Lucas smirked. “Something like that,” he admitted. “Would that be something you want?”
Avery made a face. “I’m not sure,” she said, meeting his eyes. “Is it mutual or is it something only the male of your species get to experience?”
“Wolves aren’t patriarchal,” Lucas said. “We get a bad rap because of romance writers and movies portraying us as jealous animals but the females are just as jealous, if not more so.” He laughed and Avery chuckled along with him. “But really, males and females see each other as equals. When a wolf takes a mate, whether he’s Alpha or a lone wolf, that’s his mate for life. The decision has to be mutual, but a lot of the times, it is. Wolves have this innate ability to sense who they’re destined to be with for the rest of their long life.”
“Have you felt bonded like that with anyone?” Avery asked. She shouldn’t have, really, because it was a leading question and it also touched upon his past; two big dating no-no’s. But this new Avery was more confident and didn’t seem to give a shit about dating rules.
Lucas shot her a smile. “If I told you, I’m afraid you’d run away,” he said.
“Try me,” she teased because she wanted to know, more than she realized.
Lucas opened his mouth to respond when both of their phones went off simultaneously. They gave each other a confused look but checked their messages.
“An evite,” Lucas said. “To that Masquerade Gary and Marcy are throwing.”
“That’s right,” Avery said, picking her eyes up so they locked with Lucas’s. “They’re going to announce our partnership to the world.” She looked back down at her phone and realized the event was less than a week away. “We should probably start talking about a plan.”
“Business?” Lucas asked.
“Personal,” she corrected. “We should probably plan something regarding you and me.”
He raised a brow before taking a sip of his Diet Coke. “What do you mean?” he asked, tilting his head to the side. He almost looked like a puppy there, with his wrinkled brow and cocked head. He looked so adorable, Avery had to curl her fingers into fists to keep herself from reaching out and ruffling his hair.
“Well, are we together?” she asked.
“Oh.”
His face suddenly got serious and she felt a sliver of frustration course through her veins. Did he really not want to have the monogamy talk just yet, even after his speech on werewolves being proprietary creatures and how they didn’t like to share their things?
“That’s a” –
“Forget it.” She didn’t want to have this conversation right now, not when he reacted the way he reacted. She closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to rid herself of the worrisome thoughts that started to plague her mind. “What I meant was, we need to figure out if we’re going with one another or not.”
“I didn’t think that would even be a question,” Lucas said, running his fingers through his hair. “And before you say anything, we are together, Avery. I claimed you. That means you’re mine and I’m yours.”
“Yeah, but you don’t get a mark on your neck,” Avery pointed out. She didn’t like to admit it but she felt her body relax at his subtle reassurance that his feelings for her ran deeper than their physical connection.
“You can give me one if you want,” he said with a wolfish grin. His eyes intensified as he continued to stare at her. “What do you think, though?”
“Of course I’m with you,” she said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Not about that,” he said, chuckling. “About going together.” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against his chair. “What’s on your mind, Av? You wouldn’t have brought it up if it wasn’t.”
“I just.” She started playing with her hair and then caught herself before shoving her hands in her lap. Her eyes met his effortlessly. “I just really want to be taken seriously as a business woman. It doesn’t matter that I graduated cum laude and got my Master’s degree in business. It doesn’t matter that business is something I grew up with practically my whole life. It’s still a male-dominated field and…” She looked down at her hands. “People see me and they see my father’s daughter. If I showed up with you, on your arm, as much as I want to more than anything, I worry they might think…”
“They might think you’re sleeping with me as a form of networking,” Lucas finished for her.
Avery nodded. “Exactly,” she said. “I just think maybe it would be best if we didn’t tell anyone about us just yet. Until I establish myself.”
Lucas smiled as he reached out and cupped her cheek in his palm. “Of course,” he told her.
He said the right thing, but Avery couldn’t help but notice that his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.
21
The next day, Lucas and Avery both called in sick to their respective businesses and allowed themselves one more day to enjoy each other. They were still at Avery’s place, where sunlight was bled into the place much easier than at Lucas’s, which lined the border of the Black Woods. Avery had to remember to close all the blinds in the house because Lucas had no problem walking around naked and she was not about to tell him to stop anytime soon. Not when he looked so stunning.
It didn’t surprise her when she started getting frantic texts from her mother about her breakup from Rick. Apparently, good news traveled fast, and her mother asked for every detail imaginable – from whether or not she initiated it to tell her to see if Avery could apologize and try to win him back. As though the breakup was somehow her fault.
What about the Masquerade? her mother asked. Then, Perhaps you could go as friends.
Avery rolled her eyes and decided to ignore her mother’s messages. It wasn’t a stretch, considering she tended to ignore her mother on a daily basis.
“You okay?” Lucas asked, pushing his brow together. He didn’t make it a point to look over her shoulder and try to read her texts like Rick would have done. Instead, he sat patiently, rubbing her forearm and waited for her to share. And even if she didn’t, she knew he wouldn’t take it personally.
“Yeah,” she said, shaking her head. “My mom is just being the typical Marlene Montgomery.”
Lucas’s lips curled up. “Tell me,” he urged her gently. “You’ve never really talked about your parents before. I want to get to know them if I’m ever going to get to know you.”
So Avery told him everything about her mom. How she was beautiful and witty and intelligent. How she knew exactly what she wanted and went after it. How she really loved Avery’s dad. But with that beauty came ignorance. Ignorance of what Avery experienced living in her mother’s shadow. Ignorance of what it meant to possess common sense and make decisions that had consequences. How her ambition blinded her to potential problems and others’ feelings. How her love made her incessant in her desire for Avery to fall in the same love at a time her mother deemed as perfect.
“And now she wants me to go to the Masquerade with Rick,” she finished with a roll of her eyes. “As friends, obviously.”
Lucas growled without meaning to. Avery shot him a smirk and he cleared his throat.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “No disrespect to your mom but…” He gave Avery nothing short of a predatory look and Avery felt herself pulse with immediate desire. “You’re mine.” He tilted his head to the side, grabbing her smartphone and flipping it over so she wouldn’t be able to read any incoming texts should they arise. “Have you thought about when you’re going to tell your mother about me?” He perked his brows when her eyes found his.
“Honestly?” Avery said, her shoulders slumping forward as exhaustion took over her muscles. “This is still so new for me and I just… I don’t want to ruin this.”
“How could she possibly ruin what you and I have?”
“You don’t know my mother,” she muttered under her breath. “What about you? When are you going to tell your family?”
His eyes turned the color of ash and
he looked away. “I don’t have a family,” he reminded her. His tone was bitter but it wasn’t directed at her; just the situation he found himself in. “I withdrew from the pack; I’m a Lone Wolf. So even though I have blood, alive and well, if we were to pass each other on the street, they would look right through me. Pretend I didn’t exist.”
“That’s harsh,” Avery murmured, more to herself than to Lucas.
Lucas shrugged his muscled shoulders. “That’s wolves,” he said.
“Could you create your own pack?” she asked.
“Technically, yes,” he said, “but having a pack of Lone Wolves isn’t the best idea. Normally, Lone Wolves are independent, don’t bend to the pack’s will, or they’ve been ex-communicated, like me. You get a bunch of those types together and there’s really not much loyalty. In fact, I’ve heard rumblings of a pack made up of Loners, run by some wolf named Noah Tamlin. The guy is nuts because he makes his own law and extracts the punishments. I hear he tortures people with an aluminum baseball bat even though he can shift and rip someone to shreds. I’d rather be by myself.”
“What would he need to punish?” Avery asked, pinching her brow together. “Can’t the NDS or the cops or something arrest him?”
Lucas shook his head and Avery watched as his curls followed each swift movement of his head. “It‘s not that simple,” he explained. “The (name) Woods house a lot of reject wolves. It’s dangerous. While the NDS are trying to infiltrate and arrest those they deem as fatal, they haven’t been able to do so because it’s such a tight-knit community. Anyone they encounter would be treated with suspicion, and more than that, anyone that the NDS tries to bribe or talk into going undercover and being an informant is somehow gone from the pack. Disappearing from Somerset, from existence. Personally, I think the pack has an informant in the NDS but I haven’t had that confirmed.”
“How do you know about all this stuff?” Avery asked, shaking her head. “It hasn’t been on the news.”
“The NDS is good at containing stories that could potentially lead to violence in the community,” he explained. “Think about it: if you, as a human, heard that there are wolves who belong to an unorganized, undocumented pack that beats the shit out of people, rapes their women, kidnaps children, wouldn’t you look at all wolves with suspicion? Even the good ones?”
Avery paused, letting the words sink in. She pressed her lips together and gave Lucas a look she hoped he’d be able to decipher.
“And there’s already some tension still within the community,” he pointed out. “If word got out, there would be justified violence, an unsanctioned manhunt to try and bring the wolves to justice. Any Lone Wolf could get round up and put into some kind of regulation camp or be forced to commit to a pack when they’d rather be on their own. And any wolf could be seen as a potential threat.”
Avery felt her face turn ashen. “Yes,” she finally managed to say, “but how do you know about this? You’re technically a Lone Wolf, too. If it’s not in the news, how were you able to find out?”
Lucas shot her his lazy smirk. “Just because I’m not part of a pack doesn’t mean I don’t have friends,” he said. “The Cruz pack lives just on the border of the Black Woods. We’re north and the Sterling pack is south. We have our own borders not published on any map. They’re aware of the threat because it’s starting to affect their pack.”
“How?”
Lucas gave her a small grin and curled a loose strand of hair around his long finger. “And why are you so interested in wolf stuff?”
“If you’re a wolf, I’m a wolf,” she said with a small smile. “When you love someone, their concern becomes your concern. If it’s something that troubles you, it’s something that troubles me.”
His smile turned soft. “You don’t know how much that means to me,” he murmured, kissing the gentle mark on her neck. “So you love me, then?”
Avery’s first instinct was to deny it. She wanted nothing more than to take back what she had said, what had slipped out of her mouth unknowingly, accidentally. But she wouldn’t. She would stand by what she said and she wouldn’t be afraid.
“I do,” she said. “I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. It’s new and I’m afraid of my ignorance, but I trust you. I trust this.”
“I love you, too,” he told her, his tone serious as he placed another kiss on the tip of her chin. “I’ve loved you the first minute I saw you.”
She didn’t doubt him.
“You never told me,” she murmured, almost afraid to break the spell they were both under, almost afraid to ask lest it was too painful for him to say and for her to hear. “Why you are a Lone Wolf. Why you broke away from your pack…” She let her voice trail off. There was no need for any more explanation, no need to push him if he did not want to say.
His eyes found hers, and the utter sadness there made her regret pushing him. “I told you why I hate Rick,” he began, his voice cold. Though it was clear he had moved on from whatever it was that haunted him, it was still something he could not push past. Perhaps he never would. Perhaps he recognized that and that was why he ultimately left. “And you remember why Liv and I were together.”
Avery nodded, albeit stiffly. She didn’t like the mention of Lucas with anyone but her, even though his reputation was public and infamous. However, Liv was more than just a fuck but the woman he thought he was going to spend the rest of his life with. The woman he cared about. The woman he planned things with.
Until Avery.
“I can smell your jealousy,” he whispered against her skin, his nostrils flaring as though to emphasize his point. Avery clenched her jaw but said nothing. Lucas smirked. “I love it.”
She shook her head and leaned against his hard, muscled shoulder, allowing her eyes to shut. She had never felt more relaxed in a long time.
“Don’t be embarrassed by it,” he said in a low, serious voice. “Don’t be afraid of your emotions. You’re allowed to feel them.” He took her chin in his hand and pulled it to him. “Trust me; I feel them constantly. All the time.”
“You’re avoiding the subject,” she said.
He grinned but did not pull away from her. “Even after everything between me and Liv,” he told her, his finger tracing the bridge of her nose before slowly running down her lips, “my pack still wanted me to marry her. I refused. I would not commit myself to someone who could not be loyal to my pack and to myself. So they excommunicated me.”
“But weren’t you going to be their Alpha?” Avery asked. She didn’t know why she was whispering, but she was.
He rested his forehead on hers as his hand came to rest on her chest, where her heart was pounding against her chest plate. She wondered if he could feel it thrum against him.
“Yes,” he answered, “but they’ll find someone else. A wolf’s pride is hard to overcome.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and she meant it. She could understand what that was like, the pressure to put the good of others before the good of himself.
He cocked his lips into a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m not,” he said, and captured her lips with his.
22
The night of the Masquerade, Avery paid a personal shopper to pick out a dress – something professional but eye-catching – and had her hair and makeup done. The plan for the evening was that both Lucas and Avery would meet at the Grand Hotel, and interact solely as professional colleagues, nothing more. No dancing, no lingering gazes, and definitely no touching.
It would probably be harder than she believed. She knew how he looked in business suits; she could only imagine what he would look like in a tailored tuxedo with a mask on his face, making him exotically mysterious. She bit her bottom lip, regretting her insistence that they remain just friends in the public eye. It was going to be so hard to be near him and not find some way to find his skin with her own.
Before she left in her town car – waiting in front of her home for a couple of minutes – Avery looked at
herself in her full-length bedroom mirror. She ignored the memories that immediately popped up in her head of Lucas taking her from behind, of watching him make love to her, of the clash in the skin tone, of the look on her face as he made her come. Her pelvis flinched with painful pleasure and she forced herself to focus. She needed tonight to go perfectly.
Avery wore a silver dress that flared at her hips and reached two inches above her knee – flattering but professional. The bodice was a sweetheart cut, the straps thin, and she had a strapless pushup bra that made her breasts look spectacular – much bigger than they really were. Her hair was pulled into a side bun, her bangs swept to the right side and pinned so they wouldn’t clutter her face. Her makeup was dark but not overdone, and her lips were painted red. She had never thought she could pull off red lipstick and still thought she looked somewhat ridiculous, but she forced herself to leave it on.
Tonight was not only the announcement regarding her and Lucas’s partnership with LunaApp. It was Avery Montgomery’s debut. The new Avery. The Avery she wanted to be. And that Avery wore red lipstick whenever she wanted to wear red lipstick.
When she decided everything was as perfect as she could make it, she locked her house and stepped into the town car. A flutter of butterflies tickled the inside of her stomach, like she was a fifteen-year-old girl going on her first date. She was nervous. Nervous but excited.
The event was being held at the Grand Hotel, one of the tallest buildings in Somerset. It had twenty-six floors, and one hundred rooms on each floor. There was a grand ballroom in the center of the hotel, just past the lobby, usually reserved for wedding receptions that booked out up to three years in advanced. It would be set up for Gary and Marcy’s reception tonight. The building glowed like the moon with its iridescent white brick that had this supernatural ability to shine, like marble or tile. There was also a beautiful private garden that housed hiking trails, exotic flowers, and fresh vegetables they used in their food. There were two, Olympic sized pools on the roof of the hotel and one on the west end of the hotel on the first floor, for those intimidated swimming twenty-six stories high. There was also an award-winning spa located on the east. The Grand oozed luxury, and the cheapest room for one night was $499 during the week.
The Somerset Series: A Box Set: Books 2-4 Page 29
