Iron: Blue Collar Wolves #1 (Mating Season Collection) (3 page)

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Iron warned before Steel could say anything further. Steel never liked Laura and Iron half expected this reaction, but he wasn’t going to hear anyone – even his alpha – talk shit about the woman he just confessed he was going to mate.

“Why? Out of everyone in this forsaken city, why her? It makes no sense.”

“She knows who and what we are. She knows our world. She wants lots of kids and has no problem that this is going to be our life. And I know you don’t like her, but I do, enough that I know we’ll make good parents and have a good life together.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“
Steel
-”

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Steel ground on, the disgust on his face clear as a ringing bell. “You got the sexiest, smartest woman we’ve ever met as your mate, and you’re not even going to try?”

“Made my decision.” Iron’s growl was audible, a rough scrape of vibration against eardrums. “Accept it or don’t, but I made my decision.”

Steel rose, leaning into Iron’s space, about to say something else, when with a sudden jerk he drew back, his eyebrows crowding close together and wary surprise racing across his features.

This was Steel’s alpha face. This was wolf business, somehow, but Iron didn’t feel a goddamn thing – not a wrong scent, not a wrong noise – and that had his hackles rising. Iron pulled back from their fight, every inch now pure beta of the pack. “Anything I need to do?”

Steel’s face shifted by the second, concern going into confusion, wariness translating into…
hope
? Only the light in his eyes and the feel of
alpha
never left. “Don’t know. Stay here, and follow in ten if I don’t come back.” With that, Steel left the bar, the front door slamming behind him.

“Fuck.”
This night was putting Iron on edge. Hell, he’d been on for what seemed forever. Fucking
Mating Season
. Somehow this year its pull was harder than ever to ignore, and it seemed every unmated male in the pack was feeling the effects. Probably because the full moon was on Beltane this year. Bubby would probably know, but he wasn’t going to visit the old woman to ask. She’d smack him in the back of his head and ask him why he hadn’t mated Bella yet.

Speak of the incredibly sexy little devil… Bella walked to the bar, sitting that plush ass firmly on the bar stool right in front of him. “What’s a girl got to do to get a drink around here?” she asked, and her tongue came out, touching the corner of her mouth with a light, sensuous stroke, designed to make a man’s dick immediately jump with the hope it could be included the next time that tongue made an appearance.

Fuck.

‡

I
f anyone else
ordered a piña colada, he’d have kicked them out of the bar.

Bella, though, drank only fruity drinks and the occasional margarita. Like hell he’d ever admit he’d memorized that entire section of a bartender’s bible, let alone that he bought it thinking of her.

“Thought the hospital liked you too much to let you off on a Friday,” Iron said, setting the drink in front of her.

Bella picked up the drink, her eyes on him over the rim of the cup. She took a long swallow, humming in pleasure, his sensitive ears picking up the sound over the general noise of the bar. After she put the drink back down, her tongue made another appearance, swiping away over her lips, picking up any lingering moisture.

And all the while, her gaze was locked with his.

He stared back, refusing to look anywhere else on that bountiful body, that beautiful face. He couldn’t crack, not now, not when he was finally closing the door that should have been slammed shut years ago.

“It’s not me specifically the hospital likes. Any resident is fair game.”

“They still work you too fucking hard.”

She shrugged, her lips in a little half-smile. “I gotta pay my dues like anyone else. But…” She trailed off, bending forward a little to rest on the bar, hunching her shoulders to give a wider gap at the front of her shirt and with that, an amazing look down at the top of her breasts–“I do have tonight and tomorrow off. Plenty of time to…
relax
.”

Desire pulsed low in his belly, a flame that started simmering the moment he saw her tonight rising and flaring to meet the heat in her gaze. Bella had always been flirty with him, but tonight she was on a mission, in his face with her desires. “Playing some pool to relax?”

“To begin with.”

The tension wasn’t broken, but put on hold when one of the girls Bella had come in with walked up to the bar and grabbed her arm. Iron bit the inside of his cheek to keep from baring his teeth at the girl. The girl, unaware of any vibes, pulled at Bella, saying, “We got the next game, and
Sam
is asking if you’ll partner with him.”

The way she said the name told of a long-running story, a game plan in motion.

Sam.

So that was rich boy’s name. He had an open, eager face, decent enough looking, more intelligent than handsome, and his gaze was once again fixed on Bella in a way that had the glass in Iron’s hand in danger of cracking.

“I’ll be over in a moment. Let me finish my drink and grab another.” Bella looked to Iron, and taking the hint, he began mixing the next one. After a couple more words, Bella pushed the other girl away and once again turned her full attention on him. “Sam’s a doctor – pediatrics. Nice guy, too. Been flirting with me for a while, but it hasn’t turned into anything yet.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“No, you only looked ready to murder. Why is that, I wonder? Think he’s too good for me?”

His voice was rough in anger. “Where do you get this shit? When the fuck have I ever thought that about you? If anything, pencil dick isn’t good enough for you. I could go over there and break him, and there’d be nothing he could do to protect you from me.”

Bella’s eyes lit up, and his wolf went to ground, positive he’d somehow walked into a trap. She wrapped a strand of rich brown hair around her finger, pulling it across her mouth, bringing his attention to the star of many of his favorite fantasies. “Oh? Does that mean
you
think
you’re
better for me? Because you can protect me? Place me behind you while you take on the world for me?”

Her words became visual for him, and the phantom feeling of her body pressed against his back had him almost panting with adrenaline and desire.

“How should I thank my protector?” Bella continued, and she leaned closer, dropping her voice to the low tones that seemed designed to make his dick go from zero to coming in about ten seconds. “On my knees? With my mouth open and my tongue out, waiting for my man to take his reward?”

If his knees hadn’t locked he’d be on the ground, the image in his mind destroying every bit of strength in his body.
Fuck yes
, he wanted to come all over that beautiful face, thick white strands visible against the rich tan of her skin, and then he’d push every bit into her mouth, watch her swallow his come down, and by the time it was done he’d be so fucking turned on he’d do it all over again.

“Is that what you want to see? Me marked by you, so much that no one will ever doubt you own me?”

She was sin and temptation and every fantasy of his life, and the thread of his control was fraying with every word she spoke, unraveling no matter how he tried to pull it together.

“Bella,” came a voice from the tables behind them, but other than a lift of her hand to acknowledge she heard the words, Bella otherwise didn’t give them any attention.

Instead her attention was focused on him, those gorgeous brown eyes shining with want and lust and determination. “Let me tell you a secret, Iron. I decided I’m spending the next twenty-four hours getting
fucked
. I want a dick deep inside me, so hard and so full and so deep I won’t walk right for three days. I want a man’s tongue running over every inch of my body, like he’s starving and the only thing that sates the hunger is the taste of my skin. I want a voice in my ear describing every filthy, debauched sexual act he’s going to do to me or make me do to him, and I want him to wreck me, and then I’m going to turn around and do the same thing to him. And finally, I want a good dozen orgasms before I go back to the hospital Sunday afternoon.”

Iron was frozen, his brain not working and his dick in danger of exploding from all the blood settled there.

Bella leaned back, still sexy, but no longer carnal, no longer primal. Now she was talking as two long-time friends did. “Here’s the deal. I want that man to be you. I’m tired of our little thing, whatever the fuck it is. So this is your choice. At the end of the night, I’m going home with a man, either you or Sam. If it’s Sam, it might be the beginning of a relationship, or it might be a one-time thing between colleagues. I don’t know, but I’m not going to worry about that now. If it’s you…” and here she stood and leaned forward, grabbing the drink from his hand, her face too close for anyone to mistake what she was saying as casual. “If it’s you, we can enact every fantasy the two of us have had, and I don’t know everything that will happen after, but Iron? One thing I know? I know it will be
good
.”

She placed a twenty on the bar. “Keep the change,” she said, and walked to her friends.

Fuck.

‡

S
tupid, sexy, stubborn
bastard.

Why? What had she done to deserve to fall in love with the most idiotic, blind asshole to ever walk the earth? Bella swallowed the water in three gulps. She couldn’t handle any more liquor on her stomach, not the way it roiled in time with her nerves.

None of her friends noticed, though. They laughed, smiled as they continued to play pool. Only Mel had been able to tell when they talked earlier. Of course, only Mel knew her history with Iron and what the plan was for tonight.

Sam couldn’t keep his eyes off her. She’d been the center of his focus all night. Good-looking in a quiet way, brilliant, genuinely nice, rising star of pediatrics, and she could barely look at him because Iron was in the same room.

Stupid muscle-bound, dour jerk. He pulled her out of the sandbox when Rick Jordan shoved her, wiped the sand from her knees, and told her to beat Rick’s ass and he’d make sure none of Rick’s gang would jump in. After Rick ran away with a bleeding nose and his former friends now making fun of him, Iron smiled and said, “You’re badass.”

Mrs. Jenkins scolded him for his language, and Bella decided then and there she was going to marry him.

The problem was he didn’t get the same revelation.

All through high school, Mel assured her that the chemistry between them was almost visible, that he was going to break one day and bend her over the nearest desk and after that they’d be together forever.

It never happened. He had a revolving rotation of girls, and she’d ended up losing her virginity to Billy Marconi on prom night.

Billy had been a mistake – not because she regretted finally having sex, but because his idea of foreplay was two minutes sucking on each breast, followed by five pumps, followed by being asleep the rest of the night. Yeah, she never went out with Billy again.

The bad sex she was able to rectify through a college social life she refused to sacrifice for her medical goals, but she never forgot Iron. No man could come close, though all her college girlfriends conceded she gave it a hell of an effort. She didn’t plan to pine for the guy, it was just that she couldn’t forget him.

Twenty-two years, umpteen fights, a legendary amount of jackassery, and he was still the only one who made her heart twist in her chest with his smile.

Which led to Mel’s phone call, telling Bella of her theories of what was going on with Iron and his love life. Which led to Bella taking charge and getting her ass down here.

Which led to tonight, because like
hell
Laura was going to get her man as a mate. Fuck that shit. It was one thing to think Iron would never mate. In a weird way, she could deal with that. Not optimal, but hey, that was life. Taking another woman as mate though?

It wasn’t going to happen. Full stop.