If I was smart, I’d let her go. My wolf growled. Never. You’ll spend the rest of your life with a hole where your heart should be.
The alarm went off, saving me from a conversation I’d never be ready to have. Naomi groaned, and wiggled against me. “That sound sucks no matter where I am.”
“Right?” My chuckle was strained and I slipped out of bed. I didn’t want to leave her. Didn’t matter if I lulled her into a false sense of security. “I’m gonna take a shower.”
I balled my fist against the shower wall, letting the spray rain down on me and wishing to hell I wasn’t alone. Wishing I’d invited her in here and watched her slow striptease, let her torture me as she slid those ridiculous pajamas over her dangerous curves. My wolf was going fucking crazy at the thought of her revealing one inch at a time and stopping in the middle because she thought she was being cute. She’d be right. I’d push her up against the wall, and watch the water run down her face, onto her chest, and over her tits. Her nipples would be tight and straining for my touch, and it would take everything I had to go slow. Follow the path of the water. Blood rang in my ears as my heart thundered at the thought of her in here with me. Her bright pink hair splattered against her wet skin. I’d go down on my knees, tracing the path of the water down her stomach and to her clit. I’d circle it with my thumb, before following the motion with my tongue. I closed my eyes as I ran my hand the length of my shaft, thinking about what I’d to do her. What it would be like to truly claim her as I lowered her onto my shaft and thrust inside of her. Fuck.
Next time, I wouldn’t be alone.
“GOT A MINUTE TO TALK?” Landon Fox leaned against my locker after practice. Whether I had time or not, I’d make it for him.
“Yeah.” I picked up the crutches that were angled against my locker. “These are for a friend. Not me. I’ll be ready for the game.” I hadn’t missed a step at practice.
He wrinkled his nose, like he was seeing the crutches for the first time. “That’s not what I wanted to talk about. Want to take a walk out on the field?”
“Sure.” Fuck. He came to tell me I didn’t make the cut. We started training camp with way more guys than we could possibly use. A few guys who were guaranteed to make the team like Landon, and then there were a whole lot of guys like me, for whom a cut could mean the end of the line. My brother couldn’t take football from me, but I could fuck things up pretty good on my own.
The stadium was so much bigger when it was empty. When it was only me, my hero, and my future on the field. Landon Fox might be pushing forty, but he was at the top of his game. Any teams that dismissed him as being washed up and too old to play were in for a rude awakening. He kicked my ass every time we stepped onto this field. And I had a feeling this talk would be no exception.
“Looking forward to the game this weekend,” I said to break the awkward silence and give him a chance to get it over with if he planned to drop the ax on me. Every morning when I came into practice, Landon was in Coach’s office, watching film with him. He made decisions for the team. The right ones. Even if it was to cut me.
“Me too. Whole different animal when you have another team coming to rip your face off.” He stopped on the fifty-yard line. “Didn’t come to talk about the game, though. Heard you’re having trouble with your pack?”
“What gives you that idea?” I couldn’t show any weakness. Not this close to the final cut. If it was between me and another guy, I couldn’t be the one with the potential behavior problem. I had enough risks there was probably a line of asterisks next to my name. Fuck that.
“Your back is covered in scratches and you have a nasty bite on your neck,” he said. “And that tattoo was already ripped to shit. Unless you got lucky with a wild potential Werewife, it looks like you got in a tangle with a wolf.”
My Naomi shower fantasy had been playing on repeat all day long. Now thanks to Landon, I could add her scratching her fingernails down my back to the mix.
“So it is the girl? Good for you, man.” Landon clapped his hand onto my shoulder. “Whatever you do, don’t try to tame her.”
I learned many lessons from Landon Fox, some long before he was my teammate. The most important one came the first day of Bloodhounds practice. Leave everything you’ve got on the field. No regrets. Landon turned to walk away, satisfied with my answer. But I wasn’t.
“You were right the first time,” I said, and he stopped but didn’t turn around. Fuck. I should’ve let him think I was having wild sex and dealt with Stefan on my own. But that plan never worked, and I always lost. Instead, I had to admit my weakness to my team captain and my hero. “Got run out of my pack about seven years ago with explicit instructions not to return to Alaska.”
Landon turned around. “But you’re back.”
I nodded. “My brother can’t tell me what to do anymore.”
“No, he can’t. And after this weekend, he’s going to hear everyone raving about you—on sports radio, the internet, the guy at the barbershop. They’ll be talking about how Sebastian Connall couldn’t be stopped, and your brother will have to eat shit and like it because he won’t be able to tell them any different. Packs get weighed down with petty bullshit.” Landon put his hand on my shoulder again. “I’m proud to share the field with you, Connall. You work harder than any of the guys around you. People notice. You have trouble with your brother or any of his wolves again—you don’t have to deal with it alone. The team is your pack now.”
Chapter Fifteen
NAOMI
Once I told an employer to go screw, they were usually happy to send me packing with my little box of questionably acquired office supplies. A cut and dried don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out situation. But not the Werewives.
They’re losing their minds, Delilah texted. They planned to cut you loose and were banking on you having a fit when they did it. Now they don’t know what to do.
So they’re going to keep poking at me until I explode and hope there’s a camera in my face when it happens? I probably should’ve gone over there, swept some stuff off the tables with my arm and thrown a good old-fashioned tantrum in the process. Borrowed some of Lulu’s makeup so it could run down my face when I cried. Maybe even picked a fight with her while I was at it. Then I’d slump down in a corner with a bottle of wine and babble nonsense until I passed out.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the microphone with its little vampire fangs sunk into my sweater. What they had was much more damaging than making me look like an ass. How much did they know about Sebastian and his brother? What would they do with that information? The show wasn’t about his pack. It was about a bunch of women who were willing to exchange their privacy in hopes of finding love.
But what bothered me the most is that they had me pegged as a failure. The one who’d give up when the going got tough and take the first opportunity to run to the next shiny new opportunity. They were right. I thought I pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes, when instead, people would give me a thin smile when I started yet another new venture and then abandoned it a few months later. When they asked me if I was still doing the blogging thing, like it couldn’t possibly be a job. And I’d learned to ignore that pathetic look they gave me when they asked if I was dating anyone. Like I was the last mutt left in the shelter.
In my mind, I was always off to the next big and bright thing. To everyone else, I was circling the bowl, pushing my luck that I hadn’t fallen in yet.
The show held a mirror up to my life and made me watch my failures in slow motion. They didn’t even have the decency to set the montage to a cheesy 80s power ballad. It was only accompanied by my fears of winding up a failure. Alone. The most infuriating part was this time I quit, but I didn’t fail. Sebastian wasn’t a failure. And I didn’t want to make a fool out of myself. I still had dreams of Naomi Harts Travel, TV show edition.
Delilah texted again. They’re headed to Sebastian’s condo. They told us not to tell you, but I think you should know.
You’re the best. Delilah was way too good to be a Real Werewife and I’d do whatever it took to help her find the guy she was looking for. I laughed at myself, smitten for less than a week, and now I was an expert at helping other people find love. Right.
My phone dinged again, and I picked it up off the bed. I’d stay wrapped in these blankets forever if I could. They were warm, soft, and smelled like Sebastian. He had this musky, manly scent like fresh mountain air. It had to be the wolf thing. It did something to the connections in my brain, and made me want things that usually scared me.
Read the contract, Delilah added. Please. Don’t let them use what you don’t know against you.
Fine. I’d read the blasted contract. But first, I wouldn’t let them find me looking like some shut-in housewife when they ambushed me. The fog from Sebastian’s shower still hung in the bathroom, and his scent was intoxicating. If I wasn’t careful, I’d need it more than oxygen. Sometime soon, I’d join him in here. But for now, I had to settle for the fantasy of his naked, wet body standing in the stall. And running my fingers over the hard, muscled plain of his abdomen. His thick shaft ready and waiting for me like it was the other night in the forest. I was superhuman, too, for being able to resist him so long.
A mini-makeover later, I settled into the leather couch armed with one of Sebastian’s protein shakes and my laptop. The downside of shacking up with an athlete was there wasn’t a cookie in sight. We already polished off the pizza. The shake tasted like blended lawn clippings, but I was hungry enough to finish it. And the horrible taste was no competition for what I read in that contract.
Basically, the production company owned my ass for the entire football season. Eliminations, as they called them, would only be used in rare circumstances for uncorrectable behavior unbecoming to the show and the Bloodhounds. So they considered me to be a special kind of fuck up. Good to know. But since one of the papers I signed was a non-disclosure agreement, the production company had the right to use me as part of the production whether I was eliminated or not. They didn’t want any spoilers or leaks getting out to the real world. It didn’t matter that I quit, or that they planned to fire me. It was all part of the show.
There was no escape.
Wheels on gravel alerted me to my visitor, and I greeted Tessa at the door. I wished I had a camera to record her disappointment when she didn’t catch me off-guard.
I leaned against the doorframe to get the weight off my ankle, made sure my dress wasn’t tucked into my underwear, and grinned. They weren’t going to make me look bad. “Interesting contract you have there.”
Tessa gave me a tight smile of her own, but it was too late. She already played her hand. “We would’ve come sooner, but we hadn’t anticipated you breaking free from the script so soon, and production had to meet to figure out how to best deal with the changes.”
“You keep talking about a script, but I never received one, and it’s not mentioned in the contract.” I should’ve read that thing when I got it. Knowledge truly was power. “It sounds like breach of contract to me.”
I really wanted to slam the door in her face. But I finally had her playing defense and it was so satisfying. I understood why Sebastian loved football so much.
“The script is what production uses as a guide. It’s not a real script, it’s a schedule we use to nudge the Werewives in the direction of finding their mate. No breach of contract anywhere, especially since, in your case, it worked.”
“Yeah. Sebastian and I are...something. Hanging out. You should be happy. So why do I feel like I’m about to get a spanking?”
“Production called a meeting about you and Sebastian. No one was more surprised than me that you were the first Werewife to find your mate. Viewers will want to know your story, especially since it seems like love at first sight—a destined mate.”
I swallowed hard. Sebastian talked about forever last night, but I thought it was something he said to get me naked. One of those things guys thought women wanted to hear. It scared me. Not because I didn’t want it, but because I thought I did.
Tessa succeeded in catching me off-guard.
“Which we didn’t expect. We planned to stage a few sexy dates for you with more than one guy, scheduled some time in the hot tub, and then we expected the real drama to be in the selection process, when the Bloodhounds chose their mate. We put you and Lulu together in the same house because we knew that situation had the potential to be explosive.”
“So there was never a scenario that I looked good on this show.”
“Not really.” Tessa frowned. “But the actual story is much more interesting than we could’ve anticipated. We almost followed you out of the restaurant the other night, until I realized you were wired for sound, so I could still track you. We would’ve intervened if we thought you were in real danger...”
Fuck, they knew everything.
“Sebastian’s story is fascinating. His pack shunned him, but he came back to Alaska, against all odds, determined to play football. And the two of you together...” I’d swear her cheeks flushed. “It’s way more romantic than I expected. He wants you, despite—”
“The fact that I’m me?” I finished the sentence for her so she didn’t have the opportunity to make it worse.
“Exactly.” Tessa appreciated that, judging from her grin. “Please let us follow you. Viewers will eat this with a spoon. We think they’ll root hardest for both of you because you’re both such underdogs. We’ll make you look good.”
“Do I have say on edits?” Now I had what she wanted. My, how the tables had turned.
“Yes.” That was way too easy. “But there’s something we want, too.”
“Of course there is. What is it?”
“We want to keep filming you. It’s only a matter of time before the pack shows up and makes more trouble. We’ll have the cameras here already. Before you freak out, think of it as a security system. When they come, they can’t hurt him. And we want to meet his friend, Gunnar.”
Oh, hell no. Sebastian hadn’t seen him in years. It was too dangerous to have the crew intervene in a pack war. Clearly, they hadn’t heard everything if they thought that was a good idea. “Can I talk to Sebastian about this first? Off-camera? He’ll hate it, I can guarantee that. We owe it to him to do this right. Or the situation could turn dangerous.”
More dangerous.
“Yeah. We’ll work with you.” Oh, they wanted this bad. Tessa brightened. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think you’re going to be the star of this show.”
Chapter Sixteen
SEBASTIAN
“We have to talk.” Naomi got off the couch as soon as I walked into the condo. She was all dressed up with her hair curled and candy pink lip gloss that complemented her hair. Those lips need to be licked clean, my wolf rumbled. Her dress swayed with each careful step, inching higher on her thighs. She was barefoot, and that swollen ankle was the only part of her that wasn’t perfect.
I braced myself for impact, for her soft lips against my skin, but she stopped steps away from me. “You start a lot of conversations that way,” I said.
Today had been really fucking good, and I wasn’t going to let whatever she had to say change that.
“Only when you’re around.” She accepted the crutches, taking a practice step closer to me. Her eyes fluttered closed in anticipation of the kiss when I put my arms around her waist. The lip gloss tasted like melon. She wobbled on her crutches as we broke the kiss, and tugged the hem of her dress. “I always feel naked in dresses.”
“We can fix that, you know,” I said. I’d only ever seen Naomi in a sweater and boots, and I wasn’t accustomed to the long line of her neck or the hint of cleavage. Or the way her curves swelled under the fabric. She was stunning. Even on crutches. It was my mission to make sure she knew she was the most beautiful woman in the world.
“Yeah, I know. I could take it off. Let me warn you, my underwear is only slightly less ridiculous tha
n my pajamas. I’m pretty sure I’m wearing the wrong day of the week.” Her cheeks flushed. “But then we’d get distracted and I’d forget to tell you important things. Like I was mic’d while we were on the mountain, and when we came back here.”
I’d been about to say we could take the panties off, too, but that little bomb shattered any hope of sexy talk. I’d fucked up. With my pack bearing down on me, fangs bared in public and ready to fight and take what was mine, I forgot all about the damn microphones. Mine was somewhere on the forest floor, abandoned with my torn clothes when I’d shifted. Fuck, what the hell kind of equipment were they using? We hadn’t been anywhere near the restaurant, and they should’ve heard nothing but static.
“They’re fucking with you, Naomi. To get you to do what they want you to do.” Her name came out like a growl, and she stiffened under my touch when I said it. “There’s no way they heard anything.”
She shook her head. “They know everything. What happened on the mountain and about Gunnar.”
“Shit. Why did they tell you this?” I tightened my grip on her hips. Her eyes widened and I let her go. The last thing I wanted to do was scare her. But I couldn’t have the show fucking up my return to Faraway Island. I had once chance to get it right.
“They think our story is better than what they scripted for us,” she said softly, biting her bottom lip. “Your story, especially. That you put football before pack—”
“Football is my pack.” I’d planned on celebrating my conversation with Landon tonight. Naomi would understand how important his declaration was. It wasn’t the protection I was excited about. I didn’t expect anyone else to fight my battles. It was knowing I was part of the team.
“They want to meet Gunnar. Put him on the show.” She sat on the couch and settled the crutches against the cushion. Smoothing the skirt over her thighs, she looked up at me. “Tessa came here today to bully me into doing what production wants. I wore the dress because there’s no way they could have buried a secret microphone in it. The sweaters are a little easier to hide things in.”
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