So Emerson didn’t say anything. She left without so much as a glance over her shoulder, slinking back off to the east coast and spending every waking moment trying to forget what had happened.
And now, she’d done it again. Well, almost.
Shitpissfuck.
What she couldn’t understand was how Lassiter had become so hard-hearted. There’d been a time when he’d been on the same side as she.
* * *
As usual, seeing Lassiter sent Emerson’s pulse soaring and her eyeballs floating off into the back of her head like she was possessed. Seeing him with Hector made her want to throw things.
A good night’s sleep and some perspective about her personal relationships versus work had left Emerson feeling stronger. Her convictions were the same, no matter who she allowed to crawl between her legs.
Lassiter Adams had to go and he had to go without the personal joy it would bring him if she pitched another hissy fit. She’d resolved to remain as calm as possible and keep her name calling to herself.
Until she saw Lassiter with Hector, chatting like they were old fucking college roommates, reliving the good old days.
Was that what she thought she saw?
Was Lassiter really petting Hector’s bunny?
Ohhhhhh that was a cheap play for Hector’s emotions. There was no better way to his heart than to give him the opportunity to talk about his bunnies. Hector loved his bunnies. In fact, he loved them so much he’d once tried to steal money from his wealthy cousin Julia to save them.
Yet, there was big, tall, albeit a bit pale, muscled Lassiter, talking and laughing with Hector and not just holding, but petting his bunny. His lean, long tapered fingers stroked the fur with the ease of an animal lover.
But Lassiter wasn’t an animal lover, or at least he wasn’t anymore.
He was a defiler of them, ripping their homes to shreds, usurping their lives.
In general, fucking shit up on a daily basis so he could build condos with hot tubs and vaulted ceilings.
Emerson strode on lean legs to the clearing in front of Lassiter’s trailer and stopped in front of the two men, waiting for them to acknowledge her.
Lassiter’s head bobbed up, his sunglasses hiding whatever was behind them.
“Morning, Emerson,” was his casual “oh, it’s you” greeting.
Ignoring Lassiter and his scent on the cold morning breeze, one that made Emerson’s knees weak, she gave Hector a pointed look. “What’s up this morning, Hector?”
Hector’s grin was wide. “Lassiter said he’d help me rebuild the bunny house. I was having a lot of trouble with Pinky here.” He pointed to the large, white bunny Lassiter held to his chest. “He kept getting out because the lock won’t stay shut and Lassiter helped me find him.”
Oh.
Well, wasn’t Lassiter a real caped crusader?
The glee with which Hector spoke, his complete obliviousness to whatever Lassiter was cooking up, Lassiter’s taking advantage of Hector’s innocence, made Emerson’s blood boil.
Emerson brushed her hair out of her eyes and faced Hector, who was a little too moony eyed for her taste. “I can help you, Hector.”
He frowned, his eyes flashing confusion. “You cannot. You don’t know how to use power tools.”
Emerson sent him a signal with her expression that begged him to work with her, but Hector was having none of that.
Shaking his head, Hector said, “Lassiter knows how to use power tools.” Lassiter knows how to use all sorts of tools was Emerson’s first thought.
“So… so do I,” she muttered back. Well, okay, so she didn’t know how to use a power tool, but that’s what the Internet was for, right? Shit, she sure hoped JC had managed to convince Max that DSL was a necessity in Hooterville, as she called it.
“Really?” Lassiter drawled. “You’ve come a loooonng way since that trust fund, haven’t you, Em?” His dark hair shone in the sun, dark hair that Emerson, just last night, had latched onto in passionate abandon. Leaning back against the shabby railed fencing that still remained after he’d dug the ground to China and back, Lassiter crossed his feet at the ankles and cradled the bunny. His T-shirt stretched over his pecs, enhancing their ripple.
And it was pissing her off. “Yeah, I have,” she replied with as much calm as she could muster. “C’mon, Hector. Let’s go see what we can do about Pinky’s bunny hut.”
Hector wasn’t so convinced. “I dunno, Em. It has to be sturdy, otherwise Pinky’ll get out again and I would be very upset if I lost him.”
“We couldn’t have Pinky running amok, now could we, Emerson?” Lassiter asked, turning his gaze to capture Emerson’s. His question, laced with a taunt, increased her determination to build a freakin’ bunny hut.
Hop, hop.
Emerson grabbed Hector’s hand, staring up at Lassiter’s dark, bespectacled eyes.
“No, we couldn’t have that. I can build a bunny hut. I will build a bunny hut. Now, c’mon, Hector,” she commanded, pulling him behind her, before stopping momentarily.
Letting go of Hector’s hand, Emerson took brisk strides back to Lassiter and shoved her hands in the cradle of his arms. “We’ll take Pinky, thank you,” she said stiffly, yanking Pinky, who was quite happy where he was, out of those fantastically bulging arms. Looking down at the silky white creature, Emerson said, “C’mon, Pinky. You’re going to have a new home.”
Emerson stomped off, Pinky and Hector in tow.
See me stick my tongue out at you, Lassiter Adams.
His chuckle drifted to her sensitive ears, mocking her.
* * *
Six hours later, a whole lot of chicken wire and piles of wasted wood, Emerson threw down the power drill with a scream of frustration. “Fucking piece of shit, useless, pointless, God damned waste of seventy-five bucks!” She closed her eyes and whirled around in a circle, kicking dirt as she went and dancing on the instructional sheet she’d printed from the Internet. In one last moment of fury, she kicked the long two-by-four that lay on the saw horse over, stubbing her toe.
“Mooootherfucker!” she yelped while hobbling on one foot.
“Uh-oh. Is that the potty mouthed, power tool wielding, ‘I can do this myself’ Emerson I hear?”
Fabulous.
Just what she needed.
Lassiter Adams up her ass, cracking on her for not being able to do something as simple as build a bunny hut.
Rubbing her foot through her sneaker, she retorted, “Shut the hell up, Lassiter, and go back to your trailer. I don’t need your comments. I’m just experiencing a couple of technical difficulties is all.”
Duct tape… nothing a little roll or twelve of duct tape wouldn’t fix. She’d been smart when she bought the economy pack. Who needed a freakin’ radial arm saw when you had duct tape?
Lassiter flicked a hand at the pile of wood she’d wasted and smiled. “So, ya need some help?”
Not if the world were to tip on its axis and she needed a reincarnation of Noah’s Ark to sail ’round the tilted world, would she accept help from Lassiter Adams.
“Um, no thank you.”
Walking toward her, all yummied out, he said, “That’s the ‘I’d rather be dead than take help from you, Lassiter’ no thank you, huh?”
“No, actually, that was the ‘I’d rather have my ovaries removed with rusty pliers and no anesthesia, Lassiter’ no thank you.” Emerson smiled smartly and gave Lassiter the evil eyeball. Damn him for interfering. She didn’t need him to point out that she was fucking this up. She had a handle on that already.
It hadn’t occurred to her that his trailer was in plain view of her bunny hut building site, and that he’d probably been watching her from his window and laughing his hot tookus off while she struggled.
“I don’t need any help,” she said again, pushing her hair out of her face with irritation.
His glance surveyed the mess she’d made and he toed some of the sawdust at her. “I beg to differ.”
; “I like it when you beg.”
“Funny, I thought that was you doing the begging in California…”
Fucktard. “I don’t need your help.”
“Oh, but you do.”
“No, no I don’t.”
“I build houses and apartment complexes, Emerson. You save trees, of which you’ve wasted many on this project. I think I can help.”
Stupidhead. “I don’t think Pinky and his fuzzy mates need a sauna and hot tub in their hut,” she said dryly, turning her back to him to survey the mess she’d made. “Stick to ruining perfectly good forests so you can build swanky apartments, and I’ll take care of the bunny hut.”
Emerson felt the heat of his body behind her even before he spoke. “It doesn’t have to be this way, Emerson. It wasn’t always.” His words were sentimental to her ears, said with the memory of familiarity, rife with what she’d call regret if she didn’t know better.
“Sure it does, Lassiter. It has to be this way because we’re no longer on the same side.” Saying that out loud was almost physically painful for her. Her gut clenched, tightening and recoiling from the truth. Remembering what once had been was bittersweet and almost always hidden by her anger. They meshed with one another so perfectly now that she didn’t know how to separate the two. It was a rare occurrence that allowed her to take Lassiter out of the box she labeled “forget about it already.” When she did, it led to a void she couldn’t fill with the jerk she’d run into ten years after they’d parted.
Anger with Lassiter was best. When she wasn’t angry with him, she was throwing herself at him like a virgin in a whorehouse. Slapping herself against him like he was the last man on Earth.
Placing his hands on the top of her shoulders, Lassiter drew her to the wide expanse of his chest, curling his fingers into her collarbone. “We were friends for a long time, Em, and then, in California, we were lovers.” The warmth his hands radiated soothed Emerson, seeping into her pores and turning into a liquid, electric current that skittered down her spine.
Who was this Lassiter? Not the one she’d seen after almost ten years in California. This Lassiter who sounded as if he regretted never looking back wasn’t the one she’d become reacquainted with in California. That Lassiter was cold and angry. He was too busy making money with his big construction firm to regret much, in her estimation.
Yet this Lassiter, the one who stood behind her, encouraging her head to lie against his breastbone, didn’t feel like the Lassiter from California. He didn’t smell like him either. His scent was less harried. Less dark was the only way to describe it.
Lassiter didn’t have an easy childhood, but instead of allowing it to hold him back, it had always seemed to fuel his desire to help others. However, the man she’d encountered in California was a man who lived strictly to exact some kind of weird revenge that Emerson was unable to understand.
On who or what he wanted revenge, Emerson was clueless. But the fact remained that Lassiter was here to do something she despised and that would always keep them from what “used to be.”
“We don’t have to pick sides when we’re in bed,” he whispered low against the shell of her ear, sensuous and inviting. It took all of her will and everything thereafter to keep from winding her arms around his neck.
“We aren’t going to bed.” No, no they weren’t. And they weren’t going to ground either, she thought, scrunching her eyes shut and staving off the impulse to throw him down on said terra firma, tear at his clothes and nail him.
Lassiter chuckled against her hair, the sound deep, vibrating against her back.
“You know that’s not what you want. You want me, Emerson, as much as I want you.” He stated as much with his hands as with his words, roving over her ribs, running small circles against her thin shirt, skimming the underside of her breasts.
Her throat was closing and words were forming with sludge-like motion, but she was fighting it with everything she had. “Sex won’t solve anything, Lassiter,” she offered as a meek refusal.
“I disagree.”
Yeah, so what else was new? They disagreed. Novel, huh?
“I think we can solve a lot of things if we just let happen what should happen on a frequent basis with you and I.” A delicious tendril of a flame spiked her continual craving for him when he gathered her hair in his hand and tugged her head back.
“There’s no solving this. You’re not the man I once knew, Lassiter.” Her protest grew less vehement when he nibbled at the side of her neck.
“No, Em, I’m not the boy you once knew.”
Chapter Five
That was the truest statement he’d made thus far. No, he wasn’t the boy she’d once known. The boy she’d once known didn’t do this to her body. He didn’t leave her weak and wanting more. She stiffened but Lassiter held her even tighter, running his tongue along her neck, against the lobe of her ear. Her head began to swim, her heart crashed against her ribs, her pussy throbbed with needing him.
“Why does it have to be this way, Lassiter?” she whispered to him, longing for something long since over.
Caressing the swell of her hip, he said hoarsely, “Let it go, Em. Let’s just let it go for now. Let me touch you, lick you.”
Her knees shook, her pulse quickened enough that she could hear it in her ears. The word ‘no’ was on the tip of her tongue, but the tip of his tongue held a different answer as it skimmed her ear, tracing small circles along the outer rim.
Spanning her waist, Lassiter pressed her to him, against the hardness of his chest and onto the bulge in his jeans.
With a will of their own, her hands wrapped around his neck and she arched into his hold, biting her lip as the heat of their bodies sizzled, searing an imprint on her spine. Skimming her sides, Lassiter dragged his hands over the swell of her hips, rounded the curve of her inner thigh, roaming in and out of her legs with a precise pattern.
The groan she omitted was low, feral. It caught in her throat and she swallowed the urge to claw at him with hands that rushed the process. Instead, she opted to let her head fall back and revel in the myriad of emotions he stirred in her, forgetting the anger between them.
The pop of the button on her jeans, the slide of the zipper went almost unnoticed to Emerson. Lassiter swung her around, gripping her shoulders and dragging her against him. His lips took hers possessively, plunging his tongue between them with rough insistence, gathering her closer until she almost couldn’t breathe. Splaying his hand over her ass, he ground his hips into her. Emerson stood on tippey toe, trying to drive back at him, but Lassiter was stronger, scooping her up and laying her down on the ground.
Through her fuzzy haze of lust, she realized that they were out in the middle of the woods. It was cold and the ground, colder still. However, that didn’t stop her from wanting him. It didn’t stop her from needing to complete this act of sheer madness. It didn’t allow her the time to think about it, or even want to reason with it.
Pushing her jacket off with hard hands, Lassiter groaned when his hand cupped her breast through her shirt. He pulled her to him, lodging her thigh between his own and thumbing her nipple. His callused skin caught on the material of her shirt, rasping over it, sending rippling waves of electric currents to her cunt.
Emerson pressed her palms to his chest, straddling his thigh and squeezing it to keep the wet heat between her legs from overwhelming her and she found her hands tearing at his waistband, pulling his shirt upward.
Her urgency led to impatience as she fumbled with his belt buckle and the zipper on his jeans. Her heart crashed with her impulsive need, her lungs begged for air, her breath coming in choppy breaths.
Emerson needed Lassiter inside her now, but Lassiter had other ideas. Ideas that had nothing to do with rushing their mating.
Yanking her arms over her head, he collared them in his hand and used his other hand to tug her shirt upward. Rolling Emerson to her back, he swiped her flesh with his tongue, circling her nipple, dancing around it, eliciti
ng shivers of anticipation from her. Thrusting against him, she bowed her back, arching to invite him to lick her, but he followed a lazy path along her ribs instead. Nibbling at them. Caressing her skin, so hot now it literally burned. Placing delicate stabs of his tongue into her navel.
Her cunt throbbed, ached, swelled with the taunt of silk against her flesh. His muffled chuckle mocked her ears, but seared her senses.
Just when she thought she could no longer withstand the torture, Lassiter took her nipple in his mouth, rolling it between his lips, lapping at it with a snake like tongue. He unzipped her pants, settling a hand to rest in the curls at the top of her pussy.
Emerson’s hips bucked against the warm invasion. Lassiter’s hand was so big it spanned nearly the width of her slender hips, possessive in its progress to her cunt. The sound of her own breathing, labored and raspy, slithered to her ears and she squirmed against Lassiter’s hand, awaiting his next move.
Removing her jeans with one hand, he pushed them down past her knees, still suckling her nipple, moving from one to the other with licks and strokes. Slipping a finger into her folds, Lassiter teased her clit, trailing his finger over the tip of it with a light pass.
The ground was cold on her back, but it didn’t stop Emerson from kicking her jeans from her feet, taking her shoes with them and spreading her legs wide. Then she pushed up to meet the hand that brought with it such skilled ministrations.
A fire erupted in her groin when Lassiter let her hands go and lowered his body to her abdomen, continually stroking her, rubbing the lips of her labia, planting kisses along her hips and thighs. Leaning over her, he lay across her belly and took a deep breath. The inhalation was sharp, and a familiar act displayed when werewolves mated.
Scent was everything. Yet Lassiter wasn’t a werewolf…
Emerson lost that vague, worrisome thought when he laid his head against her belly and stroked her inner thighs. Her hands threaded through his thick hair, luxuriating in its soft texture, pressing him close to her, letting the warmth of his breath so teasingly close to her cunt keep her walking the ledge of desire.
Wolfmates: Ruff & Ready Page 3