Desired by the Pack: Part Two: A BBW Paranormal Romance
Read Desired by the Pack: Part Two: A BBW Paranormal Romance Online
Authors: Emma Storm
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Romance, #Paranormal, #Fantasy, #Werewolves & Shifters
Unable to bear the sight of the boxes another second, she hid her face in the damp towel she’d
used to dry her hair. The morning after pill was useless now. Its window of effectiveness had closed more than a week ago because she couldn’t bring herself to actively destroy a possibility. Now fear and hope waged an active game of tug of war, leaving her unsure what she actually wanted.
Unsure what she was willing to risk for the chance to hold a child, to claim a mate.
The alpha werewolf sprawled across her bed wasn’t helping her make the hard decisions.
“Idiot,” she mumbled to herself.
I never want to see you again
had lasted all of about twenty hours before Thomas Becker, alpha of the Peace River Guardians and wearer of the broken condom, had prowled right back into her life.
Breathing into the towel, she picked up a hint of his scent and her insides went soft and warm.
Two weeks. She’d only known him two weeks, but she’d grown painfully attached in that short time.
They hadn’t made love since the night in the kitchen with Cross.
Hadn’t even kissed. When she got home from work, Beck was waiting for her with dinner and wine. Simple meals, but for a woman accustomed to ending her long days inside a sleeve of crackers or a can of soup, Beck’s culinary treatment was an irresistible change.
Dinner was followed by a foot and leg rub, a warm, broad chest at her back as she fell asleep. Beck didn’t stay the entire night, but she couldn’t be sure when he left because he did so with a wolf’s stealth. Before dawn, though, she knew that much. Werewolves lost much of their Moon magic with the sunrise and no werewolf, regardless how determined to win a woman, would willingly be caught out vulnerable.
January learned a lot about Beck during their midnight dinners. Over a candle-lit table, he told her about his childhood as a member of a stationary, earth-side pack. His early years were what January’s should have been, if things were different.
But they weren’t.
January dropped her towel into the hamper with a sigh. Despite her efforts to remain aloof, Beck was courting her and she was falling.
Had fallen.
Hard, fast. The morning she woke up to a pre-programmed pot of coffee and a napkin doodle of a sad sun, she knew she was screwed.
Pregnant or not, she had to get rid of him.
Donning a two-piece pajama set like it was armor, she pretended her wet hair was a knight’s helmet, took a deep breath, and left the bathroom like she was charging into battle.
Her farmhouse wasn’t modern enough for en suite bathrooms so she had to walk down the hall to reach her bedroom. When she reached Prince’s open door, she paused. Something had shifted in their friendship and January didn’t know how to bridge the growing gap.
Beck’s nightly presence was exacerbating the problem. The evenings she and Prince worked the same shift and came home to Beck, Prince only stayed long enough to shower and change his clothes before leaving again—if he even bothered to come inside at all, which he hadn’t done in the past few days. She didn’t know where he went, but his absence was another reason she had to put an end to Beck’s dead-end courtship. Prince, unlike January, would grab any opportunity to be part of a pack. Unfortunately, a male who couldn’t shift had more value as a member of human society. January wasn’t even certain Prince could form a mate bond but she knew no female werewolf would want him.
Just like no male should want her.
Squaring her shoulders, she prepared to walk past Prince’s room and confront Beck, but something moved in the dark and she stopped. Beck appeared in the door a moment later.
When she stood this close to him, her resolve weakened. To cover the chink in her armor, she met his shadowed gaze, a trick she could only pull off because the Moon had marked her Beck’s equal in many ways. The soft skin around her navel, which bore that tattoo-like mark, tingled with awareness of him.
As did other parts of her.
Distraction.
She needed one. Taking a step back, she asked, “What are you doing in there?”
“I thought I smelled something.” He stepped into the hall and stuffed something into his pocket.
January frowned. “What did you –“ And then she realized Beck was fully dressed, from a gray thermal henley all the way down to his boots. “Are you leaving?”
“Yes. I have business to deal with.” He reached out and hooked his hand around the back of her neck, drawing her close before she gathered the good sense to resist.
The hall was dark except for the dim glow of the nightlight in the bathroom and the yellow wash of light from the bedside lamp in her room, still a few feet away. The low light played over Beck’s features, obscuring his intent as he ran his other hand down her back to the curve of her ass. Gripping one cheek, he angled her lower body until she felt the hard press of his muscular thigh between her legs. Surrender sighed from her lungs and pulsed within her folds. Her lips parted, inviting him in.
Beck took her mouth with tender ferocity, licking into her and guiding her mound along his thigh at the same time. She had a weakness for his kisses and the way he seemed to want to stay in her mouth forever. And she knew she shouldn’t allow these kisses, knew they were Beck’s way of marking her as his even though he’d shared her
with his lieutenant, Cross. Even though she’d refused him in her body and life.
As she drank in the faintly minty flavor of him, a hollow ache bloomed in her breast. She found the strength to break away from the kiss, but not enough to tear
herself from his embrace. Resting her forehead against his chest, she tried to catch her breath and rediscover her resolve.
Beck saved her by loosening his grip and easing away. His frustrated groan did unwelcome things to her, filling her with a fleeting sense of feminine power.
“I won’t be back tonight.” He stared at her, his expression hungry, but more than that. Something she couldn’t identify. Before she could tell him not to come back at all, he fingered a long lock of hair behind her ear and said, “Probably not for several days. Be careful of Prince. Maverick programmed a number in your phone’s contact list. It’s under the name Aunt Margie. If anything happens call that number. Even if the Guardians can’t come for you, someone will.”
Goosebumps flashed over her skin. January hugged herself. No use pointing out she neither
needed nor wanted the Guardians’ help, because she would be a liar and Beck would ignore her protest anyway. So she just nodded.
“Go to bed now. You need rest.” He glanced at her stomach before turning to descend the stairs.
January ground her back to get teeth together and blew out a breath. Only a few more days until she could take the home pregnancy test. Maybe the proof of a negative would chase Beck away. Goddess, she hoped so, because she didn’t know how long she could fight that battle with her heart.
Beck found Jared McDowell, one of the Guardians’ scouts, running a patrol on the south edge of the territory the Guardians had claimed. Their territory interests centered around protecting the Moon gate located behind a waterfall on Peace River, one of many waterways in the Pacific Northwest. Beck preferred the dry mountains to the wetter, greener coastal areas but he went where the Goddess sent him. Under normal circumstances, he had no business outside the Peace River territory. As he tossed a ragged scrap of cloth on the ground in front of Jared, he silently cursed the circumstances that had taken him from the river two weeks earlier.
The Guardians were pursuing a rogue werewolf that had captured media attention, and all signs pointed to January’s property. Beck and the other men in his pack had watched the house and its occupants for the better part of two
weeks, half of them certain January was the rogue. Beck had prayed for evidence to the contrary.
Watching Jared dip his head and sniff around fabric, which Beck suspected was the remains of a T-shirt, Beck hoped he’d finally found a means to eliminate January from their short a list of suspects.
The brown wolf lifted his head and paced a circle around Beck and the fabric. He sniffed at Beck’s hands and legs before going back to the scrap.
Closer to the rogue’s scent than what I got off your woman’s clothes.
When Jared first described the rogue’s scent as bearing similarities to a female in Heat, Beck had set Jared’s nose to the cab of Cross’s truck and snatched a pair of January’s panties from her laundry. In both cases, her Heat scent had weekend. Jared couldn’t make a determination one way or the other about January’s scent and the rogue’s. Jared went into her house one evening and took stock of both Prince and January, but the different owners failed to match.
Beck hadn’t lied to January when he told her he smelled something in Prince’s room earlier that night. While she was showering, he caught a hint of something different from every other time he’d been in her house. He tracked the scent into Prince’s room, where he discovered the torn shirt in a trash bin.
Jared sat back on his haunches and shifted to his human form.
“Closer,” Beck repeated as Jared reached for the shirt.
“Yeah. Is this from the roommate?”
“I found it among his belongings.
Looks like it was worn during a shift.” Werewolves’ clothes never survived the damage of growing muscles. What they didn’t manage to shed while changing, they usually ripped away with their teeth. The shirt Jared held looked like it had been shredded by claws and fangs.
“I can’t figure out why the scents are so similar, but different.” Jared pressed the cloth against his face and inhaled deeply.
“It’s been nearly two weeks, and the rogues trail was cold when you grabbed it,” Beck said.
“Maybe the difference is in the age.” Jared didn’t sound convinced but he stood anyway and tossed the cloth back to Beck. “Has anybody been able to tail the roommate?”
“Not yet.” Beck worked his jaw, angry with himself. They hadn’t fixed a tail on Prince because January’s housemate didn’t come home until Beck took over the night’s watch.
And he could only see one person from his vantage in January’s bed.
“Damn,” he muttered. He caught Jared’s eye and knew Jared had reached the same conclusion.
“It’s my week on the gate,” Beck said.
“I could go tomorrow night,” Jared said. “Maybe add a second pair of eyes, someone to stay behind if Prince makes his move. We’ll stay away from the house.”
Beck planted his foot on a fallen log and stared at his boot laces. Pack relationships could be a lot like that boot lace, crossing over and under and wrapping around each other to create something strong and binding. He could hoard this draw he felt toward January. Keep the woman to
himself while still sharing his connection to her with the pack. Or he could forge a stronger bond by encouraging his packmates to tie their own knots with her. January would benefit from a bigger network of lovers, men who could step in to fill each other’s absences.
With a shake of his head he dropped his foot back to the ground and met Jared’s waiting gaze. “Don’t rope yourself off from her. She should know all of us.”