The Wolf's Mate Book 4: Michael & Shyne

by Butler, R. E.

  The Wolf’s Mate

  Book 4: Michael & Shyne

  by R.E. Butler

  Copyright 2012 R.E. Butler

  The Wolf's Mate Book 4: Michael & Shyne

  by R.E. Butler

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  **Cover Artist: Ramona Lockwood**

  This ebook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is coincidental.

  Disclaimer: The material in this book is for mature audiences only and contains graphic sexual content and is intended for those over the age of 18 only.

  * * * * *

  I'd like to thank Lisa at Editor's Cove for editing this book for me. When I was against the wall, Lisa stepped up to the plate and came through for me with flying colors.

  With much love to Kameko Gay...Allen will still be here when you're ready. To Aunt B.L., words can't express how much your support means to me. To Jacq McNeill...thank you for helping me with Michael's story, I'm so proud to call you friend. To Alex G., who tirelessly supports me and runs my Facebook page, I hope you know how special you are. Hugs and kisses to all my fans and followers on the blog, Facebook and Twitter...your encouragement gives me wings. And finally to my husband...I love you.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Epilogue

  From the Author & Other Works

  Sneak Peek of The Wolf's Mate 5: Bo & Reika

  Chapter 1

  “I did it, Trav!” Shyne gushed, opening the door to the Coffee Bean and rushing inside. “Check it!” She slapped the paper on the counter between them and beamed with pride.

  “Look at you, baby girl,” he laughed. “Aren’t you just the cat with the cream?”

  He pulled the paper from under her fingers that stated she was now a Group Fitness Instructor certified through the ACE.

  Her best friend peeked over the certificate with his soft gray eyes and quirked one perfectly plucked brow. “You really want to be an aerobics instructor?”

  She grinned. He’d been teasing her mercilessly for the last year while she self-studied for her certification and learned all she could by taking classes at different gyms in the area, including Stone’s Gym. Their current group instructor was moving away, and it had been her good fortune to stumble into their gym when she was drawing close to the end of her studying.

  “I’m not wearing leg warmers and headbands, you dork.” Snatching the certificate away from him, she looked it over once more, her excitement rising. There in beautiful script was her name: Shyne Marie Jackson. Fucking-A.

  “Sit for a coffee?” Trav gestured to the line of machines as if she could miss their gleaming exteriors.

  “Nah. I told the boys at the gym I’d let them know if I passed or not.”

  “Ooooh.” He grinned further, showing a dimple. Trav was too adorable for his own good. Carefully spiked light brown hair with blond highlights was standing at perfect attention on top of his head. She knew from waiting for him to go clubbing that he spent a long time in front of a mirror to look so good. Tall and lean, he was the perfect man for her, except he also liked cock. Sometimes it’s the little things…

  “You know they're just my friends.” She was talking about Dante, Cairo and Mason, the three owners of Stone’s Gym. They were brothers and fantastic sides of man-beef. When she joined their gym a few months ago, they only had one group instructor who taught four classes a week. Their gym was mostly for meat-heads: those big huge guys who liked the weights and nothing else. She liked a man who could lift her over his head without a thought, but she also liked something between the ears. And a wicked sense of humor helped, too.

  “I don't know how you can be 'just friends' with such hot guys.” Trav gave her his best smirk and leaned over the counter to kiss her cheek. “You know, I still think that you need a disclaimer about your appearance for your future students.”

  “What do you mean? What’s wrong with the way I look?” She looked down at herself. Feet, legs, ass, tits, arms and head. All where she left them this morning.

  “You look like an underwear model.” He smirked further and folded his arms.

  “So?”

  “So a lot of that flat belly is from good genes.”

  True. She had an excellent metabolism. But she loved exercise, too. “So?”

  “So? That’s false advertising!” He barked out a laugh, and she echoed it, finger waving at him as she bumped her ass against the door to open it. It was a great ass. Why not use it?

  When she arrived at Stone’s Gym, she found Mason, youngest of the three brothers and also the sweetest, sitting at the front desk. The chair next to him held Kathy, the receptionist. She was one of those bubbly, big-titted girls who thought she could skate by on her looks forever. Maybe she could. If Shyne was her, she’d also try to be smart and nice, but that was just her.

  Mason stood up quickly, and the chair clattered behind him. “Well?”

  She couldn’t help but grin. “I did it!”

  “Fucking right you did!” He bounded around the u-shaped desk and swung her up into his arms. Mason was a computer nerd who happened to also have a passion for weight lifting, and it showed. Like his brothers, he had a body born of hard work and dedication with thick muscles on top of thick muscles. Each brother had beautiful olive-colored skin and jet-black hair. Mason kept his hair long, which allowed his curly locks to dust his shoulders. Dante, the oldest, cut his hair short on top and shaved on the sides. And Cairo, the largest of the three, shaved his head. Dante ran the gym. Mason and Cairo were trainers, and Cairo was also a boxer in underground off-the-books matches because he — and his brothers — happened to be were-hyenas.

  Shyne was just human. She’d never known any were-animals when she was growing up. And it wasn’t until she and Trav met when she was eighteen and he was nineteen that she met her first were. It was one of Trav's first boyfriends, Todd, who was something called a rogue werewolf. That meant he had no pack. They didn’t last long. Todd had a problem with monogamy, and Trav had a problem with that.

  “Uh, Mason,” she groaned, unable to catch a breath in his tight grip.

  “Sorry, sorry.” He put her down gently, and she gulped in a deep breath.

  “It’s okay,” she promised and went up on her toes to kiss his cheek. He was her biggest supporter next to Trav, and she adored him. She adored Cairo and Dante, too, but Mason was her favorite of the three, and she cherished his friendship.

  “Go see Dante. Terri’s ready to hand over the reins to you.” He gave her a swat on the ass as she turned to leave, and she chuckled at his playfulness and went to find Dante. As she expected, the oldest and most serious brother was buried behind a stack of papers on his desk, frowning at the computer. Underneath the golf shirt with the gym’s logo embroidered on the front left, his body was a hot mus
cular playground that any red-blooded woman should be clamoring to touch and hold.

  She was not one of those women.

  She couldn’t really explain it, but they felt more like brothers to her. Maybe it was because there were three of them, and they seemed to do everything together. She wasn’t sure if that was because they were hyenas or because they were just that close. They had never asked her out individually, but she had been over to their beautiful home for dinner on a few occasions. Everything was casual with them, but underneath the friendly overtures was an undercurrent of tension that made her think that, if she just made a suggestion for more, she could have it. The question on her mind always was whether having more meant Mason alone – which is what she might have entertained – or all three together – which wasn’t even on the radar of things she wanted to try. Not even once. She was a one-man woman, period.

  After sharing her news with Dante and getting a cheek-kiss and hug, he made a copy of her certificate for his files and officially offered her the job. For the next two weeks she would teach with Terri, and then Terri would be gone and Shyne would have her classes. The pay was decent, and she got full use of the gym whenever she wanted. She also got to have more than four classes a week, which was something she very much wanted. All she had to do was get people to want to take her classes and help bring more business into the gym.

  She found Cairo in the boxing ring. The main floor of the gym was all equipment; everything from bikes to treadmills to machines to weights. Up a flight of stairs was an exercise room with glass doors and one wall of mirrors. Her fucking classroom! A small open area outside held cool-down and stretching machines, and in another room was a boxing ring and training area. Although Cairo spent most of his time training others on the first floor, his free time was dedicated to training himself in the boxing ring and with the heavy bags. She’d never really understood the phrase "finely-tuned machine" when it applied to a person, but Cairo was the definition of the word. Perfectly sculpted and enormous, he was flexible in a way that belied how big he was. She watched him weave and duck around the heavy bag as he pounded into it. She’d never asked, but she always figured that part of the reason he fought in the underground matches was because he wasn’t entirely human.

  He stopped abruptly, panting. “Hey! Did you pass?”

  She really didn’t think she’d been smiling so much in her life. “Yeah!”

  He came over and looked at the paper but didn’t take off his gloves. “I’m proud of you, Shyne. Really. I’d give you a hug, but I’m all sweaty. Rain check?”

  “Sure.” She laughed and turned to walk out.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “So Dante offered you the job?”

  She nodded.

  “You said yes, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. Next weekend is the Temple County Fair, and we’ve got a booth reserved to sign up new business. I’m also doing an exhibition fight on Saturday night. We’d like you to help pass out brochures and stick around for the fight. I’d like you in my corner.”

  “Aw. Cool. I’d love to.”

  He moved back to the heavy bag. “Trust me. With you on the payroll and passing out brochures, we’re sure to get a ton of business into the gym.”

  “I think you’re overestimating my appeal, Cairo,” she snorted.

  “Not hardly. You’re hot, and you know it.” He smiled at her once, dark eyes flashing in good humor, and then he turned back to the bag and his features slid down into serious concentration.

  She looked into the fitness classroom, amazed that in a few short weeks it would be hers. Filling up the classes and being the best teacher she could be were her next two goals.

  Leaving the gym for the day to head home, she sat down in her Miata and turned on the engine. The stereo blasted her, and she pushed the volume button. She always forgot to turn it down before she turned off the engine. One of these days she was going to blow her eardrums out.

  Dalton, Kentucky, was what some referred to as a whistle stop. There really wasn’t much to the town: one main street, a few small developments for nice homes, and a few businesses. It was bigger than some other towns she’d been in but had that nice, homey feeling to it. A girl could walk through Dalton at night and feel safe. Not that she would, mind you, but she could if she wanted to. The gym sat on the outskirts of town, basically between Dalton and the next town, Farris, which was slightly larger. The gym did a lot of business because of Cairo’s boxing career and the high quality of trainers and equipment.

  She and Trav met when she had just aged-out of the group foster home, and he had come fresh from rehab. He’d had a drug problem because he was trying to cope with his parents' hatred of his gay lifestyle. He’d tried to kill himself, and they tossed him in rehab but wrote him off and said to never contact them again. Like him, she was also tossed out on her ass. She was turned out of the home with her scant belongings in a duffel bag and twenty dollars. Trav was shown the door at rehab and had only the clothes on his back and a bus ticket voucher.

  Age eighteen. No driver’s license. No home. No job. Barely any money. Woefully unprepared for the real world, even though she felt like she’d already lived and died in the “real world”, suffered and bled for it.

  She was standing in a bus station looking at the queue when a young man came to stand next to her. After several quiet minutes of both of them looking at the board, he looked down at her, his eyes rimmed with dark circles from lack of sleep and his mouth drawn into a frown. “I don’t even know where to go.”

  “Me either,” she admitted.

  “Travis Heron, but you can call me Trav.” He offered her his hand, and she took it.

  “Shyne Jackson.”

  “That’s a cool name.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m gay,” he blurted out, and then he clapped his hand over his mouth and blushed. “Sorry. Sorry. I was going to ask you if you wanted to maybe go to the same place together, but I didn’t want you to think I was trying to pick you up.”

  There was something very puppy dog about him, and she knew they were going to be good friends. “I only have $20. But there’s a restaurant in Clarksburg that the woman who runs the group home I aged-out of told me about. Supposedly, he has a room he rents out over the restaurant to people who work there.”

  “I could do Clarksburg. If you want company?”

  “Sure, Trav. Better to go marching into hell with a friend than alone, I always say.”

  “You’ve got a strange sense of humor, Shyne. I like that.”

  A few hours later, they stowed their bags in the safe in the manager’s office and began their first shifts at Bruce’s BBQ. Travis washed dishes and bused tables, and she waitressed and did side work in the kitchen. The room was just that: a large empty room. Cots leftover from WWII with blankets and pillows were their beds, and they shared the space with two illegal immigrants who were saving up money to bring their families up from Mexico and a young woman just slightly older than Shyne who had left an abusive home. They stayed with Bruce for a long time, saving every penny they could. They both took second jobs nearby. Within a year, they had a few grand between them, and the world was their oyster...so to speak.

  They decided to leave Tennessee. There was nothing there but bad memories for both of them. They looked for jobs in Kentucky, and both of them found work in Austin, which was just north of Dalton. Trav at the coffee shop, and Shyne in a mall bookstore. They moved into one apartment together for two years, and when the apartment across the hall opened up, she snagged it. They were still neighbors, best friends, and the only family either one had. She’d change a lot of things about her life if she could, but not meeting Trav and becoming friends.

  The next week passed quickly for her. She stayed at the front of Terri’s four classes, and Terri gave her the cool-down time. Shyne had a lot of good feedback from the women in the classes. She certainly hoped to keep all of T
erri's clients, but it would remain to be seen. Shyne just didn’t want to disappoint the boys, who had shown such interest in her career and been almost as supportive as Trav.

  Saturday morning was the first official day of the county fair. She hadn’t really known what to wear, and they promised she could wear anything as long as she also wore one of the gym shirts. She paired the form-fitting white golf shirt with a Champion running skort and black tennis shoes with aqua trim.

  Trav walked into the bathroom while she was brushing out her long black hair. “Wow, baby girl. I don’t think you’re going to attract women in that outfit. Well, at least not the sort of women you’re thinking of.”

  She laughed and met his eyes in the mirror. “I just want to bring business to the gym. If I have to flash a little thigh to do it, then I am not above doing that.”

  “How was dinner last night?” He took her hairbrush away and began doing her hair, pulling it back into a high ponytail and leaving a section loose to braid and wrap around the tie.

  She had eaten dinner with the boys at a nice Italian restaurant. “Okay. They’re sweet.”

  “Hot.”

  “Yeah.”

  “When isn’t 'hot' enough for you to grind them through the mattress?”

  “You make me sound like a slut.”

  “You’re not, Shyne, of course not. But you like to have sex with men you like, and you like them, right? You’ve known them for a few months, and you haven’t done anything but kiss their cheeks and eat dinner with them.”

  “I can’t explain it. I get the feeling that there’s more to them than they’re saying, you know? I like Mason a lot, but they’re so connected to each other that I’m not sure they don’t do some extra kinky stuff.”

  He stopped braiding the loose section. “Kinky like what?”

  “I think they share.”

  “Ew. Like each other?”