By the Tail

followed her example. When they’d left the pride after Quince’s sixteenth birthday, every one of the pride males had seemed to breathe easier. Miles and Quince included.

“I’m not sure what happened.” No longer interested in speculation or Miles’s say-so, she wanted to know the truth. She’d come to understand that her older brother had a blind spot when it came to Quince. He refused to believe anything good about his ex-best friend. Joy didn’t understand why, especially after the way Quince kept treating her like spun gold.

“You still smell like him.” Stacey grimaced and stared at her manicured nails.

“Shut it, Stacey. You smell like that mongrel Dean all the time.” Joy sneered, though she thought of Dean as her own twin. He got into more trouble than she did, on a regular basis. “And I’d know. Remember? I banged him back in June.” Actually, she’d pretended to have an affair with Dean in order to trick Dean’s brother Grady into making a move on his current wife. A female who, at the time, didn’t seem to know Grady was alive. A convoluted scheme, but Grady now had a wife he couldn’t live without. Joy’s doing, naturally.

“Liar.” Stacey glared at her. “As if. Dean would never—”

“You used to call him a man-whore.” Joy started to have fun.

Amy grinned. “And Jethro. Gomer.”

“Boy-toy, flavor of the month,” Melissa continued.

“Oh, all right. I was peeved with his whorish ways, I admit.” Stacey sighed. “But at least his loyalty has never been in question.”

Stacey had a point. Still… “Maybe it’s time to stop seeing Quince through Miles’s perspective. Quince did help us finish Lex.”

“Technically, he forced me to distract Lex while Burke and our pride—” meaning the Cougar Falls pride Stacey had recently adopted as her own “—finished them off.”

“But Quince helped too,” Joy insisted, bemused to find herself wanting to defend the arrogant cat. “Without him, we’d never have dealt with Lex, always waiting for him to make a move. Quince was an ass about it, but he got the job done.”

Her sisters stared at her in silence.

“You know,” Amy said slowly. “Reports I’m getting from our friends down South do hint that Quince is doing a good job rebuilding. Sharing the wealth, divvying up resources. He’s appointed lieutenants again to keep the peace. And he’s got legitimate pride accountants tracking down the money and restoring it to the group.”

“That does look good for him.” Melissa nodded.

“Well I don’t care,” Stacey said flatly. “The proof is in the doing.” She narrowed her eyes at Joy. “You don’t seem to care about his troublesome history. Fine. I’ll give you this bit of advice though. You want to stay a step ahead of him? Act like you despise him. Men love that.”

“Seriously?”

Stacey nodded. “But don’t work your wiles on him. Stay just out of reach, Miss Easy.”

Joy blinked. “You think I have wiles?” Oh wow. Did she? She had the Bermin genes. Men seemed to love her sisters. Maybe she had a buried ability to attract men she’d never known about. She could grab them for sex but never seemed to hold on to her dates after the fact.

“The point is moot. You can’t have a relationship with him. Remember what he did to me.”

Joy frowned. “What, exactly?”

“The man held a knife to my throat and threatened to hurt Miles if I wouldn’t help him. I was devastated. Scared for my life.”

Joy rolled her eyes. “Please. I should enjoy him for that alone.”

“Bitch.” Stacey flipped her hair back and gave Joy her infamous death glare, her light blue eyes like lasers.

“Thanks. Back at ya, Your Highness. Honestly, I don’t know how poor Dean endures you.”

When Stacey screeched back an insult, Joy fired one back for fun and decided it was past time she returned to Miami. She’d enjoyed keeping one step ahead of Quince, but now she was tired. She wanted to relax, like she had earlier that afternoon.

Her belly fluttered, and she knew exactly what she needed. Some fun in the sun with Quince to see what the hell was really going on in the pride, and some distance from her perfect sisters. Even snarling, Stacey radiated beauty and poise, which was annoying all the way around.

Melissa and Amy exchanged sympathetic looks while Joy finished packing up to go home. When Dean entered on the end of Stacey’s diatribe about how much she’d given to the poor backwoods people of Cougar Falls while Joy went off to God-knew-where, he took one look at his mate, one look at the rest of them, and advanced.

“And then I—Dean? What are you doing?” Stacey gasped when he yanked her to him and hefted her over his shoulder. But it didn’t take her long to start swearing like a sailor.

He turned to wink at Joy. “Good luck. Allow me to translate for your sneering sister. ‘Keep your legs closed, you hussy, and think of your poor little sister and what she suffered’ actually means ‘I’m going to really miss you and I love you dearly. But don’t worry about me, because I married the perfect man.’”

Stacey smacked him on the ass, pushed up off his back and twisted around to be seen. She shoved her hair aside to glare. “And you, you spiky-haired cretin. Big sister or not, I’ll kick your sorry ass all the way to—”

Joy cut her off. “Yeah, I’ll miss Your Royal Bitchiness too.” To Dean, she gave a kiss on the cheek. “See you, man-whore.”

He gave her the one-finger salute, chuckled, then turned on his heel with a slap to his mate’s ass and a warning to tone it down. To their surprise, Stacey sputtered then grew silent and flashed them a grin and a wave goodbye.

Joy and her sisters stared at one another in the sudden silence.

“Embarrassing,” Amy said.

“Such a spectacle,” Melissa agreed. She paused, then added, “Especially because she loves when he manhandles her like that.”

“I don’t even want to think about where he’s taking her and why.” Amy cringed. “Those two have sex on the brain—”

“Twenty-four seven,” Melissa ended.

Her little sister and Dean, a more perfect couple Joy couldn’t imagine. “And you all wonder why I want to remain eternally single.” She shook her head and finished packing, alarmed at the excitement she continued to feel whenever she thought of joining Quince again. “Do me a favor. If I ever get like that,” she paused to nod at the door, “shoot me.”

Her sisters said as one, “Done.”

Chapter Three

Quince stared through the window of the plane, uncomfortable at being in an enclosed space, one that could fall out of the sky at any given moment. At times like these he understood why raptors thought they had an edge on land dwellers.

“Okay. Lay it on me.” Joy sipped a rum and coke, slouched in her seat as if enjoying herself at a four-star resort. She cocked a brow. “Well? I’m not getting any younger.”

She sat close and—considering that even the first class seats seemed miniature for him—they continued to brush against each other, which made the trip almost bearable. That and he’d left Montana far behind. Thank God.

He glanced around them and noted that with the late hour, few passengers remained awake. Those that were listened to music or watched their electronic tablets. The rumble of the plane gave him added assurance he’d be hard to hear if he lowered his voice.

Speaking in a voice too low to be heard by humans, he explained what he’d been wanting to tell her for far too long. “Michael was like my father. You know that.”

“You loved him,” she said quietly.