Better Mate Than Never (New Adult Werewolf Romance) (4 page)

“I’ve never
felt this way before with anyone,” she told him, her face buried into his
shoulder, hiding her embarrassment at her loving words.

“Look at me.”
He started to reach for her, wanting to see her expression, but she caught his
hand gently.

“Not yet,”
she replied quietly. 

Caleb nodded,
letting her remain in control.

“There are
things that I’ve always wanted to tell you…things that I never dared say. But
now, after all that has happened, all of the time that has passed. I just don’t
want to let another day slip by without telling you the truth.”

Paige felt
her breath catch in her throat, but forced herself to go on, straddling his
lap, his cock now barely inside of her.  She felt him suck in a deep
breath as she allowed the head to slide just beyond her slit.

“Tell me,” he
growled, impatiently. “You can tell me anything.”

“I want you,”
she replied quickly knowing the words must come out fast or they never would.
“I’ve always wanted you as mine…entirely mine.”

She kissed
his way down the side of his face to the cleft of his chin, enjoying the
restrained strength of his powerful muscles just lurking beneath the skin,
peering up at him shyly, suddenly unsure. The crisp hairs on his chest teased
her as she worked her way down the length of him, lingering on the brown, hard
nipples when he rewarded her with a groan before continuing over his rock hard
abs. She especially loved the way his v-cut muscles quivered when she nipped at
them, so close to the waistband of his breeches.

“Are you
going to stop there?” his voice was mild, but there was a challenge in his
eyes, as though he wasn’t sure she was woman enough to go all the way. Her
spine stiffened; she wasn’t going to back down. She’d come too far for anything
else.

“Only if you
want me to,” she purred throatily, her fingers curling around the waistband as
if she was going to give him a choice.

“No,” he
replied. “I meant…is that all you have to say?”

“Yes,” she
replied coyly before kissing the head of his cock and he groaned when she
finally took him into her mouth, tasting the hot saltiness of him. His strong
fingers gripped her curls, not quite hard enough to hurt.

“Then I must
tell you,” he replied with a groan as one of his hands came down to play with
her breasts, toying with the nipples and sending little thrills of need through
her. Just when she was sure it couldn’t be much longer, he pulled her away,
then reared up and dragged her forward so that she was back on top of him.

“I’ve always
wanted you, too,” he growled, gripping her hips as he pushed himself inside of
her without pause. The sudden shock of being filled so quickly mixed with his
deep, masculine tone made Paige cry out, her back arching, her legs trembling. Caleb
sat up, wrapping his arms around her waist as he covered her mouth with his,
changing the angle so that it was even deeper, even better. He thrust his
tongue in and out of her mouth, matching the rhythm with which he made love to
her. Wanting to give herself entirely to him and not feeling she could ever get
enough, she bit down on his tongue, engaging him, her fingers digging into his
skin as she pushed back with her hips.

“You are
absolutely beautiful,” he told her. “I don’t know how it’s possible for any woman
to be so perfect…for me.”

His words
touched her heart, but she refused to read into them, simply kissing him again
to silence him. Although it didn’t matter, he had already seduced her
emotionally. An unbelievably deep…real attachment to this man wasn’t something
she had ever wanted, yet if she were honest with herself she would have to
admit that it had always been there… Her nails dug into his skin a little
harder than she intended at the thought, and she forced herself to relax and
enjoy the moment.

He broke the
kiss again so he could savage her neck, biting and sucking in a way she knew
was going to leave a mark. It thrilled her that she didn’t care. A moan broke
from her lips when one of his hands reached down between them and found her
clit, stroking her higher and higher as he continued to penetrate her with
steady, hard thrusts. She was molten, a quivering, burning mass of pleasure,
and it wasn’t long before the orgasm broke through her with an overwhelming
force. She held onto him for dear life, her legs clamping his waist, her pussy
clenching around his cock as she screamed his name.

“Yes,” she cried
out, gouging her nails into his shoulders. “Oh God, Caleb!” They moved together
furiously, pushing each other to the edge, and she watched his golden eyes go
blind as he emptied himself inside of her with a roar.

Afterward, he
levered himself onto his arms and stared down at her with an unreadable
expression. He brushed a hand against her cheek, lingering, and the gesture was
so tender she wanted to cry. She opened her mouth to say something, but the
doorbell rang, and he was on his feet, fastening his pants.

“That’ll be
your security detail coming to relieve me. Get dressed so I can introduce you
before I leave, okay? I’ll be back here at six-thirty.”

He stalked
out of the kitchen, and she struggled with the urge to heave her empty coffee
mug at his sexy, naked, retreating back. The need for clothing won out, though,
and she hurried up the stairs to change.

Today was
going to be a
long
day.

Chapter Six

 “What
do you mean, you let her get away?”

Randy cringed
inwardly at the censure in their master’s tone, though his face remained a mask
of stone. He glanced at Kyle, who was still unconscious; healing from the
bullet wound, and wished he were awake. He was better at dealing with people,
and usually was the one who dealt with these kinds of conversations.

“Caleb
appeared just as we were about to take her. While we were trying to fight him
off, she shot Kyle in the neck. We had to retreat.”

His master
let out a disgusted sigh. “Sometimes I wonder if I should have just gone down
to do this job myself. How long until Kyle is back in commission?”

“At least
another day.” Shifters normally healed pretty fast, but this was a serious
wound.

“I can’t afford
to wait that long. I’m sending someone else in. He’ll meet you this afternoon.
If that woman isn’t delivered to me within twenty-four hours, I will personally
skin you and mount your hide on my wall. As for your brother, he’ll share your
fate.”

Randy swallowed
as he glanced over at the sleeping Kyle. From anyone other than their master,
it was an idle threat. “Yes sir. Consider it done.”

His only
answer was a click, followed by a dial tone.

*

Paige ran her
fingers through her hair, her frustration mounting. She was typing up some
legal forms for a client, and she had to go back and reword the legalese.
Mostly because of the man standing in the corner of the room, his eyes glued to
her every move, making it hard for her to focus.

“Can’t you just
give me a bit of space?” she snapped, not for the first time as she swiveled
her chair around to face him. “I can’t focus when you’re staring at me like
that.”

The
guard—his name was Matt, she remembered—shrugged. “Mr. Stone told
me that I wasn’t allowed to take my eyes off you. I work for him, therefore I
follow his orders, not yours.”

“I’m pretty
certain that Mr. Stone doesn’t mean for you to disrupt my work while you’re
guarding me.”

“I’m pretty
certain he doesn’t care what I have to do, as long as you’re safe.”

Paige gave
him a baleful glare, but gave up when he simply stared at her impassively.

“Fine. I’m
going to the bathroom. You can guard the door, but you are
not
coming in
with me.”

For a split
second, she thought he might actually argue with her. Then he shrugged and
pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt. “Ryan, I’m accompanying her to the
lavatory. I need you to on the south wall.”

Paige rolled
her eyes as she stalked out of her office and down the hall. Great. She was
going to have one of them outside the door, and the other outside the wall.
Privacy was obviously a thing of the past for her. With a sigh, she shut the
bathroom door behind her and locked it, then turned around.

The wall
exploded inward, and she screamed, shielding her face from flying glass and
drywall. From between her fingers, she saw some kind of hulking monster
standing in the newly created doorway—a beast, wolf-like, but larger,
fiercer.

“Paige!” She
heard the door being smashed in behind her, but she didn’t have time to look
around—the thing grabbed her, tucking her under its shoulder, and bounded
through the hole in the wall. Shots rang out, and she felt a searing pain along
the back of her right calf. Ryan jumped in front of them, his gun in hand, but
it was like jumping in front of a bull—the monster simply grabbed him by
the throat and tossed him aside. Paige winced at the sickening crunch.

“Let me go!”
She pounded on the side of the monster, and looked back over her shoulder to
see Matt chasing them at a dead run. Then suddenly they were racing through the
streets, flying off into the darkness of the forest that lined the county.

She watched
the blur of greens and grey’s as they raced by, staring hopelessly as she
struggled between panic and lack of oxygen to breathe. Then they were in an
even greener, lush wooded area—somewhere close to a river.
Great. No
civilization in sight.

They suddenly
stopped in a clearing, where she was dropped unceremoniously onto the ground.
The beast growled, his large, sharp fangs framed in a hideous grin, then instantly,
in a blur of a few seconds he morphed into a tall, thin man with fiery red hair.
He turned to grin at her, his decaying teeth blackening his face, and she
gasped at the sight of him—the left side of his body was covered with
some kind of red and black tribal tattoo that continued down his neck and
disappeared beneath the collar of his black t-shirt.

“You’re a
pretty little thing,” he observed in a voice that was like rough velvet. His
eyes, a pale yellow, gleamed. “Too bad you’re a contract job, or I might have
kept you for myself.”

“Who
are
you?”
Paige threw up her hands, already on her feet.

The
man—
or beast
—shrugged. “Who I am doesn’t matter. All you
need to know is that I work for whoever is willing to pay my price and today,
that means delivering you to the highest bidder.”

“Delivering
me to who?” she demanded.

“You’ll find
out soon enough.” The creature looked over his shoulder. “Here’s our ride now.”

A black
Escalade pulled into the clearing, and the man with the scar on his face got
out. His stony eyes flicked briefly over them. “Good, Blair. You have her.”

“Nice to see
you too, Randy. You got it?”

Randy nodded,
wordlessly passed it over, and Paige backed up at the sight of the large, thin needle.

“Oh no. No,
no, no. Please, you don’t have to do this. I’ll cooperate, I’ll go anywhere you
want me to.”

The creature
grinned. “Sorry, but the boss man is a little leery of you after you shot their
friend in the neck. We’re taking no chances here.” Randy came to stood behind
her, grabbing her roughly, reaching around to grip her chest, holding her in a
bear hug that left her desperate to breathe, as she struggled against him. He
smelled of sweat and grease, and his chest rumbled as he roared with laughter
at her attempts to be freed.

Blair moved
quickly, grabbing her arm and pushing the sharp needle deep into her flesh.

 “Ahh, yes…there
you go,” he said soothingly as her head started to spin. Her body reacted
quickly to whatever was in the syringe and she began to sway, still in the grip
of Randy’s strong arms.

“Don’t worry.
We’ll be there before you know it. And then the real fun will begin.”

His cruel
laughter chased her as she sank into blackness.

*

Caleb paced
back and forth in Adam’s living room, struggling mightily against the desire to
punch a hole in the wall. He’d already ripped Matt a new one, and would do the
same to Ryan, who was downstairs in the medical room being treated for his
injuries. His spine had been cracked by the force of the blow—whatever
had thrown him had been strong enough that the tree trunk Ryan had slammed into
had been split in two.

What the
hell had come after him that was so powerful it could sling his men around as
if they were children?
Whatever it was, it had Paige now. His palms grew
sweaty at the thought of her being at the mercy of such a beast. God, what had
he done? He should have never left her alone.

“Stop blaming
yourself,” Adam ordered as he stepped into the room. “The only thing that might
have changed if you had been there is that you’d be the one laying on a
hospital bed instead of Ryan.” The vein pulsing in the clan leader’s temple
told Caleb he wasn’t nearly as calm as he sounded. “Matt and I have finally
figured out who these goons are.”

“You have?” Caleb
stopped pacing and turned his full attention to Adam. “Tell me,” he demanded.

 “The
two shifters who attacked you and Paige in the alley are deserters from the
Columbia shifter clan… or at least, that’s the surface story.”

“What does
that mean?”

“They didn’t
so much as desert their clan but disappeared off the map completely. One day
the two of them were gone. Their mother had just died of a serious illness, so
some speculated that maybe they’d just gone mad with grief. They’d never shown
signs of discontent with their clan before, but when they never came back the
clan just wrote them off as deserters.”

“Adam, I’m
not really interested in their backstory,” Caleb said tightly. “They took Paige
and all I care about is finding out how I can get her back.”

“If you’ll
calm down long enough to think this through, you’ll realize this information
about them is relevant. Or don’t you remember a certain warlock with a penchant
for collecting superhuman creatures for his menagerie?”

“Darius?” Oh
God. “But that’s impossible. My father killed him nearly fifty years ago.”

“Doesn’t mean
he didn’t have an offspring or prodigy following in his footsteps.”

“Fuck.” Caleb
scooped his hands through his hair. If it had been a fellow lycan he could have
just tracked him down by scent. But a warlock was a whole other story. “This is
all just speculation at this point though, Caleb. We don’t really know if these
two are enslaved by a warlock, or if Darius did have an apprentice loyal enough
to seek vengeance so many years later.”

“No. But I
did manage to track down the place these two were staying at.” Adam pulled out
his phone and plugged in an address. “It’s maybe fifteen minutes from here.
Less than three from your apartment.”

“Jesus. These
bastards were sitting in my backyard the entire time.” Caleb struggled to control
his temper. He’d never felt so completely out of control in his entire life.
“I’m going over there. They might have left something useful behind, something
that will lead us to Paige.”

“I’m right
behind you.”