Avery pressed her brows together. “I don’t understand,” she said.
Her mother made a face. “You wouldn’t,” she muttered, not unkindly. “Av, look, no matter how much better you are at business, no matter that you graduated with honors from a prestigious business school, no matter that you are the daughter of one of the richest, most successful men in the world, people in business are going to look at you as inferior simply due to the fact that you have a vagina.” She pressed her lips together, her eyes staring straight into Avery’s. “Stop trying so hard to change that.”
“You’re saying it’s right that because I’m a woman, I’m not taken seriously simply because business is a male-dominated field?” she asked, aghast. The Chinese food was getting cold, but Avery didn’t mind. Somehow, Chinese food tasted better as leftovers.
“I’m saying men do things a certain way,” she said. “You’re a woman. You need to do things differently. Don’t try to fit in when you don’t.”
Avery opened her mouth to argue but then shut it. She allowed her mother’s words to sink in and took a couple of deep breaths. “Are you saying to stop trying to do things the way a man would,” she said, “and start doing things the way a woman would?”
Her mother smiled. “Precisely,” she said with a curt nod. “Those frigid bitches were talking shit about the relationship I had with your father because they were threatened by a young beautiful well-educated woman who didn’t just smile and say yes to whatever a man told me. Your father and I were real partners. We discussed things. I gave my opinion, he gave his. Sometimes, we wouldn’t agree but we supported each other. I didn’t complain to your father about it because then I’m feeding the negative energy. Instead, I had a great sex life.”
“Mom,” Avery said, turning red.
“No, you need to listen to this, Av,” her mother continued. “I’m being serious. Your vagina is the key to your success. If you’re getting enough orgasms, it’ll show. Sexual energy is creative energy. Energy tends to rest in your pelvis – you need to get it to flow through your body. If your father was away, I would get myself off just to ensure my energy was always flowing.”
“Mom, I think I’ve had enough of your sexual energy for one conversation,” Avery said, feeling her cheeks turn red. “Or, ever.”
Her mother rolled her eyes. “Does Lucas treat you right?” she asked.
“Now you care if Lucas treats me right?” Avery asked. “Of course, he treats me right. I’d never allow myself to be with someone who didn’t. The problem was, I didn’t know Rick was a bad fiancé. I had no one to compare him to. And that’s not always a good thing, but…” She let her voice trail off and she shook her head, her eyes far away. “Mom, I know you liked Rick but he’s not a great guy.”
“How am I supposed to know that, when my own daughter doesn’t tell me anything?” her mother asked, throwing out her arms.
Avery’s eyes descended to the chow mein in the plastic container, and she pushed them around the Styrofoam without meeting her mother’s eyes. “I didn’t know he was a bad guy, Mom,” she told him. “I had no one to compare him to. I didn’t know what was normal when it came to relationships. What was expected. Most importantly, I didn’t know what I wanted and what I wouldn’t tolerate. Lucas showed me…” She let her voice trail off. “Lucas showed me what it’s like to be a woman, Mom. And I don’t mean when it comes to sex, but what it means to truly feel feminine, powerful, graceful, and beautiful. He makes me feel good about myself. I want you to like him but I won’t force you. But your feelings don’t make a difference to mine. If you choose to make your snide comments and your faces that Daddy says you can’t hide for anything, you’re going to lose me. And as much as you aggravate me, I don’t want to lose you.”
She paused for a moment in order to catch her breath. Marlene stared at her daughter, a contemplative look on her face. Then, her shoulders sagged and she looked out the window to the rays of sunshine spilling through.
“You’re really serious about him, aren’t you?” she asked, defeated.
Avery grabbed her mother’s hand, forcing her to look at Avery. “Yes,” she said. “I really am.”
“Oh, all right,” her mother said. “I’ll meet him and I’ll keep my comments to myself. Perhaps we could all go out to dinner, the four of us, and get to know him better.” She paused for a moment, thinking. “He is pretty cute.”
Avery laughed despite herself. She was surprised to see the pretty red blush that caressed the tips of her mother’s cheeks.
“What?” her mother said. “I’m not blind. Av, I’m just, I’m just worried, okay? I know vampires and werewolves have been mainstream since the turn of the century. I get it. But I don’t know what it means to love someone of another species. I don’t know the sacrifices you’re going to have to make, the prejudice that’s going to play into that, the discrimination you’re both going to have to face. It didn’t help that he practically transformed in front of everyone.”
Avery shot her mother a look. “If Rick hadn’t been there in the first place,” Avery said, but her mother cut her off with a dismissive wave of her hand.
“I know, I know.” She rolled her eyes. “That is old news, Av. Would you just let it go?” She gave her daughter the first genuine smile Avery had seen from her mother in a long while.
“He did it for me, Mom,” Avery murmured.
Marlene reached out and squeezed her daughter’s hand. “I know, hon,” she said. “It’s the only reason I’m willing to allow myself to like him.”
Avery rolled her eyes but she squeezed her mother’s hand in return. It wasn’t much but she would take it.
25
“Doctors speculate that a new species will be confirmed by the NDS in as little as days. We’re not certain what that species will be, but some are speculating that fairies aren’t mere legend and that they’re more dangerous than humans, vampires, and werewolves combined.” A cute petite news reporter stared at the camera, her blue eyes piercing. “However, the Somerset PD assure us that they, along with the NDS, are studying this new species, learning how to contain and control” –
Lucas snorted and rolled his eyes, looking away from the television. Avery glanced up at him from the corner of her eye. His long fingers began to trace mindless patterns on her shoulder.
“Clive Shereen, head of a classified department of the NDS, will have a press conference in a couple of days to ask questions. It is uncertain if this is when the fairy species will be confirmed, but at the very least, it can give answers we’ve been speculating about for years. I’m Carolina Fitzgibbons, and this is Somerset News.”
Lucas grabbed the remote from the arm of the couch and snapped off the television.
“Do you not think fairies are real?” Avery asked from her position with her head on his chest, looking up at him with a tilt of her head. “I hear there’s royalty just like the vampire, but they each have their own courts, like wolf packs.”
“It’s not a matter of if they’re real or not,” Lucas said. “It’s the NDS thinking they can contain a species. They can’t contain vampires or werewolves. Hell, prisons can’t even contain humans. And they want to attempt to figure out how to do that to a species that’s even worse than all three put together? I just don’t understand…” He shook his head. “It’s why I had to leave my pack. Control. Expectations.” He paused. “Even after what she did to me, they were still going to have me marry her. They excused her behavior, saying she was just exploring her youth before being tied down forever.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t marry someone I didn’t trust. So I left.”
Avery furrowed her brow, her hand reaching up to squeeze Lucas’s shoulder. He never got into why he left his pack and, truth be told, it hadn’t been something at the forefront of Avery’s mind. Now, she wished she had asked him, if only to show that she sincerely cared about what happened.
He looked at her in reaction to her touch and gave her a half smile that didn’t q
uite reach his eyes.
“You wanna talk about it?” she asked. She hated that question more than she hated a lot of things. It felt contrived, forced, and too sympathetic for someone as strong and as independent as Lucas was. But she didn’t know how else to verbalize that she was here for him if he needed her. And she wanted to know this part of him. She wanted to know all parts of him.
“Liv was a wolf, too,” he said, his eyes going to the glass coffee table in front of them. Avery didn’t mind; she understood that he needed to stare off in order to feel fully comfortable sharing this sort of information with her. “She’s part of the Cruz pack. Her family is really important, actually. Nearly as important as mine. Wolves are still traditional in that some of us – especially the Alpha family – will arrange marriage in order to unite packs or to keep bloodlines pure. It’s a way to guarantee a wolf pup when it’s time to mate. Do you follow?”
Avery nodded but refrained from asking questions. She wanted him to get everything out before she began to ask for clarification.
“When I was young, my parents arranged a marriage between me and Liv,” he said. “Liv’s family are my family’s betas – the second strongest family in the pack. It just happened that there were a daughter and a son between them, similar in age, that could possibly help balance each other out. Since it’s not uncommon for our culture, Liv and I started dating when we were young. I think we cared about each other deeply, but as I look back, I don’t know what was love and what was projected love in hopes the mating bond would appear between us.”
“The mating bond is based on instinct between two wolves, right?” Avery asked. So much for waiting.
“Right,” he said. “It’s supposed to lead you to your mate, whom you bond with for life.”
“And it never appeared?”
Lucas shook his head. “Not to me, not to Liv,” he said. He shrugged. “The feeling you get when you meet your mate… It’s instantaneous. There’s no maybe. There’s no later on. It happens the minute you lock eyes and your soul meets its other half.” He reached out and curled a lock of hair behind her ear, the pads of his fingers lingering on the tip of her ear. “That’s what I felt when I first saw you.”
“You-you did?” she asked, her eyes widening in surprise.
“Of course I did.” He said it as though it was the most obvious thing in the world and the curve of his smile danced with light. “I’m sure you know my reputation. I’m not the kind of guy who settles down. When I first saw you, really looked into your eyes, any desire I had to be with anyone else went out the window. You were mine since that moment, whether you knew it or not.”
“So that girl at the club?” Avery asked, furrowing her brows.
“I didn’t even touch her,” he said, trying to reassure her. “And the rare occasions I had to made my body tense up with disgust.”
“She was gorgeous,” Avery pointed out, her tone almost flat.
“She was,” he admitted, “but once you imprint, your body is solely for your other and theirs is solely for you. I don’t think you realize what it did to me, knowing you were with Rick. Knowing he was allowed to touch you, to kiss you, to do things to your body and to your mind and to your soul that I wasn’t allowed to do? Fuck, Av. It drove me crazy. I wanted to throw you over my shoulder and claim you as my own, especially when you put your mouth on my cock and swallowed every last drop of me. I know you said the two of you weren’t having a great sex life but I still worried about the possibility of you doing that to him” –
“I never did,” she told him. “Trust me.”
“I do,” he said. “But still.” His hand reached out and he gently caressed her forearms with the back of his fingers, leaving goosebumps in their wake. “You are the only person I want touching my body, now and ever.” His eyes softened. “I know that’s a lot to take in. Maybe I sound crazy. It’s why humans and wolves don’t mate all that much – because even though the imprint locks into place for the wolf, that doesn’t guarantee it will for the human.”
“But you imprinted with me,” Avery said. “How does that work?”
Lucas shrugged. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “We don’t question why things are the way they are, just that they are. I’m just lucky enough to know that you feel the same way about me.”
“I do,” she said. Avery paused, formulating the words she wanted to say in her head before she said them. She wanted to make sure she didn’t offend him but she also wanted to be honest. “I mean, I think it’s too early to plan for the future but I don’t see myself wanting to be with anyone other than you.”
Lucas smiled. “Perhaps we should discuss our personal relationship,” he said. “I know you didn’t initially want to publically be with me because you were afraid of the perception people were going to give you regarding our partnership, both romantically and professionally. However, your speech at the Luna Debut…” He let his voice trail off and his brown eyes bronzed. “You admitted we were together.”
Avery was silent for a moment, her mother’s words twittering in her head.
“I’m not ashamed of you, Lucas,” she said. “And I’m not going to hide one of the most important parts of my life from the public. I know I’m trying to make a name for myself, outside my father and you and everything else. But I can’t pretend to be someone I’m not. So any events we attend, we attend as a couple. No more pretending.”
“Does this mean we can’t have sex in supply closets anymore?” he asked, perking his brow.
Avery threw her head back and started laughing. Real, genuine laughter. She didn’t remember the last time she did that, and it felt good.
“Of course we can still have sex in supply closets,” she said. “Let’s just try to find better timing next time.”
He pulled her closer to him, onto his lap so she was facing him. Without thinking much on it, her wrists locked behind his head. His eyes looked at her considerable cleavage, a feral look taking over his eyes and making them sparkle.
“Do you regret it?” he asked suddenly, tilting his head to the side. “What happened between us? How it happened?”
Avery pressed her lips together. “There’s nothing about our relationship I regret,” she told him.
Without warning, Lucas flipped her on her back, her legs still wrapped around his waist, and he drove his pelvis into her, hard. She threw her head back and groaned at the action, so completely contradictory to the sweetness of his question. This Lucas was all wolf – possessive, demanding, and rough. She gripped his shoulders with her fingernails and he growled.
“Your mom?” he asked, raising a brow. His hands were fiddling with the buttons of her shirt.
Her mother was the last thing Avery wanted to discuss but she knew Lucas wanted some kind of resolution to the woman he might call mother-in-law at some point in the future. She could understand. Perhaps she was lucky she didn’t have to deal with his mother. Perhaps she was missing out as well.
“She’s coming around,” she managed to get out. That wasn’t completely a lie, but it was hard to give details when his cock pressed so hard against her mound.
He bit out a grin. “Good,” he told her.
“The flowers helped,” she told him. “Make sure you lather on the charm when we go out to dinner next week. All of us. My dad, too.” She gave him a look as her body began to grind against him, without so much as a conscious thought on her end. “Can we stop talking about family?”
“I’ll do anything you tell me to, Avery,” he told her.
Her brows shot up. “Really?” she asked, surprised.
“Of course.” He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Do you think I only like to dominate and control? Do you think that perhaps I want someone to tell me what to do in the specific context of our bedroom?”
Her eyes darkened at the prospect of getting on top of Lucas, straddling him, and taking out all of her anger and frustration of her day onto his erect cock. She didn’t know if t
he tugging was her body’s response to his words or the bond the two shared. From the way his eyes darkened and dropped to her lips, she thought that perhaps it was both.
“Go to the bed,” he told her. “I have more to teach you.”
Want to know when my next book comes out?
An Education in Academics: A Somerset Novel will be released April, 2017.
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Acknowledgments
To my husband Frank, my daughter Kylee, and my stepsons Jacob and Joshua – thank you for your undying love and support. I couldn’t do this without you
To my mom and my brother – for always believing me
To Desi – amazing, beautiful cover, as usual
To my amazing betas – Diane M., Heather K., Sophie K., Cindy F.
Your thoughts, your corrections, and your comments shaped this tory into what it is today. Without you, it wouldn’t be this great.
An Education in Business: A Somerset Novel (Somerset Series Book 3) Page 15
