chapter 4
“Would you quit f*cking pacing, man? You’re giving me a headache,” Bo complained. “I know she’s pretty, but she’s just a girl. It’s not like the queen is coming here.”
Michael spun with a growl. “She’s not just pretty, she’s gorgeous. I’m just nervous. I keep thinking she might change her mind.”
“You think those hyenas are going to try to win her over?”
“I don’t know. They have a lot more to offer her than I do.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, man. You’re a good guy. You’re honest and loyal, and you’ve been waiting for the right woman. If you think she’s your mate, then nothing those dogs say will change anything for either of you. Even humans can pick up on the mating lure when they’re with their wolf.” Bo leaned back against an old picnic table as they watched the wolves begin to gather for the cookout.
“True. That’s what Trick said when he met his wife Vanessa, right?” Vanessa was pack. Trick was human and also the town sheriff. He was a handy man to have on your side.
“Yep.” Bo pulled his baseball cap down further over his eyes and kicked his legs out and crossed them. He looked like he was going to fall asleep. Michael had just a moment to feel sorry for his friend. When he was fourteen he was struck by a car and nearly died. If he’d been sixteen and able to shift, he could have healed the injuries. But because he was so young, the injuries healed with human slowness, and they also didn’t heal quite right. He had a bad limp, and the pain kept him up at night. Human pain medication didn’t work on wolves. Eventually, he’d go the way of Michael’s grandfather and have arthritis in his joints bad enough he couldn’t shift.
Glancing at his watch, he grinned. “I gotta go get Shyne. Be on your best behavior.”
“Yes, Sir.” Bo gave him a mock salute, and Michael just laughed and headed to his motorcycle. He got to the empty bar parking lot with about ten minutes to spare. He wanted to be waiting for her, not the other way around. Debating on how to actually be waiting for her took some figuring out. Stay on the bike? Off the bike? Go sit on the curb? Lean against the wall? Finally, he worried she’d show up and he’d be twitching like a mental patient, so he stayed on the bike, pulled out his cell to check what he knew would be his empty email inbox except for her message, and leaned forward between the handlebars.
It had taken him a half hour to write the email to her. He wanted to sound sweet and witty without being sarcastic. She seemed to have a good sense of humor, but you never knew how people would take something in an email so he erred on the side of sweet instead. The crunch of gravel alerted him to her arrival. She pulled into the far parking space in a two-door older model sporty Miata.
Her high-heeled sandal-clad foot stepped out of the car first, and she swung the door open wider, pulling a small satchel over her shoulder and standing up.
Great mother of everything holy.
Thank you whoever invented short denim shorts.
The red tank top showed off her navel, where a belly button ring shone in the sunlight. Her hair was even more gorgeous left hanging long and plain than up in the high ponytail she always wore at the gym. He was one lucky f*cker.
“Hey, Shyne.” He got off the bike and took her bag, popping open the storage container on the back of his bike and handing her a spare helmet. He bought it for her that morning.
“Hi, Michael. Thanks for meeting me.”
He smiled at her, shut the storage container, and swung his leg over the bike as she clicked the buckle on the helmet. After he put his own helmet back on, he took her hand, and she slid easily behind him. “It’s not too far to the lake. Ready?”
Her hands slid around him slowly before clasping firmly together just under his arms. Leaning her cheek against his shoulder, she said very close to his ear, “Ready.”
Stifling the groan that the whisper of her breath against his skin had elicited in him, he headed towards the lake. Never had a ride been both so fast and so slow. He couldn’t decide if having her on the bike was heaven or hell. Heaven – her arms were around him. Hell – he couldn’t touch her without crashing the bike and possibly killing her. Heaven – he could feel the heat of her body through his clothes. Hell – he really wanted to touch her.
It was almost a relief when he pulled into the grassy area near the man-made lake that sat back on a large farm belonging to one of the wolves. Immediately, even in the July sunshine, he felt chilled when she let go of him and eased herself off the bike, flashing a lovely bit of inner thigh with the motion.
When she took the helmet off, she ran her hand through her hair and gave it a tousle, and he pictured it tickling his knees as she rode him with her head thrown back in ecstasy.
“Michael?” She nudged him with the helmet.
Was he blushing? Shit.
“Sorry. Did you say something?”
He got off the bike and growled internally at his cock that had remained rigid since the first glimpse of her as she climbed from her car. Stowing the helmets, he got their towels from the storage container as she said, “I was just asking who this lake belongs to. It’s really pretty here.”
“Glad you like it. It belongs to a friend of our father’s, a wolf named Robert. He farms the land around it but has always let the pack use the lake.”
He offered his hand, and she took it. He struggled not to let the happy growl rumble from his chest. In the short distance it took to walk from where he parked to the lake, he found out that she had just gotten her certificate to teach fitness classes, had grown up in Tennessee, and lived across the hall from her best friend who, she assured him, was as gay as the day was long.
He introduced her to Jason and Cadence first, finding them standing near one of the large folding tables set up with food. Cadence was working her way through a plate of ribs when they walked up.
“Jason, this is my friend Shyne that I told you about. Shyne, this is my brother Jason, pack alpha.”
“Hi, Shyne,” Jason extended his hand with a genuine smile. “This is my wife, Cadence.”
“It’s nice to meet you both,” Shyne smiled, shaking both of their hands once Cades had found a napkin to wipe her sauce-covered fingers.
He took her around to meet his friends, starting with Bo who was on his best behavior, then Linus and Karly, his parents, and the rest of the pack that were gathered. While he was giving her the introduction tour, he found it increasingly difficult to watch her even shake hands with the unmated males in the pack. He had an entirely new appreciation for how much his brother had gone through before he and Cades had mated. He’d only known Shyne for a week, and he didn’t want anyone else touching her. Jason and Cades had been dancing around each other for years.
“Hungry?” He chanced the opportunity to brush his fingers down her bare arm. Her skin was so silky and warm.
“Not at the moment.” She chewed lightly on her bottom lip as she looked out across the water.
“Want to swim before it gets dark?”
Her pretty eyes glinted with a smile, and she pulled her tank over her head with all the casualness of a woman that didn’t realize just how gorgeous she really was. Keenly aware that she was nearly in underwear and that the chatter around them had gone very quiet, he groaned in his head for thinking it was a good idea to have her come here in the first place.
Black bikini. Tiny, too. And then the shorts fell, and she bent over – f*cking bent over! – to undo her sandals.
Shit! Dropping to his knees, he pushed gently on her shoulders until she stood up, and he put a hand on her ankle. Was she insane? “Wouldn’t want you to fall over,” he offered lamely, and she chuckled and let him undo the tiny buckles on the straps of her red-checked shoes. She stepped from the shoes and the shorts, and he stood up with the shorts and folded them on the nearest picnic table with her top and reached for the button on his jeans.
She seemed lost in her own thoughts and wandered to the wooden dock that jutted out over the water by a handful of feet. Her gorgeous ass was just barely covered by the sleek black bottoms, tied on either side. His wolf wanted to close his teeth around them and tug until the seams tore.
He heard a few murmurs of appreciation, and he shot warning glares to the young wolves as he toed off his shoes and dropped his jeans to reveal dark trunks. Trying not to break out into a full run, he made it to where Shyne was standing at the edge of the dock shading her eyes and looking across the water.
“How pissed would you be if I tossed you in?” he asked.
She looked over her shoulder at him, a mischievous glint in her dark brown eyes. “I don’t know. Is it deep here?”
“Not here at the dock, it’s shallow. But out towards the middle it's about ten feet deep, give or take. You can swim, right?”
“Michael,” she said with a stern tone. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t be pissed.”
He reached for her, fully appreciating that he could tease her and also finally touch some more of that silky skin. He played his fingers across her shoulder. “Answer my question.”
“I, uh, can’t?” She tried to look innocent, but it failed miserably. She was just too sinfully hot to be anything even close to innocent.
He reached for her again, and she turned fast and jerked his arm forward so his own momentum carried him off the dock. Falling ungracefully face first into the water, he surfaced quickly to find her doubled over laughing.
“Ready?” she asked him, and he nodded, walking backwards away from the dock to watch her jump in. Whether she did it on purpose or not, she rose up under the water right in front of him, bumping against him with her luscious breasts, which thrust out slightly as she ran her hands through her hair.
“Clever little minx.”
“Don’t underestimate me. I may be cute and short, but I’m feisty.”
Indeed.
“I promise I won’t in the future. Race you to the end?” He leapt away from her and began to swim, twisting onto his back to watch her cut through the water like a fish. Hell. She was so pretty he kept forgetting she was an athlete. Wanting to salvage his pride after that dock debacle, he beat her to the end, but just by a few strokes. He could thank longer arms for most of that. He didn’t want to think she might have let him win.
He lifted her up onto the soft grass, and they stretched out on their backs, far away from the pack and noise and the other men looking at her.
“Your family is nice,” she said, rolling to her side. “Thanks for inviting me.”
“You’re welcome. I wanted to get to you know better, Shyne. The gym isn’t exactly conducive to that.”
“You could have asked me out,” she said casually.
“I did.”
She blew out a breath. “No, I mean you could have asked me out for coffee or something.”
Ah. I f*cking wanted to, honey. “I wanted to take things slow, if that’s okay? We just met last weekend.” Actually, sweetheart, I’d like to tug those bottoms down and spread your thighs and bury myself inside you forever. Is that slow? Mentally leashing both his wolf and his cock, he asked her a ton of mundane questions that she answered easily, turning the question gun right back on him. Oddly enough, she didn’t seem to care at all that he was a wolf. There was something particularly refreshing about that.
Eventually their stomachs growled, and since both of their suits were dry now, they walked around the lake instead.
As she told him about taking every fitness class she could over the last few years to figure out what she liked best, learning from others and being mentored, he couldn’t help but appreciate her dedication to what she was doing. She didn’t seem to be carried away about health and fitness, but she loved exercising and helping other people feel good, and she found a way to make a career of it. The only thing she didn’t seem very willing to open up about was her family. She did say her parents were dead, but that was as far as that conversation went before she carefully changed the topic. He let her without pushing it. He didn’t want her to resent his curiosity. There’d be time enough for secret sharing when she knew him better. Already, he was itching to touch her, hold her in any way he could. His gums hurt from his fangs wanting to elongate, and his fingertips ached from his claws trying to push through. By the time they settled on their towels near Jason and Cadence to watch the fireworks, his throat was so raw from growling quietly at everyone that looked at her a second too long, he thought he’d lose his voice by the end of the night.
As she leaned against him and the fireworks exploded overhead, he caught the hint of rapture on her face and wondered if it was just the general magic of the lights in the sky or if there was more to it than that. He didn’t ask, not wanting to interrupt whatever it was that made her look so sweetly entranced.
Before they headed to the bar, he took her up to Robert’s home, and they both changed into regular clothes. He donned a pair of jeans and a navy blue silk t-shirt. It wasn’t exactly his style, but there was something about the way that it offset his blue eyes that made him think she’d like it. He was right.
When she came out of the downstairs bathroom, her eyes lit up. “Wow. What a great color on you.” She carefully touched the edge of the sleeve with her fingertips. Electrifying.
“What, this old thing?’ He grinned, and she laughed. “You look great, too. But I think you could wear a potato sack and look good.”
Her cheeks pinked slightly at the compliment. It was true. Granted, she really did look great. Dark jeans, low cut black shirt, and worn cowboy boots. Those were the kind of boots that made him picture stripping her slowly and then putting those back on. Just those. Hell the f*ck yeah.
He enjoyed the ride back to the bar this time. Now that they’d spent a few hours together, they had both relaxed towards each other, and she seemed to be the touchy-feely sort, casually touching him in places that shouldn’t have been erotic but suddenly were. Could a man come from a touch on the hand? He wouldn’t have thought so, but perhaps it was just a culmination of things with Shyne. Her scent, her presence, her voice. Everything about her seemed tailor-made for him alone.
When they got to the bar, he offered to buy her a drink. “I, uh, don’t drink. I mean, I do, but not when I have to drive. But I’ll take a soda, if you’d like to hang out some more?” She sounded painfully shy suddenly, as if she thought he would say no. Not gonna happen.
“A soda sounds great. I’ve been meaning to drink more of them. They’re one of the food groups, right?”
Her lush mouth split into a wide smile. “Yeah, right up there with potato chips and ice cream.”
He couldn’t have picked a better mate for himself. She was just so perfect. She fit right in with the pack, engaging Cadence in a lengthy conversation about pregnancy workouts and massage, which clearly thrilled Jason. They had all been worried after the fiasco with Callie’s wedding in May. She had been part of the pack and Cadence’s best friend since elementary school. When she left the pack to find herself, it nearly destroyed Cadence. Linus’ wife Karly had helped her come back from the edge, but she had a baby to deal with and was looking into opening up the old Lonestar restaurant in town. Cadence was kind of drifting right now and really needed a friend.
Michael looked at Shyne as she spoke passionately about fitness to Cadence who took it all in enthusiastically. This was heaven for him. Yes, it would be even more heavenly to be in bed making love to her and marking her as his forever, but this was a piece of his life that he’d been pining over for a long time. A mate. Someone to share his life with.
Cadence didn’t want to dance, but Karly did, and Michael and Linus watched their women act like old friends as they danced to the new band. For a guy that hadn’t had a ton of breaks in his life, suddenly things were looking way up.
When it drew close to one a.m., Michael walked Shyne out to her car. “If you’re too tired to drive, I have a lumpy couch,” he offered.
“I’m good. It’s not that bad of a drive anyway.”
“Do me a favor?” She opened the door of her car and tossed in the small duffel.
“Sure.” Straightening, she looked up at him.
“Would you text me or call me when you get home? So I know you’re safe?”
She looked utterly awed at the request. He wondered how old she was when her parents died, and who took care of her in their place. Maybe no one had cared about her welfare in a long time. He would change that.
“I will, Michael.”
He stared down at her as his body grew more tense by slow degrees, while his mind played ping pong with the most important question he’d ever needed to answer to-date: kiss her or not?
Her lips parted slightly, and he lost the ability to think any further, answering the question with action. Kiss her? Hell yes.
He brushed her mouth lightly with his own first to give her a chance to pull away if it was too fast, but she didn’t. Instead, she stepped closer and rose on her tiptoes to wrap her arms around his neck and pull him down. Slanting his mouth to hers, he delved his tongue inside the hot cavern of her mouth and thought his body might combust just from the sweet taste of her. Decadent like chocolate, she tasted sweet and sinful at the same time, a devil and an angel wrapped up together. Gingerly, he put his hands on her waist, and she let out a small moan when his thumbs grazed the warm skin bared between shirt and jeans.
Her arms loosened slightly, and he pressed one more kiss to her lips before releasing her. Best. Kiss. Ever.
“I’ll let you know when I get home. Thanks for today. It was a lot of fun.”
Her eyes were glittering with happiness as she sat down in her car and shut the door. He stood out in the parking lot and watched her leave until the red glow of her taillights was gone.
“Oh, hey, Michael.” Fritz interrupted his reverie over the days’ events and the amazing kiss. Fritz was carrying a guitar case towards the band's van that was parked at the back of the lot.
“Hey, Fritz. How are things?”
Fritz unlocked the back of the van and set the case down gently. Turning with a broad smile, he said, “Man, I’ve never been happier. I had no idea how freeing it was to find my truemate. And her brothers are great.”
Suddenly, Michael wasn’t feeling very jealous of the younger wolf. He’d found his own mate, and he couldn’t be happier, either. Clapping Fritz on the back, he said, “I’m happy for you.”
He returned to the bar to say goodnight to his family and friends and then headed home. As he pushed open the front door, his phone beeped with a text from Shyne:
“Home Safe. Thanks for Everything. You’re Wonderful.”
He returned a text to her before lying down for the night. “You’re wonderful, too. Good night, sweetheart. Sweet dreams.”
He was certain his own dreams would be very, very sweet, too.