by Mia Madison
Even though I don’t have any basis for comparison, I’m pretty sure I just had great sex. That doesn’t mean it’s anything more than that. Wolf has never given me the slightest indication that he cares about me.
He wants me, sure. And he cares about his friendships with my cousins who are in Firestorm. But I’m just a woman he wanted to fuck.
I need to remember that, reconcile myself to it so I don’t get hurt. No, that’s not right. It already hurts; I need to keep it from getting worse.
He said he’ll call me. Swore this wouldn’t be a one-night stand. So if this happens again, I’ll get to have more great sex. I can deal with that.
The one thing I cannot let myself do is fall for Reid Calhoun.
9
Feel That For A While
At noon on Monday, three days after my encounter with Wolf, I’m falling asleep at my desk. This is because I couldn’t sleep Friday night after he left, and when the weekend went by without any word from him, I didn’t sleep Saturday or Sunday night either. So I’m here in my office, dead on my feet, trying not to think about the fact that Wolf is tired of me already.
It’s not like he didn’t know what he was getting with me. But I knew what I was getting with him, too: a man who values freedom above all else and doesn’t like to be tied down. He promised me this wasn’t a one-night stand, but that was before he had me.
I already knew a woman like me couldn’t be enough for a man like him. It’s just hard — even harder than I thought it would be — to have the only man I’ve ever really wanted dump me after fucking me once.
At least my pesky virginity is no longer an issue. And from everything I’ve heard, having a fantastic first time is not that common, so I should be thankful. Maybe I should send Wolf some flowers in gratitude.
Those are the snarky, cynical thoughts I’m using to keep my melancholy at bay when I hear a ruckus out in my reception area. My business suite is very small. It contains a tiny waiting room, a slightly less tiny conference room, and my office, which is bigger than the reception area but smaller than the conference room. The restroom is outside, shared by the whole floor.
I go to the door of my office and my body goes solid. Wolf is coming down the hall. Seeing him here, in this staid business environment, is a shock.
He’s always been my fantasy. Now, as his big, denim-and-leather-clad body prowls toward me, it’s as if I’m seeing him for the first time, free of my romanticizing. With a sudden strange clarity, I know that on some level — maybe multiple levels — Reid Calhoun is a very dangerous man.
And holy fuck, it makes him a hundred times hotter than he already was.
My receptionist hurries after him. Since I’m just starting out in my practice, I don’t need to maintain full-time office hours. I mostly see clients by appointment. Jenna’s a college student who comes in for two hours, three days a week, to do billing and filing and phones, and the other odds and ends of running an office.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Adamo,” she says breathlessly. “He doesn’t have an appointment and I told him you weren’t available but he didn’t listen. Do you want me to phone the police?”
Wolf turns his head to look at her and she shrinks back, but doesn’t turn and run. Point to Jenna. “It’s all right,” I tell her. “I know him.”
She opens her mouth and closes it again, a pained expression on her face. I suspect she finds Wolf disturbing and would like to banish his large, unruly presence from her tidy, tightly-controlled domain. In fact, she’d probably be more comfortable if he didn’t exist.
This makes me bite my lip to keep from smiling or even laughing. “Go ahead and go. I’m fine.”
Jenna sends Wolf a doubtful look, but her ingrained good manners won’t let her ask if I’m sure, or say that maybe she should call the cops just to be on the safe side. Her lips compress, but she goes back to her desk, and a few moments later the front door opens and closes.
I look to Wolf to see he’s studying me with an expression on his face I’ve never seen before. “What?”
He doesn’t tell me, just backs me into my office and closes the door. “Your girl’s on break?”
My office feels a lot smaller with him in it. I’m getting tingles in vital locations just from his nearness, and forgetting that I’m mad at him for not calling me. “No, she’s only part-time. She’s gone for the day.”
He gives me his slow, sexy smile again and my heart stutters. It feels like that smile is just for me, even though I know it can’t be true. “You got any appointments?” he goes on, still backing me up.
“No.” I hit the wall, heat prickling between my legs. “No appointments.”
“Good.” Wolf hauls me against him. His mouth hits mine and need roars through me like a wildfire.
The next few moments pass in a confused flurry of activity that ends with my skirt hiked up around my waist, his hands on my ass, and my legs wrapped around him. “Someone might come in,” I pant, and he turns and carries me to the door.
“This thing don’t lock?”
“No, just the outer door.”
“Fuck it,” he mutters, and sets my back against the door. Holding me up with one hand under my ass, he grabs my plain cotton panties in the other and rips them apart. I gasp as his fingers test me.
“So wet for me,” he rumbles in my ear. “Love that, babe.”
My legs tighten around him. “Wolf.” What I mean is hurry, and as if he knows it, he frees himself and spears into me.
I shout, and his hand covers my mouth. “Hold on tight,” he growls. I wrap myself around him as he pounds into me, not being gentle at all, and I love it.
My climax is already building. When I start to clench around him he pummels me even harder, until the orgasm hits me like a shock wave and I scream into his hand. He keeps going, fucking me even harder until he finds his own release, his cock swelling inside me before he plants himself a final time and lets go.
After a few moments, Wolf uncovers my mouth and gets both hands under me. “Missed you,” he says against my hair, and I close my eyes as something warm and heavy moves in my chest.
“I missed you too,” I whisper. He sets me down and I start putting my skirt back into place. My legs are trembling.
The amazing thing is not that Wolf just fucked me up against the door of my office, where anyone could potentially have walked in and heard us, even if the likelihood of it happening wasn’t that high. It’s that I don’t feel embarrassed or ashamed or sorry at all.
“You need to be here?” he asks. “Or can you work from anywhere?”
“I only need to be here for client meetings, basically. There’s nothing scheduled for the rest of the day, so yeah, I can work from anywhere.”
“Good. I’m gonna follow you home and then take you up to my place.”
My heart does a happy little jump. I smile at him. “Okay. Just let me grab a few files.”
A couple of minutes later, I’m ready. So when Wolf takes my files and purse away and sets them on my desk, I frown at him, puzzled. And then he turns me around and says, “Hands on the wall.”
I obey before I can think, the innate authority in his voice unlocking something deep inside me. When he hikes my skirt up again, my breath catches. His hand rubs a gentle circle on my ass, and then he smacks me.
My breath hisses in. “Did I do something?” I don’t know why he’s punishing me.
Wolf moves so he’s facing my side. His other hand comes around to cup me. Against the back of my neck, he says, “The only reason we need, babe, is that you like it and so do I.”
And then, lips on my neck, fingers on my clit, he spanks me until I come, and there’s something almost tender about the way he does it. Which I would have said was crazy, if I hadn’t just experienced it.
While he’s working my skirt down again, I say, “I’m gonna feel that for a while.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. “And by the time we get to my place you’re gonna be wet and horny as fuck.”
As it turns out, he’s absolutely right.
10
Harder On You
I’m cuddled with Wolf on his couch, wearing nothing but one of his t-shirts. His hand is tracing random patterns on my ass. Once again, I’m in the bliss zone.
First, there was riding with Wolf on the back of his bike, which was beyond awesome. Then there was his house, which is up in the mountains not far from where Rico lives, and is also awesome. I thought it would be a total man den, but while it is very masculine, it’s also very comfortable. Not exactly tidy, but not like the Firestorm compound, which would not feel unfamiliar to a bunch of frat boys.
Then there was the meatloaf Wolf made us for a late lunch. Again, I pretty much expected that he would have bread, maybe some deli meats and cheese, canned soup, stuff like that. But he cooked — and it was delicious.
And then, of course, there was more sex. Wolf went down on me again, and then I got to go down on him. I was an eager student, and figured out quickly that doing that for him is a turn-on for me.
Afterward, he did me doggie style, and I loved that too. Which brings us to now, and me thinking that I really like sex a lot and if I could somehow spend the rest of my life doing nothing but fucking Wolf, I’d be a happy camper.
My reverie is interrupted by my phone ringing. Fortunately, my purse is on the coffee table right in front of us, and Wolf can reach out and snag it without either of us having to move. He hands it to me, and I fish out my phone to see it’s my mom calling.
“Hey, Mom,” I greet her. Wolf’s thumb draws circles at the base of my spine, and I shift against him. The corner of his mouth quirks up and he gives my ass a gentle squeeze.
“Hello, darling. Is Wolf there?”
I hold the phone away from my face and stare at it. That night at the club, I told Mickey that Adamo mamas are psychic, but seriously? Putting it back to my ear, I say, “What?”
“Let me talk to him, darling.”
“Mom,” I hiss. How am I going to explain to Wolf that my mother, whom I adore, is crazy and possibly has long-distance mind-reading powers? Let alone that her picture is in the dictionary next to nosy.
“I just want to say hello.”
She’s not going to give up; I know her. I press the phone into the cushions to muffle the sound and say to Wolf, as apologetically as possible, “It’s my mother. She wants to talk to you.”
He immediately holds his hand out for the phone, and with not a little trepidation I give it to him. “Yeah,” he says, and listens. “Yep. Right. Got it.”
With that, he ends the call. I stare at him, stunned. For one thing, I think that might be the first time anyone, even including my brothers, has managed to have a monosyllabic conversation with Paola Adamo. For another, she’d normally want to bend my ear for another half an hour before she was through. “What did she say?”
“We’re invited to dinner tonight.”
“Oh, god.” I do a face plant into his chest.
“Babe,” he says. “It’ll be fine.”
I lift my head. “You know they’re going to do an invasion. Hordes of Adamos, all checking you out.”
Wolf does not look at all concerned by this prospect. “It’ll be fine,” he says again.
I decide not to dwell on the possibilities. “What time are we supposed to be there?”
He checks the time on my cell phone. “About an hour. You just got time to get dressed.”
“Crap.” I jump up and dash for the bathroom, muttering, “Good thing you didn’t destroy this pair of panties.”
And behind me, I hear the deep, rich, unbelievably wonderful sound of Wolf’s laughter.
My two eldest brothers live in another part of the state, so I’m hoping that the only people we’ll be eating with are my parents, my brother Kosta, Erin, and my twin brother Carmine.
But when we reach my parents’ house, the street is lined with vehicles and a lot of them I recognize. “Oh god,” I say. “They’re already here. We’re late to our own invasion.”
“Relax,” Wolf says as we climb off his bike.
“How can you be so calm about this?”
He hooks his arm around my shoulder as we cross the street. “Used to a bunch of rowdy bikers, babe. I ain’t scared of your family.”
That makes sense, but I can’t help thinking he doesn’t understand all the ramifications of an invasion. It’s not a “let’s say hi to the guy you’re screwing” event. Maybe it seems like that on the surface, but really it’s a sign that a relationship is Serious.
Or, at least, that’s how it’s been for my brother Kosta, my cousins, and their women. It’s always possible that Wolf and I will be the exception that proves the rule. This is not a happy thought, and I shove it away as we reach the house, lest my too-perceptive clan pick up on my feelings.
The second we come in the door, it starts. A roar of greeting from all the Adamos packing the place, and then hugs and kisses and what feels like a thousand people all talking over each other at once.
Wolf and I are separated almost immediately by the crush of people, and even though they’re my family, I’m the one throwing him a panicked look over my shoulder as we get farther apart. I don’t know if it’s because I’m worried about him, or what exactly. All I know is I don’t want to go through this without him.
And then he’s there, cutting through a sea of my relations like Moses parting the waves. He puts his arm around me and pulls me against his side, and I lean into him, at once moved and grateful, but also worried about how my family will interpret his behavior.
My mother is a hardcore romantic, and I'm her only daughter. The weight of her expectations in the marriage-and-grandbabies department has been heavy on my shoulders since I was a girl. I don’t want my clan, and especially my mother, to get their hopes up only to have them dashed.
As if I’ve summoned her with my thoughts, Mom is here in front of us, with her delicate features and the amber-colored eyes she passed down to Kosta and Carmine. I, on the other hand, look like a feminine version of my father, with dark brown hair and eyes.
“My darling,” she says to me, kissing my cheek. Then she turns to Wolf, frames his face in her hands, and looks into his eyes like she can read his soul.
He lets her do it, a small smile playing around his lips, as if his badass alpha maleness is immune to maternal scrutiny. It lasts a few seconds that feel like an hour. And then my mother smiles softly, goes up on her toes, and murmurs something in his ear.
She does this opposite the side where I’m standing, so I can’t hear what she says or even try to read her lips. But when she settles back on her heels, pats his cheek, and moves on, Wolf looks like she hit him with a two-by-four.
Before I can ask him about it, my dad is there. “Desi Adamo,” he says, shaking Wolf’s hand.
“Reid Calhoun.” Dad’s not as big as Wolf, but he’s no slouch, and they’re doing the manly grip, sustained eye contact thing. When Dad turns to give me a hug, I can’t read his expression; he doesn’t seem disappointed, but neither is he pleased.
My stomach pangs with anxiety. I have no idea if Wolf and I are even a real couple, though today felt pretty couple-ish. But no matter what’s going on between us, I don’t like the idea of my dad disapproving.
My brother Kosta is next, and he does the same damn thing, shaking Wolf’s hand and sizing him up. Even Carmine follows suit. I know alpha males will do what they’ll do, but it’s still annoying.
Erin, instead of following Kosta, slots herself in at my other side. “How are you doing?” she says in my ear.
“Kinda freaking out,” I tell her.
She squeezes my hand. “Hang in there. Here come the other girls.”
Soon Mickey, Frankie, Cait, and Gina have me surrounded, and Rico, Victor, Tonio, and Carlo are giving Wolf brotherly hugs, slapping him on the back. When it’s time to sit down and eat the enormous quantities of food that all the guests brought with them, the girls maneuver things so
that Wolf and I wind up at a table with them and their men.
Everyone at our table is very pleased with this arrangement. The rest of the clan is not so happy, since it means they won’t have the entire meal to give Wolf the third degree about his life and grill both of us about our relationship. But since the couples we’re eating with survived their own invasions, they know how intense it can get and that we need a breather.
After dinner, though, Dad “invites” Wolf and me to sit with him and Mom for dessert. Kosta and Carmine join us, and my stomach starts to tense up again. I’m ridiculously grateful when Erin slips into a seat beside me.
“So, Reid,” my dad says. “What is it you do?”
“Own a bar,” Wolf answers easily. “The Boneyard.”
Dad just nods, but I have no doubt that before long he’ll have chapter and verse on every detail of the bar’s finances. And probably Firestorm’s, for that matter.
On the surface, my father can be mistaken for a bit of a nerd, a forensic accountant who loves his wife. But below that deceptively mild-mannered exterior, he’s a macho alpha male who will do whatever it takes to protect his family. Kosta, in a similar vein, hides a kickass tough guy behind his cosmopolitan façade, which came in handy when stuff went down with him and Erin.
I just hope neither of them decides Wolf isn’t good for me. If it comes down to that, it’s my call, not theirs.
The conversation turns to less personal topics, but I know Wolf and I are under scrutiny. What he says, how he says it, and especially how we are with each other. Somehow, he takes it all in stride, so much so that it helps me relax and go with the flow.
When it’s time to leave, he takes my hand, lacing our fingers together as we stroll back to his bike. The easy intimacy of it shimmers through me like sunlight. I give him a squeeze and ask, “You okay?”
“That was harder on you than it was on me.”
I guess I didn’t do a very good job of hiding it. “I’m okay,” I say, even though he didn’t ask.
