“There are people waiting behind you.” With raised eyebrows, she tilts her head.
Turning, I find she’s right. A human woman clutches the hand of a little boy and holds a large stack of children’s books in her other arm. She stares up at me with wide eyes, then swallows big.
“It’s no problem. Take your time.” There’s a quiver on her last word.
Roderick Jameson, striking fear into the hearts of mothers everywhere.
“He’s leaving. Now.”
The authority in the librarian’s voice should set my instincts on edge. As the leader of the Pine Falls pack, I take orders from no one. Especially not humans.
But instead of tensing, my muscles tingle with excitement.
Wrestle with her, my wolf urges.
I’m not doing that, I think back.
Without a word, I stalk from the library, likely giving up a good portion of my dignity with the retreat. But I need space to clear the voices in my head.
One voice in particular.
And maybe if growled words were all I had to ignore, I could manage it. But the wolf sends me images too. Fantasies. Ones where I reach out a clawed finger to slice the buttons off her blouse and find what she’s hiding underneath. Ones where I pullher into my lap and bring on that flush in her cheeks for reasons other than anger. Ones where she says my name in her sweet voice and drags her hands over my body and covers my bedding with her lemon-paper scent.
The ideas leave me horny as fuck, and I reach down to adjust the crotch of my jeans.
Clearly, my wolf wants a mate.
I can’t deny that anymore. As I mount my bike, a solution occurs to me.
My wolf insists I take a mate, but there’s no reason it should be the librarian.
The beast will forget all about her when I give him someone better to focus on.
What I really need is a woman in the pack. A wolf who’s grown up in Pine Falls. A woman who will understand the responsibilities of being the mate of the pack leader, as well as possesses a solid connection to the community.
As I rev my bike to life, I begin to craft a mental list of all the single female wolves of a reasonable age. Any of them will make a better mate than a human outsider. My wolf just needs to be redirected.
Everything will go to plan, and soon, Juliet Adair will be nothing more than a vague memory.
5
RODERICK
Courtney Benally,one of my oldest friends and a werewolf in my pack, is walking down her front steps with a basket in each hand when I pull up her gravel drive at the ass crack of dawn. She sets down her load and sidles up to the driver’s door, giving me her slightly wild grin.
“I only hired one Jameson. Why am I getting two?”
“Mom needed her truck today,” I explain. “I offered Isaac a ride.”
We both glance over to my younger brother, who’s just finishing pulling on his worn, mud-caked boots. Farm work is hard on footwear.
“I’ll have my own ride soon,” Isaac points out before hopping out of the cab.
“Yeah, just in time for you to go back to school and leave me to muck out my own stable again,” Courtney pretends to complain, but her smile never truly leaves.
Her giving this job to my brother was a boon. People might think his quiet temperament means that he’d be great at somecashier job, but I know Isaac would be climbing the walls, stuck inside all day. He’d probably do well, working on Uncle Mason’s build sites, but there are legality issues with him only being sixteen.
Farm work is perfect for him, and he’s excited about earning his own money, even if it means waking up before the sun rises his entire summer break.
