time?”
“Almost. She’s…amazing.”
“Quite a swimmer,” Marlon agreed. He wasn’t able to see much of the woman aside from the fact that she was tall and athletic. “Are you almost done?”
“Yeah, we agreed to one more lap,” Jeff reported, sounding a little more coherent.
“I’m going over to the bar. Meet me there.”