by Alisa Woods
Her name was Morrigan, she was the daughter of the alpha of the Northern pack, and she had an MBA from Northwestern and a body to die for. Only she really would die if Jaxson claimed her for his mate. But she didn’t know that—couldn’t know that—and with the sizzling hot looks she was sending over the oyster appetizers, he was pretty sure she was picturing them in bed at this exact moment. Her eyes were half-lidded and kept roaming his body. She was probably imagining the best orgasm of her life—which was no doubt what a normal mating would be.
Jaxson sighed and waved over the waiter. “Another please.” He held up his club soda.
“Of course, sir.” The tuxedoed waiter slipped away.
“Wouldn’t you like something a little stronger?” Morrigan asked, raising her glass of red wine.
“Have to work tomorrow.” He gestured to the crimson liquid. “How’s your Merlot?”
“Delicious.” She took a long, luxurious sip, probably thinking it was sexy—all it did was remind Jaxson he’d rather be somewhere else. Anywhere else.
The Café Mer had a glittering view of the bay and was one of the fanciest restaurants in Seattle—the perfect first-date spot for someone serious about finding a mate. At least, that’s what Olivia said when she made the reservation two days ago. Riverwise’s clients frequented places like this, but Jaxson didn’t have much use for the extravagance. However, Olivia was determined to make the ruse convincing, and he had to agree the setting was beautiful—brass fixtures, polished wooden floors, artistic lighting that complemented the cityscape below.
There just wasn’t any magic in the conversation. Or the company.
“So your MBA must come in handy at the office,” Jaxson tried. Even his small talk was coming out miniscule.
“Northern Peaks is a law firm,” Morrigan said with a smirk. “They tend to think of an MBA as that thing you get when you can’t quite make it into law school.”
“Oh.” He cringed. “Sorry, I—”
“Jaxson, I’m teasing.” Her green eyes widened a little like she couldn’t believe how dense he was.
Great. He was completely off his game tonight. “Right. I completely knew that.” He tried for a sheepish smile, but it just felt empty.
Olivia had spent a full half hour before the date admonishing him to look past his prejudices and prior experience to give the date—and Morrigan—a chance. His delicious office assistant seemed determined to find him a soul mate before the one-year expiration of this ruse, and he had promised her he would try. But trying couldn’t create a magical spark that didn’t exist. And while Morrigan was undeniably beautiful—with the smoldering sexiness of an alpha female shifter—she just didn’t float his boat. Riverwise had worked with Northern Peaks on a few cases when his clients needed some very discreet legal opinions, but the entire pack was… stiff. It was the only word he could come up with, and he supposed it made sense for a pack comprised of lawyers and MBAs, but it didn’t help him pretend to find his date fascinating.
His wolf was off sulking in a corner.
Jaxson sighed and gazed out at the twinkling lights of the bay.
What was Olivia doing right now? Was she at the library, looking for whatever her true dream job was? The gig at Riverwise had to be temporary in her mind. Something to pay the bills. She would tolerate it until she could move on to something better. Would she even last the whole year? Maybe she was waiting by her phone for him to call with an update—
“Jaxson.”
His attention snapped away from the thousand-mile-gaze out across the bay and back to the female shifter who was his date. Her claws were about to come out, with the way her face was flushed and her eyes were boring into him. She must have said something he missed.
Jaxson put on his contrite face. “I’m so sorry, Morrigan. I’m distracted tonight, and that’s really not fair to you.”
Her hiked-up shoulders relaxed. “Is everything all right?”
He breathed out another sigh. It felt like he’d had a hundred sighs already on this date. “Just work. Nothing I can discuss, unfortunately.” That much was true.
She nodded, and her eyes lit up again. “There must be all kinds of exciting things you can’t share in the security business.” A small smile snuck on her face.
“We’re actually in the business of keeping things unexciting—our clients pay us to keep the fireworks far away from their personal lives. Which we usually manage to do. But if something goes down, we debrief it, break it down, discuss it internally. Everything stays within the pack. You know how it is.”
“What about your mate? Will she be privy to all the juicy celebrity secrets?” Morrigan arched her eyebrows and took another sip of her wine.
He forced a smile on to his face. “Of course. Although I can think of more interesting things to talk about in bed.” He tried for a flirtatious lift of his eyebrow, but it all felt off. He hadn’t thought of a mate as a potential security leak, but now…
She leaned forward, lacing her fingers. “What sorts of interesting things?” He didn’t know if she was deliberately thrusting her breasts forward, but they strained against the low-cut, sleeveless black dress that was trying to contain them.
He lingered his gaze there, which she obviously wanted—Olivia should be proud of how hard he was trying here—but there was really no point to it. The last thing he wanted was to actually feel something for Morrigan. It would be just that much harder when the ruse was revealed. And when he left his pack altogether.
Jaxson dragged his gaze up to Morrigan’s face. Her lips were parted, and it wasn’t hard to scent the arousal on her. “Things that wouldn’t be polite to say in a crowded public restaurant.”
“I guess we’ll have to save that for later this evening.”
He wouldn’t be taking her home, so there was no point in letting that hang in the air. And clearly she was angling for some kind of first-date advantage in this Dating Game that Olivia had invented. The idea that Morrigan was actually competing for this chance at being his mate… just chilled the entire thing for him.
“So tell me about your role at Northern Peaks,” he said, deliberately cooling his tone.
She leaned back, disappointed.
He couldn’t help sneaking a look at his phone. He was just checking the time, he told himself. But he also noticed there were no messages from Olivia.
Olivia stared at the mess of files on her computer. She’d only been at Riverwise for two days; she couldn’t undo months of disastrous accounting in that short amount of time. She knew that, but it was still frustrating. Just deciphering the complex filing system that Jared River used to store receipts for office expenses was like figuring out the Rosetta stone with only two languages. And the reimbursements for the other pack members? Filed completely at random as far as she could tell. Half were scanned and stuffed into electronic folders, while the other half filled a cardboard legal box. And some were duplicates, which just made everything worse.
Olivia sighed. It was late, and her eyes were starting to cross. She should go home and start over in the morning. She needed a fresh mind to tackle the mountainous task of organizing Riverwise’s business into something halfway logical. But she knew exactly why she had stayed at the office way past when the rest of the pack had left—Jaxson River was on a date with a hot redhead, and that image would just fester in her mind if she went home to her empty apartment. There was nothing to distract her there, not the way a thousand misfiled receipts in the office could do.
So she buried herself in paperwork and tried not to think about her gorgeous shifter boss bringing home a hot female wolf to see if they had “chemistry.” Or maybe gazing deep into her eyes and finding his soul mate there.
Olivia groaned. Who was she kidding? Even the office accounting mess couldn’t keep her focused. She ran her hands over her face, rubbed the blurriness from her eyes, then clicked through to the folder she’d put together on the three female shifters Jaxson would be dating.
For a y
ear.
She didn’t know why that bothered her so much—it was literally her job to find him a mate. And she wholeheartedly wanted him to find happiness; there was way too much sadness in those gorgeous blue eyes. But there was a small, selfish part of her that simply squirmed at the thought of him putting his hands on another woman.
As if he would ever put his hands on her.
She was plump, only moderately attractive, and most importantly… not a wolf. Even if Jaxson, for some reason, missed all those rather important details, there could never be anything more than a hot kiss in an alleyway between them. Because she was half-witch, and eventually that would come out. Jaxson’s work was high-end cyber security, for god’s sake. He would find out what happened to her parents if he bothered to look. And he was too smart not to look.
Olivia sighed and clicked open the file for Morrigan North, the female shifter from the Northern pack. Of the three contenders, Olivia liked her the least. She was all wrong for Jaxson, at least on paper. Her MBA project was a long dissertation on how to pull companies out of bankruptcy and reorganize them for maximum efficiency. Olivia supposed it was useful for a law firm like Northern Peaks, but it sounded like dry legal wrangling to her. And quasi-sleazy business speak as well.
The second candidate wasn’t much better—Thea from the Blue Mountain pack was a brown-haired accountant and the least attractive of the three. Although, to be honest, all three were ridiculously good looking. Must be the shifter gene—Olivia noticed every shifter in the office, which was the vast majority of employees at Riverwise, was supernaturally hot. She’d spent the entire first day staring at her feet in order not to gape at the bulging biceps and powerfully-built rear-ends of the Riverwise staff. The women were gorgeous, too, but only a couple of them were shifters. Jaxson was right about female wolves being relatively rare, at least in the office.
Which made it all the more unusual for three female shifters to be competing to be Jaxson’s mate. But that didn’t surprise her at all—he was brilliant and funny and panty-meltingly hot. His time in the SEALs only made him more swoon-worthy. And he was a natural alpha—commander for his unit in the Navy and now CEO of Riverwise as a civilian. Olivia had created a file on him in the course of her match-making, and it just highlighted how much Jaxson had to offer a mate. A mate who would definitely not be her. In spite of that obvious fact, she couldn’t help wanting him every time he stepped into her office. It wasn’t her fault—he was all alpha, with a natural ease that would be irresistible to any female. And she’d grown to simply like him as well. He was funny and kind and…
Olivia sighed. She had to stop crushing on her boss. She flipped through the files again.
The third shifter hoping to become Mrs. Jaxson River was the one Olivia both admired the most and feared would be The One for Jaxson. Terra was a raven-haired beauty with soulful dark eyes. An artist with a wild streak, she spent most of her teens roaming the streets of Seattle and taking pictures of the homeless or other denizens of the street. She had just turned twenty-one, and she was already one of the city’s up-and-coming artists, with three gallery exhibitions this year alone. And her pictures were good. Olivia had checked them out online, and they somehow brought out the bright inner light of even the darkest, dingiest corners of the city.
Terra’s pack was different—a collection of shifters tied together by bloodlines but not in business with each other. The Wilding pack had a research professor at the university, an entrepreneurial inventor with his own company, and even a colonel in the Army among their scattered count. Their pack operations were looser, with each individual striking out independently to make their marks upon the world.
That sounded more like Jaxson. And Olivia was certain, once he had a chance to spend time with the beautiful and passionate shifter girl-artist, he would find the mate he was looking for.
Then he’d likely never look at Olivia again.
She covered her face with her hands and leaned back in the black leather chair of her new office. She really had to stop thinking about him that way. One hot kiss in an alleyway didn’t mean anything. Which didn’t stop her from playing it over and over in her mind… another thing she really needed to stop doing. But that only brought the heat back to her face—
“That bad, is it?” a deep voice said from the doorway.
It jolted her and made her chair squeak. Her hands flew away from her face, and her mouth fell open. Jaxson stood in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb with his arms crossed, a smirk on his face and a laugh dancing in his brilliant blue eyes. His white silk shirt—the one she had helped pick out for his date—was just thin enough to cling attractively to the strong muscles of his arms where he’d rolled up the sleeves.
“What are you doing here?” was all she managed to get out. She glanced at the screen. “It’s only nine o’clock.”
Jaxson unlocked his arms, strode over to her desk, and leaned against it, stretching out his long legs. They almost brushed against hers dangling off the edge of her chair. “The date was a bust.”
“Already?” But her heart wasn’t unhappy about that, not really.
Jaxson shook his head and glanced at the screen. She had left the image files open with pictures of the three candidates. A flush of embarrassment swept across Olivia’s face, but Jaxson just sighed when he turned back to her.
“I don’t know if I can keep this up for a year.”
“Wow, that painful, huh?” Olivia bit her lip. Maybe she shouldn’t have lined up the least likely of the candidates first.
Jaxson’s gaze dropped to her lips, so she untucked them. Then he frowned and pierced her with a hard look. “You knew it would go badly, didn’t you?”
She tried not to cringe, but she was sure the guilt was printed across her forehead in forty-eight point font. “I didn’t know… but I kind of suspected.”
He wagged his finger at her. “You worked overtime to convince me to give her a chance.”
Olivia held up her hands. “Well, did you? I mean, really? There’s only so much I can do here with elegant restaurants and candle-lit dinners.”
“There were no candles.” He scowled. “And I’d rather take a knife to the chest than sit through another dinner with Morrigan North. Less pain, and at least the scars would be visible.”
“Jaxson.” She gave him an exaggerated look of impatience. “You’re never going to find a mate with that attitude.”
He frowned and dropped his gaze to study his polished black shoes. The worry lines were back on his face again, and it twisted her stomach. It was like the creases in his forehead were fissures in his soul, weathered and worn, but only she could see them. It propelled her up from her chair, and she was standing in front of him before she knew what she planned to do.
“Hey,” she said, teetering because she was suddenly too close to him but couldn’t really back away without making it more awkward. “Don’t listen to me. I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m the last person to know anything about mates or even dating, really. You should probably fire me as a dating consultant. I’m much better at filing, though, I promise.”
He smiled, but some of that sadness he carried inside leaked out and poisoned it. “But it’s true. I’m never going to have a mate.” His voice had turned soft.
“Don’t say that.” She dropped her voice, whispering now, like him. “There’s someone out there who’s The One, and you deserve to find her. Besides, we’re just getting started. I’m not giving up, so you’re not allowed to, either. I may be the world’s worst dating consultant, but I’m going to find you that soul mate, if it’s the last thing I do.” And at that moment, she meant every word. She couldn’t stand the lost look on his face.
He stood up from leaning against the desk—which didn’t help with the standing too close part—but he smiled a little more, and it lifted her heart. “You’re a very stubborn woman.”
“You have no idea, Jaxson River. So don’t tell me—” Her words were cut off when he
raised his hand to touch his fingertips to her cheek. What was he doing? His gaze dropped to her lips, so she shut her gaping mouth. She had no air to form words, anyway.
“You know…” He leaned closer, his voice a husky whisper. “It so happens that I’m between dates at the moment.”
“You have a date with Thea on Saturday,” she breathed, but she couldn’t bring herself to pull away. Her heart thumped so loudly, she wondered if he could hear it.
“I’m a free man for two days, then.” He drew closer and slipped a hand behind her back. What was he doing? Was he really going to kiss her?
“You’re… you’re supposed to be…” She tried to protest, but she didn’t want to, not really. And his nearness, his electric touch on her skin, was scrambling her brain.
“I’m big and bad, remember?” he whispered as his lips brushed her cheek. “I don’t do what I’m supposed to.” The last words crashed against her lips along with his mouth. His arms encased her body in a steel cage of muscle, but the last thing she wanted was to escape. The shock of his hungry lips on hers made her forget to kiss him back—but her body responded instinctively. She melted into his chest, her hands clawed at his back, and her mouth opened to him. He plunged his tongue inside, and by the time she tried to return the kiss—to counter the total domination of her mouth by his—he just groaned, twirled her around, and pushed her rear-end against the desk, trapping her between his rock hard body and the unforgiving wood of the desk. She was consumed by his lips, and she didn’t think the kiss could get any hotter, but then his hands started mapping her body. His fingers trailed hot lines of fire down her arms, around the small of her waist, and up her back. She gasped when he brushed the side of her breast, then rounded the palm of his hand against it, lifting and squeezing it and moaning against her mouth.
The heat was gushing between her legs, and every part of her body was fully alive under his commanding touch. She could barely breathe, and she had no idea what he was thinking, but his touch and his strength and his overwhelming masculine need for her was destroying any attempt at rational thought.
