Authors: Becca Jameson
“What do we do about Alyssa?”
“Alyssa who?”
“Ha ha. The sexy blonde girl?”
“Was she blonde?” When Charles turned toward him, once again widening his eyes in shock, Reese laughed. “Oh, good grief. I know what color her hair is. I’m just pointing out what portion of my brain is actually focused on her.” Reese turned and stomped toward the opening in the trees. Taking advantage of their new ability to communicate silently, he spoke directly into Charles’ mind.
“You coming, or am I going to claim Jessica alone?”
There was no need to shout or turn around now that they’d found a mate. Their friendship had just taken an about-face.
“Do you have to be so crude?” Charles grumbled, but he didn’t care. This situation was sticky at best; it had disaster written all over it at worst.
“You want me to sugarcoat it?” Reese spun around in front of him, his nostrils flaring. “We’re fucked.”
“Hey, it’s not our fault. We’re innocent in this whole thing. How the hell were we to know we would meet our mate today of all days? People, wolves too for that matter, have lives. This surely happens.”
“Of course it does, but a very nice woman came halfway across the country with us for the holidays. You want to tell her or you want me to?”
Charles cringed again. Reese was right. Furthermore, Nancy Masters, Charles’ mother, was not going to be very happy if her son treated anyone, wolf or otherwise, with anything but respect and courtesy. He could hear it now. “Son, you invited this charming woman to spend the holidays with us, so now you must reap what you sow and deal with it.”
Reese craned his neck forward, waiting for an answer.
“Let’s figure that out later. First, we have to go talk a reluctant Jessica into … well, I don’t know quite what, but something.”
“At least we agree on that.” Reese turned on the balls of his feet and headed directly for the truck. “No sense stopping by the house now. We’re out of time anyway.”
* * * *
Jessica peeked out the small window in the corner of her classroom for the fiftieth time. It was the last day of the semester. The first day of Christmas break. Why the hell was anyone still in the building?
There were three cars outside. Her Honda Civic. An unfamiliar black truck right next to it with steaming windows, which could belong to no one other than either Charles or Reese. And last of all, the assistant principal’s Mercedes. Obviously Carrie’s husband had a better job than she did.
Stalling was Jessica’s middle name this afternoon. A confrontation with two hunky men was inevitable, and the last thing she wanted was witnesses.
She’d been waiting, rather impatiently, for the last few people to leave the school for a half hour. Normally, everyone scrambled within moments of the last bell to begin a break, especially a long break. Not today. No. It was taking an excruciatingly long time for everyone to vacate.
Butterflies bounced around in her stomach. Her head was so light she’d already stuffed it between her legs three times since school got out.
“Jessica?” The soft voice made Jess nearly jump out of her skin as she twisted herself around to face her assistant principal. Her hand got tangled in the blinds she held open to stare out the window, and they clanked against the frame, the noise louder than a freight train in contrast to the silence of the nearly abandoned school.
“Oh. Sorry. You scared me.” Jessica put her hand over her chest and heaved breaths. How had she managed to be oblivious to the approaching footsteps of Carrie St. Martin? The woman tromped around in tall heels every single day. It was nice because she could never sneak up on anyone’s classroom. Everyone could hear the woman coming a mile away as she clacked down the hallway.
Although somehow Jessica had been so far off in space, she’d managed to completely miss the woman’s approach even in the total silence of the afternoon.
“Are you okay? Why are you still here?” Carrie didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she angled herself around the desk and peered out into the waning winter day. “Is someone waiting for you?”
“Yes.” Jessica scrambled to stuff papers in her bag. Clear her desk of debris. “I was just finishing up.”
Carrie laughed as she turned back around. “Well, I’m leaving. I just thought I’d check on you when I noticed your car still outside. You’ll be okay? Do you know those people?”
“Yes, I’m fine. I’ll be right behind you. Friends. They’re waiting on me.”
Carrie looked concerned. Her brow furrowed as though Jess were lying. “Okay,” she drawled, seeming to realize how ridiculous that would be. “Everything’s locked up. Just make sure to pull the door closed when you leave.
As Carrie left the classroom, her heels resonated like tap shoes, echoing on the linoleum floor. She turned back one more time at the door. “Go. Enjoy your vacation.” She smiled and disappeared.
Exhaling a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding, Jessica scrambled to gather her things, flipped out the lights, and headed for the front door.
Now what are you going to do, smarty pants?
Perhaps it would have been better to leave while there were still teachers all over the parking lot than now when it was ominously empty.
As soon as she stepped outside, the chill bit at her cheeks and fingers. Large flakes were delicately drifting through the air toward the ground, in no hurry to reach their destination.
Apropos
, seeing as she had no spur on her heel to reach her destination either.
Fortifying breaths. She just needed to face these hunks and get out of here as fast as possible. Preferably before she succumbed to the lure of their scent as she had earlier today. This was not in the plan.
Charles and Reese stepped out of the dark truck parked next to her Civic and leaned against the bed. Their matching stares stabbed into Jess like four sharp daggers.
The afternoon had given her the opportunity to stiffen her spine and gather her wits without the ridiculous male pheromones to cloud her judgment. In fact, she practically held her breath now so she could think, and she stopped several feet from the men, spreading her legs a foot apart in the standoff. With her hands plastered to her hips, she could only hope she demonstrated a daunting presence.
Breathing in through her mouth to avoid what she’d already experienced earlier today, she began. “Listen, this isn’t going to work. I know—”
Charles laughed, practically in her face. “Are you kidding? Did you just become a lupine last night?”
His expression changed from mocking to sober to contrite as she glared. He didn’t continue.
“Listen, I’ll be the first to admit I’m not extremely versed in the ways of your—
our
—kind, but I know enough. I know I do have the right to refuse you, and that’s what I’m doing. Exercising that right.”
Charles took a step forward before Reese grabbed his arm and hauled him back against the car.
Reese took a few deep breaths, tipped his head back, and then narrowed his gaze at her again. “Why would you do that?” His words wafted toward her on the slight breeze, faint, almost unintelligible.
“None of your business. Please, let me be. Find someone else. I don’t want this.”
Charles had more difficulty controlling himself than Reese. He yanked his biceps free of Reese’s grasp and stepped toward her. “It doesn’t work like that,” he began. “If it did—”
“There is no need to make this difficult,” she interrupted. “I. Don’t. Want. A. Mate.” She separated the words and enunciated them succinctly to ensure there was no misunderstanding.
“Jessica—” Charles tried again, but this time Reese cut him off.
“Believe me, we didn’t head out this morning in search of a mate either. In fact, it’s downright complicated for us, but that doesn’t change the fact we are drawn to you on a level we can’t resist … and you are just as affected by us.” He lowered his voice and tucked his chin as he stated this last part. “Denying a mating is … rare.”
“It would be difficult. Unimaginable,” Charles finally managed to squeeze in. He even had the audacity to adjust his crotch.
Jessica’s gaze went from his face to his groin, taking in his stance that appeared almost painful. Neither man wore a coat, even though it was hovering near the freezing mark this afternoon. The bulge in Charles’ jeans grabbed her attention and held her gaze. She actually had to shake her head to wipe out the image and draw her attention back to his face.
Her lips burned in the cold, and it occurred to her that her mouth was hanging open, letting the frigid air in and drying her lips and tongue. She swallowed as she faced off with both men, licking her lips as she glanced from one to the other. “I’m not interested in mating.”
“Ever? Or with us?” Charles asked.
Tucking her fingers into the pockets of her coat to warm them, she shivered. “Ever.” There was no mistaking her intention. She’d not minced words. Were they dense?
Charles cocked his head and narrowed his gaze again. “You do realize this is inevitable, right? What are you afraid of?”
Jessica gasped. He’d hit the nail on the head and come way too close to reading her. She didn’t want anyone to dig into her brain and find out her secrets. It was her life, and she intended to live it in celibacy. They didn’t have stores full of vibrators and dildos for nothing. Somebody had to shop there.
“Please,” she pleaded, hearing the squeak in her voice. “I just want to go home.”
Back to the apartment where I’ve lived for four and a half years. The one where I live alone with my toys. The very one I was abducted from in the fall. Where I cry myself to sleep at night, praying I never meet with another group of crazy religious freaks or run into anyone resembling a mate—like you two.
With a tear sliding precariously close to the edge of her eye, Jessica plowed past both men, yanked her car open, and climbed inside out of the frigid air.
Her fingers shook on the steering wheel as she drove away. She didn’t want to discuss what she’d been through for the past twelve years with anyone… How her parents had been murdered right before her eyes at the age of ten… How she’d been yanked from her perfect home and placed in human foster care… How much she feared succumbing to the same fate as her parents if she ever let her lupine side come to the surface. No, Jessica had no intention of ever shifting and running free. It wasn’t safe, and she wanted to stay alive.
Chapter 4
“Son, may I have a word with you, please?” Those deep words accompanied the stern face and furrowed brows of Charles’ father, Richard Masters.
Charles hadn’t even climbed from the truck yet. The man had appeared before he’d gotten the keys out of the ignition and the door open.
“You too, Reese.” Without pausing, the tall patriarch spun on his heel and walked toward the barn.
“Shit.” Charles glanced at Reese.
“He’s not happy.”
“Let’s go.” Reese jumped from his side and crunched into the snow, the noise grating on Charles’ nerves at the moment.
Like two little boys, the men dragged themselves, tail and all, to the barn. Charles hadn’t felt this kind of confusion since the time he’d been spanked, scolded, and grounded when he was about ten for a pile of offenses he’d not committed and his older brothers had never fessed up to.
What now?
The barn was warmer than the outside, but somehow Charles didn’t feel all cozy when he gazed into his father’s eyes.
“What the hell is going on around here? And don’t feed me some line of bullshit. I wasn’t born yesterday. Let’s just cut to the chase, what da ya say?”
Charles narrowed his gaze and thought back to the events of the past several hours. Reese shuffled in the dirt next to him, his own imagined chagrin just as palpable as Charles’.
“Dad, I… Well, what are you talking about?”
His father’s eyebrows rose toward the roof. “Does the name Alyssa ring a bell to anyone?” He didn’t give them a chance to speak, which was a blessing since Charles couldn’t have known what to say yet. Where the hell was he going with this interrogation? “You two came waltzing in here yesterday, after six months of playing around. You bring a woman with you, whom I had to assume you had honorable intentions toward. And then,” he was nearly shouting now, “you traipse off this morning and don’t return for hours. Does that about sum it up?”
Silence.
“Oh, he’s pissed.”
“Do you blame him?”
Reese returned without moving an inch.
“You’ve been gone six hours.
Six
. What the hell were you doing?”
“We had to pick up Miranda from school, and—”
“All day? That was this morning. Half an hour, tops.”
Reese stepped forward, but Charles stopped him by clearing his throat. “It’s complicated.”
“It’s complicated?” his father mocked. “What the dickens is that supposed to mean?”
What should he say? How could he possibly explain this situation?
He couldn’t. They’d made a promise to Alyssa, and they needed to keep it. If that was even possible now. Wasn’t there some sort of natural law demanding an actual mate trump a potential mate?
Charles’ father glared back and forth between them, probably wondering at such odd behavior from two grown men. “That’s it? Neither of you has a word to say for yourselves?” He paused and then whipped his hat off his head to slap it across his leg.
Charles flinched. Rarely in his life had his father lost his temper. And the man had raised six children, five of whom were wild boys.
“Look here. I can smell a rat from a mile away. I wasn’t born yesterday. Whatever the hell you two are keeping mum about better damn well be good. Your mother is beside herself in there entertaining
your
date the entire day. Even your brother Michael stepped in to entertain your date for a while.
“Now, I know damn good and well this sweet woman who came home with you, Alyssa, is not mated to you two. She isn’t even mated to
one
of you. But the woman does have feelings, and if you have intentions toward her that extend beyond some sort of romp in the hay, then you’d better improve your bizarre behavior. If not, then I’m not sure why on earth you brought her home with you. None of you have ever brought a woman here who wasn’t your mate.”