Loner (Norseton Wolves #2) (2 page)

When the pack had voted months ago on whether or not it was time for Alpha to put out the mate call, Darius had been the second-slowest to put up his hand. The only wolf more reticent was Anton, and it was easy enough to guess what Anton’s dysfunction was. “Beast” had gotten mauled six months ago while in his human form. He was blind in one eye, and though he’d had a good deal of plastic surgery on the side of his face, he couldn’t hide his scars. It made sense that he was holing up inside his house. Darius had half a mind to do the same, but it was too late. Alpha caught his gaze and waved him over.

Damn.

Darius’s packmate Colt snorted as Darius pushed off the wall he was holding up. “Good luck, Loner,” he said with a dry laugh.

“Fuck you,” Darius muttered under his breath.

The teasing and name-calling was all in good fun, usually—they
all
had nicknames—but sometimes it got so damn wearying. Probably another reason Anton had kept himself inside. Alpha would probably have Anton’s ass for it later, but seeing as how Alpha was his uncle through marriage, Anton
probably
didn’t worry too much about it. But when Darius thought about it, he realized Alpha had never put much stock in nepotism. Maybe Anton should have worried.

Shoving his hands into his jeans pockets, Darius made his way up the short stone path and around the bench that held the four women.

He felt a bit like he was marching off the gallows, but instead of him being the one sentenced for an unforgivable crime, some poor woman was getting punished by receiving him as a mate.

Alpha had one of the women standing now, one with hair the color of cinnamon and the nicest pair of tits Darius had seen outside of a Vegas showgirl
. No, not a showgirl.
Like one of the pin-up girls from the 1940s he’d seen in a book he’d picked up at a festival long ago. She had red, heart-shaped lips and an eyebrow arched curiously at him. She was prettier than any of those glossy pictures.
Unreal. Is she mine?

She looked him up and down and pursed her lips.

Maybe that was actually her natural hair color. Best he could remember, he’d never been with a ginger. Then again, he didn’t remember much about very many of his sexual encounters. That’s all they were, really. Transient wolves didn’t form attachments. The pack had only recently settled in New Mexico.

“Stephanie Benson, meet Darius Lucas. Darius, this is Stephanie,” Alpha said, and with that terse introduction, moved on down the line.

That’s it?

Now what?

She bobbed her eyebrows. “So…it’s nice to meet you, I guess.”

“Likewise,” he muttered. It was all he could come up with. He was tongue-tied at the best of times. If he’d been thinking ahead, he would have rehearsed something—perhaps thank her for coming so far and apologize in advance for what he was.

He picked at his thumb’s cuticle and stared at his feet.
Fuck
.

Colt jogged over at Alpha’s beckoning next, and a moment later, led his mate to Alpha’s house, where they’d stowed all the women’s luggage.

Oh
.

Darius started after them.
Stephanie probably has some bags
. Halfway there, he figured he should see if she was following. She was. She bobbed her eyebrows again and clasped her hands behind her back.

“Sorry.” He gestured toward the house, and she walked on ahead of him.

Luggage acquired—and she had a lot—he led her to his own small adobe bungalow and pulled open the screen door. She walked in and waited in the foyer as he made a tidy pile of her luggage.

“Nice place you’ve got here.”

“It’s all right.” He certainly couldn’t complain. Up until last winter, the wolves had been living out of the conversion van that they used to transport themselves from one assignment to the next. They followed the dollar signs, taking security gigs for various groups, and doing all sorts of mercenary tasks, short of wet work. They did
try
not to kill people, but some folks just asked for it. Now the pack was more or less settled in the community of Norseton, where they’d been contracted to provide security services to a group called the Afótama. Lots of space around them, and not a hell of a lot of people to get in his face. It was a pretty sweet job, and he prayed to the goddess nightly that no one fucked it up for them.

He turned on the living room light and closed the heavy wood door, leaving it unlocked before turning to his would-be mate.

Stephanie rocked on her heels and clamped her arms over her belly. “So…how do you want to do this?”

Her voice was everything he’d expect from a woman shaped like a silver screen siren. It was husky and low, with a tantalizing rasp that seemed intent on tugging his cock to attention.

“
Helloooo
?” she crooned.

She must have been hypnotizing him somehow. It wasn’t uncommon for some wolves to have a little magic—usually the ones the goddess had taken a special interest in for whatever reason. He just bet the goddess had bestowed numerous blessings onto a woman like Stephanie. It was the only explanation for her being so alluring.

He pulled his gaze from her bright red mouth and stared in the general vicinity of her eyes. “Yes?”

“You don’t talk much, do you?”

“I talk.”

“In full sentences?”

“Yeah.”

She let out a breath and gave her head a small shake. “Just as well. I guess I can talk plenty enough for the both of us. My mother says I could talk the paint off a wall, but I think I’m interesting, at the very least.”

His gaze fell to her succulent lips yet again, and every muscle in his core and crotch tightened with his imagination’s unwelcome romp into the nasty. She would probably leave a ring of red around his cock as she sucked him off, and push those breasts up to catch every last drop of his cum. He’d return the favor, of course—he’d bury his face between her solid thighs and lick her until she came on his tongue. He was pretty sure that was how it worked—in theory, anyway. No one had ever expected him to perform that specific task, and he hadn’t felt compelled to volunteer.

“I mean, I spent a lot of money going to college to make myself interesting. Bachelor of Fine Arts. The only thing that degree is good for is talking about, though.” She shrugged nonchalantly. “And teaching, I guess.”

She dragged her tongue across her lips and he drew in a sharp breath.
Will she put that tongue on me one day?
If she was going to be his mate, he could ask.
Or is that something people don’t ask for?
He wasn’t sure what was allowed. If he’d had to go out and hunt for a mate on his own, he would have probably come home empty-handed. Finding a woman to fuck was one thing. They didn’t necessarily expect conversation and chivalry. But a mate?
Whole different ballgame
, he was guessing.

“Like I asked before, how do you want to do this?”

Gods, her voice
. He could hardly make sense of the words through the spellbinding sound. “Huh?”

She tugged down the neckline of her loose tank and exposed the stretch of pale flesh between her breast and collarbone.

Dear goddess…

“The bite.”

He forced down a swallow, his mouth suddenly having gone as dry as the desert outside.

Just a bite?

“Do you want to do it right here, or should we find a nice sofa? Hey, no worries—I’m easy.”

“Easy?”

She let go of her shirt and rolled her eyes. “Not
easy
easy. You know what I mean.”

He did. Or at least, he
thought
he did. He’d always considered himself to be pretty street-smart, given he’d been on his own since he was a kid, but his brain sure as shit seemed to be a few beats behind at the moment. “Uh—sofa, I guess.”

“Lead the way. Unless you’d like me to just make myself at home?”

“Yeah. Your home now, too.” He hoped she liked it. It was basic: a base model house with no customization. He hadn’t even known what upgrades to pick, and by the time he could give it any serious thought, it was too late to put the specs in. He didn’t really care, though. She could do whatever she wanted to it.

“Oh-
kay
.” She turned on her heel and passed beneath the archway into the great room. There, she paused, looking around and finally heading for the sofa.

He hurried ahead of her and picked up the pile of newspapers he’d been storing there. He didn’t even know why he was collecting them, beyond his chronic inability to throw things away as of late. He’d been so used to having few possessions, and only one or two bags to store them in. Having a whole house to himself was a novelty that still hadn’t worn off in six months.

He dropped the papers onto the coffee table and straightened the slipcover. “Sorry for the mess.”

“Nice print.” She settled onto the sofa and gave the fabric a rub beneath both palms. “Did you pick it out?”

“Uh—yeah.” He could have lied and said that Alpha’s wife, Mrs. Carbone, had chosen it, but he didn’t see the point. He’d been drawn to the pattern. The hunter green chevrons reminded him of mountain treetops—of home. Of course, he hadn’t seen that home in over twenty years. He’d been expelled from his birthpack at age nine. Fortunately, Alpha had scooped him up before any real harm could come to him. Still, he missed it, his first home, in spite of everything that had happened there. In spite of being all but forgotten by the people who were supposed to care for him.

“Plain white sofa underneath?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“I recognized the pattern because I used to have same white chair, just with a different cover. Gone now, though. I sold or gave away most of my things before I came here.”

She must have had a lot of stuff if she’d needed four big suitcases to haul what was left. “Sorry. You can change it. So it’s like yours was, I mean.” She could have whatever made her comfortable. He wouldn’t complain. It wasn’t like he knew what he was doing in that part of his life, or many other, for that matter. He was far smarter in his wolf form. His wolf wasn’t constantly second-guessing himself, or berating himself for saying stupid shit.

“Nah, I like the green. I can do stuff with green. It’s not in my usual decorating palette, but I like stretching myself. It’ll be interesting to see what I can do to feminize it. Hope you don’t mind a little feminizing around here.”

He shook his head. She’d be spending more time there than he would, anyway. He spent most of his days out on the Norseton grounds, and by the time he got home, he didn’t care much what his surroundings looked like. They only things that were important were that they were dark and quiet.
Cavelike
, Mrs. Carbone had once accused. “You’d live in a cave, wouldn’t you, if you had your druthers?” she’d asked him.

He’d just shrugged. It was true. The guys had laughed, but Darius hadn’t seen the point of arguing it. He’d spent a lot of time as a child in his wolf form, hiding out in caves whenever the human world got too fucking crowded and loud. No one ever went looking for him, and eventually, they’d asked him not to go home at all.

“Splendid,” Stephanie said. “And you need more furniture.”

“I buy a little each month.” He took a seat on the coffee table in front of her, right on top of the newspapers.

“Are you going slow by necessity, or are you just indecisive?”

“I don’t use credit.” Everything he had he owned free and clear. Most folks couldn’t say that, and he was proud that he could. If she expected more from him, then she was just going to have to be disappointed.

“I don’t either. I’ve got lots of money.”

He furrowed his brow. It seemed like an odd thing to confess, but he wasn’t exactly a gold star student when it came to small talk.

She shrugged. “Might as well be candid, right? We’ll probably be married tomorrow morning if what Alpha said during the drive from the airport was true. He said his missus is a traditionalist in that one way.”

“Yeah, that’s the plan.”

“So we might as well clear the air, right? Well—I’m quite wealthy.”

“Okay.” He chewed on the inside of his cheek, and with great difficulty, pulled his gaze away from the smattering of freckles beneath the sun-reddened skin on her chest.
Is she spotted all over, like a cougar?
He’d been with a were-cougar woman once, but he couldn’t remember if she’d had spots. He was drunk, as he often was during one-night stands. The booze took the edge off the social shit—the performance. Not the sexual one, but the song and dance leading up to it.

He raked his hand over his face and sighed.
Fuck. Is she going to expect that from me?

“You don’t seem especially gleeful about that, Darius. Any other man would have had a wanton glint in his eye by now.”

What are we even talking about?
He dropped his hand and fixed his stare on the bright green of her eyes.
Green. Oh, right. Money.

He cleared his throat. “I’ve always worked for what I wanted.”

She shrugged again, making those distracting tits bounce.

Sighing, he closed his eyes to shut off the visual onslaught and let his knee bob. The last thing he needed was to go hard like a horny fifteen-year old and embarrass himself in front of the finest woman he’d ever encountered in the flesh.

“Keep on keeping on, then,” she said. “I figured I’d make things cozy. I assure you, I’m not the kind of girl who spends to excess. In fact, I only own
ten
pairs of shoes.”

He opened his eyes, only to furrow his brow at her.

“Just kidding. I have five pairs, not counting these sandals. But they’re
really
nice shoes.”

“I have two pairs.”
Dumb. Like she even cares.

“The boots you’re wearing and what?”

“A pair of tennis shoes.”

They were around…
somewhere
. He’d probably had them for nearly as long as he’d had his GED.

“They probably suit about ninety-eight percent of your needs.”

“Pretty much, or I go barefoot, otherwise. I don’t need shoes in my wolf form.”

She cringed. “Wolf, huh? I guess I’ll be able to shift by morning, if it works.”