Rick's Reluctant Mate
Read Rick's Reluctant Mate Online
Authors: Alice Cain
Rick's Reluctant Mate
Lupinville Book 4
Copyright 2014 Alice Cain
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
All Romance
Edition
November 2014
All Romance Edition, License Notes
This ebook is for your personal use only.
This ebook remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be
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~ Alice
This is a fictional story from the author’s
imagination and is not to be confused with fact. It is not advice or
suggestion. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons is purely
coincidental.
Blurb:
Rick has always been fascinated by the wolf
that broke through a window to protect him, but when he finally meets the wolf
in his man form the physical attraction between them is off the charts.
Jordan can't understand what fate was
thinking. Why would he be given such a sweet, intelligent, and innocent mate
after everything he's seen and done in his miserable lifetime? Surely something
has gone wrong and Ricky can't really be his. The young human deserves so much
more than a jaded werewolf with a murky past.
Yet when Rick discovers they're destined
mates, he's determined to make Jordan see they were made for each other. Jordan
might be reluctant to claim him, but Rick isn't going to let something as
trivial as his mate's legendary stubbornness get in their way.
Warning
: Gay erotic romance. This fictional
story contains explicit adult content and coarse language and is intended for
mature readers only. All characters involved in sexual behavior in this story
are adults capable of consent, are over the age of twenty-one, and are willing
participants.
20,050 words
Rick's Reluctant Mate
Lupinville
Book 4
Alice Cain
Copyright 2014
Chapter One
Twelve
months ago…
"I'm not a threat," the man said
as Rick opened the front door of his home. He had his back to Rick and was
currently addressing two snarling wolves as if he knew they were people in wolf
form and not wild animals. Rick almost fell backward when the brown wolf bolted
past the huge man and put its furry body between Rick and apparent danger. "I'm
not here to hurt anyone, but I need Ricky's help."
"Jordan?" Rick asked the wolf at
his feet, needing to understand why the werewolf was here and not in
Lupinville,
and
why he and his
companion considered the man on his porch a threat.
The man finally turned around and Rick
narrowed his eyes when he realized who he was looking at.
"You're Adrian Alateeka," he said.
"Why on Earth would you want my help?"
The man's surprised reaction wasn't all that
unexpected. They'd never met, but when Rick's dad had described Adrian to him,
and explained the reason the man had been looking for him—because Rick had
created a rather powerful computer algorithm they apparently wanted—Rick had
been curious enough to look the guy up. He'd been keeping as close an eye on Alateeka
Protection Services as they apparently were on him.
"Our resident computer genius has gone
rogue on us," Adrian said, glancing at the wolf at Rick's feet. Jordan was
barring his teeth aggressively and Rick was a little disconcerted to realize
Adrian wasn't actually afraid of the wolf. Rick's dad had suggested that Adrian
Alateeka might also be a werewolf, but the guy seemed way more confident than
that. "We need you to shutdown the guy's online role playing game."
The other wolf had apparently decided Adrian
wasn't a threat, but Ricky was more than a little surprised when it pushed past
Jordan and went into the house.
"Please, Ricky," Adrian said
quietly, "people are dying. We need to shut this site down."
Rick dropped his hand to the head of the
wolf at his feet, nodded, and then moved back to let Adrian in. "I'll do
what I can."
It didn't take long to find and shutdown the
game Adrian showed him, so the man was there for less than a half hour.
"Thanks," Adrian said, handing
over his business card. "If you ever need anything, please call."
Ricky glanced down at the card, then over to
Cali sitting on his couch and currently wearing his clothes, and the wolf still
pressed against his legs. "I seem to be well protected," he said in a
tone that couldn't really hide his annoyance, "but you know where to find
me if you have more computer problems."
"I'm sorry that we needed to involve
you, Ricky," Adrian said. The man sounded very sincere.
"I'm not," Rick said, glaring at
the brown wolf when he made a sound of disapproval. "The world is a
dangerous place, Jordan. You know that better than most, and if I can do
something to make it a little safer, then that's exactly what I intend to
do."
"We'll try not to call on your skill
again before you've finished college," Adrian said, "but if you're
still interested in a couple of years, we have a place for you on our
team."
Jordan growled, and for one tense moment
Rick thought Jordan was going to attack, so he dropped his hand back onto the
wolf's head and spoke in a firm tone.
"Thanks, Adrian. We
will
stay in touch."
The brown wolf growled again when Rick
closed the door after Adrian without letting Jordan leave the house.
"Hell, no," Rick said.
"You're not leaving here until I understand why you and Cali are here in
the first place."
Jordan turned his furry head in
Cali's
direction and made a sound that had the girl
grinning in response.
"I'm on his side," she said to the
wolf, "so you may as well change into human form and explain it all."
Cali actually laughed when Jordan bared his
teeth and growled low in his throat.
"If you want to leave, all you have to
do, Mr. Bossy Paws, is change into your human form and open the door." She
lifted off the sofa and moved closer to where Jordan was still pressed against
Rick's legs. "Assuming, of course," she said in a tone that wasn't
quite as teasing as Rick suspected she intended, "that you remember
how."
Rick really didn't like the sound of that.
There was a young woman in Lupinville—Lisa,
if Rick remembered her name correctly—who'd stayed in her wolf form for nearly
a year. She'd apparently had a good reason for it, but there had been a lot of
people worried that she'd never be able to reclaim her human side. Fortunately
for Lisa, she was a strong-willed young woman and she'd successfully clawed her
way back to human-style living.
"How long has Jordan been in wolf
form?"
Cali seemed to understand his concern. She
shook her head. "I don't know."
The wolf
huffed
a
sound of annoyance, but he did move away from Rick's legs and trot toward the
bedroom. Hopefully he was going to raid Rick's wardrobe the way Cali had done.
"It's good to see you, Cali," Rick
said, leaning over to give the young woman a quick hug. "I heard about
what happened at the high school, but Dad was pretty vague on the details."
She gave Rick a bright smile that didn't
quite reach her eyes. "Officially, I died. Unofficially, I was assigned
bodyguard duties until such time as I can return to Lupinville without being
recognized."
"How long will that take?" Rick
asked. Cali was a good student and had been adamant about wanting to go to
college and get an education. It saddened him to think the young werewolf had
to put her life on hold at all, let alone the years it was likely to take, but
then the rest of that sentence sank in. "Bodyguard? Whose
body
are you
guarding
?"
Cali
didn't say anything, but the answer was obvious from the tight smile and tilt
of her head.
"Me?
You and Jordan?
You're guarding me?" Cali nodded and then glanced away, clearly
uncomfortable with his reaction. "Why the hell are you guarding me?"
"To protect you from anyone who would
take advantage of your skills. Anyone including the asshole you invited in a
half hour ago," an angry voice said from behind them. Rick couldn't stop
the shiver that rolled down his spine, but it wasn't in reaction to the man's
ire. Hell, Rick had known for a while now that he was gay, but he could
honestly say he'd never been aroused just by the sound of a man's voice.
He turned to find a gorgeous guy with thick
brown hair and the wolf's golden-brown eyes standing in the hallway that led to
the bedrooms. He was totally ripped—every muscle clearly defined by one of
Rick's nowhere-near-large-enough-for-this-man T-shirts and jogging shorts that
lovingly outlined a rather impressive package. Simply put the guy was delicious
enough for Rick to want to lick him all over.
"Jordan?" he asked because he
simply had to know for sure. He'd often thought of the wolf that'd crashed
through a window in a mistaken need to protect him. It had been more than two
years ago, but Rick hadn't forgotten a moment of that standoff. If he'd known
what the man form of the wolf had been
,
Rick was
pretty sure his memories would have led to endless fantasies. Hell, it was
almost a given that's exactly what would happen now.
"We shouldn't be here," Jordan
said in a gruff voice, without moving any closer
or
confirming his identity. "Noah asked us to guard you
without interfering in your life."
"How is this interfering in my
life?"
Cali grinned and turned to Jordan, her eyebrow
raised in challenge.
"You should be enjoying the whole
college experience."
It was Rick's turn to raise an eyebrow.
"If you've been watching me for the
past two years, then you know that I'm not enjoying anything about my college
experience."
~*~
Jordan winced and tried not to show how much
those words affected him. He'd known his mate was more comfortable with
computers than with people—and it was clear that his skills were far superior
to those of his professors—but the past two years Jordan had watched him
withdraw even more from the typical college experience.
Ricky had been living in a dorm on campus
when Cali and Jordan had first been assigned to protect him, but the situation
had quickly deteriorated when Ricky's computer-geek roommate had discovered
girls and booze. The stupid kid had lost his scholarship soon after, and the
guy who'd replaced him as Ricky's roommate had been even worse—a spoiled,
self-centered asshole who'd simply been wasting his parent's money instead of
getting an education.
Endless partying, drunken visitors,
derogatory comments, and the constant "sharing" of everything that
belonged to Ricky—from food to computers to…ugh…underwear—had made the
situation beyond stressful.
Thankfully, Trent—Ricky's dad's mate—had
managed to purchase the brownstone terrace home soon after and had come up with
a plausible-enough excuse for why his stepson should live there alone. It had
made guarding Ricky much easier, but it had also made it harder to watch his
mate become more and more lonely.
"Perhaps Cali should move in with
you," Jordan suggested, hoping only to alleviate his mate's feeling of
isolation. He knew what he really wanted, but Ricky was just a kid so that
wasn't going to happen. And okay, twenty-one wasn't exactly young for a human,
but that didn't change what Ricky needed and it didn't make Jordan any more
deserving.
After everything he'd done in the past
one-hundred-and-sixty years he sure as fuck hadn't earned a mate as sweet as
Ricky.
"I think I like that idea," Cali
said with a wide smile. "Guarding you at night from inside the house has
to be a whole lot easier."
Ricky glanced between Cali and Jordan and
back again before settling on Cali. "Where have you been guarding me
from?"
Cali was a smart pup, so there was no way she
misunderstood the expression on Jordan's face. "Not important," she
said flippantly, at least agreeing with him on this point. Ricky didn't need to
know that at least one of them had been hidden in his yard whenever he was
home. They had an apartment not far from here, but since they were never there
at the same time it was almost like living alone.
Jordan was actually grateful for the
"alone time" of not being constantly surrounded by members of the
Lupinville pack. It had given him a chance to really go over the decisions and
choices he'd made over the years. Unfortunately the down side to that sort of
self-reflection had been to realize just how awful a person he truly was. Too
often he'd followed his wolf's instincts instead of his human ones, and as
intelligent as he'd once thought himself to be, it hadn't stopped him from
being manipulated into making the wrong choices by people with less than honest
intentions.
Jordan never had and never would deserve a
mate like Ricky.
But in the past couple of years he'd also
watched Cali grow more and more isolated as well. She'd gone from being a
popular young woman and an alpha
who
had protected all
of the werewolf students at Lupinville high, to a "murder" victim,
and now to an undercover protector for a young man who was just as lonely. The
very least Jordan
could do would
be to encourage the
two of them to spend time together.
"It would make protecting you a whole
lot simpler," Jordan said, finally agreeing with Cali. "And I think
it would be better for both of you to have company your own age."
Yeah, that kind of made him sound like he
was ancient, but considering that Cali was only nineteen and Ricky barely
twenty-
one,
Jordan kind of was in human terms. He'd
seen way more of the world than both of them put together. Cali likely
remembered some of the terror—she'd been fifteen when Noah had taken over the Lupinville
pack—but hopefully neither of these young people would ever know what it was
like to live in constant fear under the iron-fisted rule of an arrogant and
dangerous alpha.
"What about you?" Ricky asked
curiously.
"Me?" Jordan managed to squeak
past a throat suddenly tight with arousal. Surely he was only imagining the
scent of desire on the air. There was no way, as a human, that Ricky would
sense the mate bond the way Jordan did.
"I have three bedrooms," Ricky
said." There's no reason why you both can't move in with me. Heck, Cali
might even be able to pick up a few classes."
"Whoa," Jordan said, trying to put
the brakes on his wayward imagination
and
what Ricky was saying. "Our job is to protect you. Cali can't do that if
she's off doing school work."
