by Elsa Jade
Rafe had also told her that now she wouldn’t age the way she would have as a human. He’d told her that was the best part, that losing a mate was devastating to a shifter because of their longevity. He’d said that shifters rarely found a second mate, that he only knew of it happening twice. Once to his father with his mother, and to a shifter named Doc and his mate Mae. “You’ll meet them one day. When we travel to America.”
She wasn’t in any hurry to leave Europe.
Her mental meandering was interrupted.
Rafe’s phone, on the table between them, buzzed.
“Damn,” he hissed. “It can’t be good if Niko’s calling me.”
He tapped the phone’s screen and held it to his ear. He listened quietly, then said, “What the hell is she doing on a private chartered boat?”
Rafe paused, listening, still. Everyone became quiet.
“Absolutely. Stick with her. She’s damned good at getting into trouble. Which ship? That’s ours.” He was silent for a moment. “She’s not using her name? Hell. I’ll get you on there. When is it supposed to raise anchor? Hold tight, I’ll have you on the list in less than an hour. Pack. Do you know the itinerary?”
He scratched at the scruff on his face.
Rafe continued, “What? I wonder why… Never mind, it’s her. Enough said. You’ll be good to go before then. Thanks, Niko. The Tieros are indebted to you.” Another pause, then he laughed. “Okay, just put it on the bill. Make sure nothing happens to her.”
Rafe shoved the phone into his pocket and shook his head.
Vax frowned. “Sophie? Again?”
Rafe shook his head in disgust. “Sophie. Again. I hope this Niko guy is up for it.”
Vax raised a brow. “I would think he would be. He’s a cousin of Gavin’s, on his mother’s side.”
“Oh, hell,” Rafe said.
Jax looked at Rafe, a question in her eyes.
“Part Irish,” he said. “Part Greek. Black panther. Their family tempers and passions run deep and hot.”
“Maybe we should feel sorry for Sophie?” Jax said, the concern she felt for his sister plain in her voice.
“No, he’s got his hands full.” Vax’s lips twitched, and he seemed to be fighting a laugh off. “She’s Italian on our father’s side and Macedonian on our mother’s.”
Rafe’s face sobered. “I miss my home in Northern Greece, on the border with Macedonia.”
“Why are you here in Rome, then?” Jax asked. Did this mean he wanted to live in Greece?
Rafe looked toward his brother, but not with accusation. “One of us had to be here.”
Vax shook his head. “You don’t have to, you know, just because Gio wants you to. It’s your life. Go live it.”
A sound came from the front hallway, and Rafe cocked his head, listening. “Think that’s Gio?”
“No,” Callie said. “I heard him talking to your uncle Federico this morning. He said he was going to Sicily. That he’d had enough.”
“Then who…?” Rafe started to walk toward the alcove.
His progress was stopped short by a giant of a man followed by a woman with luminescent green eyes.
Vax stepped forward. “Kane. Astra.”
The man smiled, the expression breaking the sternness of his face. “The driver said we should just come in.”
Vax put his hand to his forehead. “Sorry. I forgot to tell everyone when you called.”
The big man stepped forward. “I’m Kane.” His voice was deep, his demeanor subtle, but he seemed to have a core of strength that left no doubt he’d be one to have on your side in the midst of a scuffle.
“Rafael Tiero.” Rafe put his hand out. “Call me Rafe. This is Jax.”
They shook hands.
Astra squealed. “Vax! Callie! You’re expecting.” Her light green eyes glowed. “Want to know what gender it is?”
“It’s a boy.” Vax practically growled the words out. “How are Mae and Doc?”
“Happy. Mae’s always busy making arrangements for Bear Canyon Valley.”
“Of course,” Vax grinned. “The valley wouldn’t be the same without her.”
Kane put his arm around his mate. “Astra’s got her heart set on finding her childhood friend Anya.”
Astra’s face grew serious. “The last time I saw her was the day my mom was killed. Anya saved my life. I have to see her again. I have to. It’s a mission. I’ve never forgotten her, never forgotten what she did.”
Jax looked at the newly arrived couple. More shifters in the Tiero Villa, she decided. The man was definitely a shifter. He had to be.
Then she looked at Astra.
Who was this woman with eyes that almost seemed to glow with a life of their own?
Rafe reached down and put his arm around her waist.
The woman with the ethereal eyes, the big shifter, Vax and Callie… It was all gone from her mind as she smiled up at the white tiger shifter who’d made her dreams come true.
The End
Website | Newsletter | Twitter
Temptation
Grey Wolves Rising #1
BBW Stand-alone paranormal romance
Mating Season Collection
Emma Storm
Website | Newsletter | Facebook
Mating Season Reader Chat on Facebook
Some werewolves walk the world forever in search of their mates. Gabriel Danes was one of the lucky ones–Joy Sutton appeared in his path one night six years earlier. Unfortunately, she came along too soon, leaving him with a painful choice: succumb to temptation and rob a young girl of her innocence, or suffer through season after season until she’d experienced enough of the world to know what she would have to give up if she decided to accept his bite.
Joy didn’t need four years at a university in Miami to teach her anything about the world, but she went anyway because Gabriel Danes wanted a woman, not a girl…and because it was just too painful to watch him live his life around her while she yearned helplessly for what he wouldn’t give. Now she’s home, and she’s done. Just done.
But when Joy tracks Gabriel down to let him know she’s moving to Florida for good, his tightly-leashed control snaps–and Joy realizes she did learn something during four years of college.
She learned how to claim her mate.
Copyright © 2015 by Emma Storm.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.
Emma Storm
PO Box 3281
Baltimore MD 21228
www.emma-storm.com
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Temptation: Grey Wolves Rising #1 by Emma Storm June 2015.
Also available
Obsession – Grey Wolves Rising #2
Salvation – Grey Wolves Rising #3
Forbidden – Grey Wolves Rising #4
Chapter One
‡
Gabriel Danes was hungry, but not for the bacon sizzling on the grill at Calla’s Kitchen. The animal inside him craved the sweet, rich iron of its True Mate’s blood.
But that wasn’t on the diner’s breakfast menu. After shaking the first flakes of a late-spring blizzard from his hair, he returned the nods several locals sent in his direction. If they had any idea they were filling their bellies in the company of a werewolf caught in the height of the Ma
ting Season, they didn’t show it.
In the thick of the Saturday-morning crowd, a familiar hand lifted to wave him over. Gabriel strode through the tight-packed tables, heading for Zev and Forrest, the other two men who made up his pack.
Lines of tension bracketed Forrest’s mouth, while Zev practically vibrated with wild energy. A human gathering place was no haven for three males consumed by the primal urge to fuck…and so much more than that. If the compulsion of the Mating Season stopped at their dicks, everything would be a damn sight less complicated.
“Cheer up, guys.” Their server winked as she slid a cup of coffee and a menu in front of Gabriel. “It’s just a few flurries.”
“We’re as ready for the end of winter as anyone else.” Forrest, always in possession of his public face, elicited a commiserating cluck from their server before she took her coffeepot to the next crowded table.
Once she was out of earshot, Forrest spoke. “Less than a week. You two going to make it?”
“I’m fine.” Gabriel tore open a packet of sugar with unnecessary force and dumped it into his cup.
Zev slaughtered a sausage with his fork. “I want it finished.”
“You should be praying for more time, not cursing the time you’ve been given.” Forrest leaned back against the padded bench seat of their booth and looked at Gabriel. “Joy came home last night.”
At the sound of her name, Gabriel’s wolf reared up. On the outside, Gabriel went utterly still. The sights and sounds of the diner fell away, leaving him to drown in a river of memory and fantasy.
Her eyes haunted him. Hell, every part of her haunted him, but he would never forget the shadow of pain he’d put in her wide eyes the last time they’d parted.
The hurt he’d dealt was necessary. Joy had no knowledge of his kind, of how her life would change once he claimed her. Every day, he prayed she would forgive him when the time was right for her taking, and every night, he dreamed.
He dreamed about her golden silky hair spilling over his thighs while she took his cock into her warm mouth. His hands craved the soft, heavy weight of her breasts. And his ears—Gabriel closed his eyes as hunger clawed in his gut. His ears needed the wet, carnal sounds of sinking into her tight, slippery heat.
All things he’d denied himself for the past six years because he wanted more from her—more for her—than frenzied coupling with a werewolf.
Zev’s rough curse sawed through Gabriel’s dark thoughts. “Tell him all of it. He’s too proud to ask.”
Gabriel raked his hands through his hair and braced his elbows on the table. “All of what?”
Forrest stirred the pulp in the bottom of a glass of orange juice. “She’s finished her fourth year. That’s supposed to be the end, isn’t it?”
“Unless she’s going after a graduate degree.” The way she should. His small-town girl could have the whole world if she wanted it. So curious and hungry, she’d more than once nearly broken his resolve to stay away and push her to experience the world. She deserved her chance at life the way normal people lived it.
“Your problem is you fell in love with her.” Zev didn’t sneer the words but he came damn close.
“That was your last free shot,” Gabriel warned, low enough that his words wouldn’t leave the table.
Forrest ignored them. “She got into town late last night with an empty trailer hitched to the back of her car.”
No point asking what that meant. All at once, the crowded diner felt like a trap he needed to escape. He forced himself to remain seated. Meeting for a friendly meal at the local diner a couple Saturdays a month to show that they were three regular dudes reinforced the illusion of normalcy he, Zev and Forrest had carefully cultivated over the past several years. Storming out in the middle of weekend breakfast service would draw unwanted attention.
If not for Joy, they wouldn’t have bothered with the masquerade. Wolves were made to roam and the Great Lakes encompassed a vast territory. If he’d found Joy at a different time in her life, he would be running wild with her now.
Instead, he was grasping at the crumbling edges of his control while the thought of losing his True Mate before he’d even had her battered the inside of his skull.
Never mind that away—away from their isolated lake town, away from the secretive, nomadic life that was all he could give her—was what he’d pushed Joy to find. He’d never really meant to succeed at permanently driving her away. His kind wasn’t made to walk alone. The spirits of their True Mates called almost as loudly as the primitive drive to reproduce and keep their species alive.
Claiming Joy was his life’s purpose.
“Not here,” Forrest said, rescuing a mug of coffee as the steaming liquid sloshed over the rim, shaken by the force of dark emotion vibrating through Gabriel’s arms to rock the table.
Drawing upon the reserves of his willpower, Gabriel wrested control back from his wolf and slammed an iron door on his wilder half. The table stopped shaking.
“Tell me the rest,” he said, spearing Forrest with his stare.
But Forrest jerked his head decisively. “This isn’t the place. There are too many people, and…”
Forrest said more but the words tangled into gibberish as the bell over the diner’s door chimed. A strong wind ushered in a scent that had imprinted itself upon Gabriel’s soul the first time he’d caught it six years earlier.
Instinct jerked his head around. Joy’s heart-shaped face, cheeks flushed from the cold, immediately ensnared him. As their gazes locked together, her lips parted in surprise. His focus dropped to the small, straight pearly teeth he loved to see bared in a grin just for him. Teeth he needed on his skin, sinking into his shoulder as he pushed her higher and higher to the peaks of pleasure he’d only shared with her inside his own head.
Before desire could drag him from the booth, he forced himself to look away from her mouth—but that brought a fresh bolt of temptation.
She’d grown her hair longer during the winter in the south. The thick, shiny length spilled over her shoulders, its gently curled ends resting on the upper slopes of her high, round breasts. They weren’t the right shape—she’d changed the style of bra she wore. He wanted to shred this new style with his teeth and bring back her natural silhouette, which was heavy and full and perfectly formed to spill into his hands.
She was dressed for spring in Florida, not Michigan. He might have been okay if she wore the same kind of thick, fleece-lined coats her parents had zipped up to their chins, but no. She’d wrapped a filmy pink scarf around her neck and left her fitted jacket open to show a thin white tee. The white fabric clung to curves he’d always adored, but she’d always hated. Her shirt loved her body as much as he did. It hugged her belly and highlighted the outline of her navel, something so vulnerable that it roused his dick to hard, aching attention. Dark, close-fitting jeans begged him to find her sweet mound but he reined himself in and sought her eyes again.
And she was looking back at him with so much heat and longing, he nearly lost himself anyway.
Across the table, Forrest muttered, “We are so screwed.”
Then Gabriel saw him—the male standing too fucking close to his mate. He couldn’t mute the growl rumbling in his chest.
“We’re supposed to be wearing our normal faces,” Zev muttered through a wall of tension as thick as the odor of bacon grease in the air.
Gabriel barely heard his pack mate’s warning. The guy standing a step behind Joy towered over her, all tanned and cocky-looking in the way of college boys who knew they had their pick of the young women on campus. As one of Joy’s age group, he wouldn’t have had any qualms about enjoying her lush curves. His experiences were the same as hers and the life he would lead promised the normalcy Gabriel had pushed her to explore.
Looking at her, framed by her middle-aged parents and the regular guy, wrenched a silent howl of outrage from his wolf.
Gabriel set his jaw in a grim, determined line. Joy had come home before the Mating
Season’s end. Nothing mattered more than that, not to Gabriel or his wolf. The man beside her didn’t matter, either. Not as anything more than a trespasser to dispose of.
He’d half-risen from the table when both of his pack mates stood to block him.
“She’s not alone,” Zev said. “We’re not alone. This isn’t the place or the time.”
Gabriel shot an incredulous look across the table. “You’re calling for moderation?”
Of the three of them, Zev was the wildest and the least likely to advocate backing down from anything. Ever.
But he stood there now with a warning light in his eyes. “She’s with her family and the whole town is digging into their pancakes right beside us. You still have time to claim her but you can’t do it here.”
*
Four years of college had packed Joy Sutton’s head with numbers, ideas and absolutes, but all that expensive knowledge vanished in the instant she made eye contact with him.
The air whooshed from her lungs, knocked right out by a familiar punch of awareness. Everything she’d ever wanted sat right there, dark and rough around the edges, hiding something she’d never quite been able to figure out because he wouldn’t let her close enough to get under his skin. Sometimes she thought she knew what he wanted. Sometimes she thought she saw hunger in his eyes, in the way his broad, work-hardened shoulders tensed when their paths crossed. His hunger seemed to reach for her now, beckoning her to find her way through the crowd and into his strong arms. She swayed, took a step toward him, and ran straight into an invisible wall when he looked away.
The sounds of conversation and clattering dishes melted into nothing, leaving her in a pocket of stunned, aching silence until someone nudged her shoulder. She flinched away from the touch and fisted her hand against her leg. Her body didn’t want anyone except the silent man who’d stared at her from across the room.
