by Sara Summers
“I’m pretty sure that’s not up to you.” I pulled my hair up into a pile on top of my head and wrapped a hair-tie around it to hold it down. “I’ll drop you off at your apartment and take the truck to my house.”
Cody didn’t respond until he stopped at the next stoplight, when he turned and met my gaze.
“My brother’s soulmate almost died last time he and I were on the mountain, so unless you’re ready to meet the Creator, neither of us is stepping foot on Mount Edge until the morning.”
He stepped on the gas as the light turned to green, and without his intense gaze locked with mine, I could breathe a little easier.
When he put it that way, I was much more inclined to spend the night at his place.
“Why did she almost die?”
I remembered him telling me his brother’s soulmate’s name was Hallie, but didn’t use her name so he would think I hadn’t been paying attention.
“My dad’s pack isn’t okay with the fact that we have human soulmates now. Some of them would rather shifters die out than be with the other halves of our souls, and they took it too far and threatened Hallie. Now all of us with human soulmates have our own pack, Tanner is the Alpha.”
So there was a lot more to being a shifter than I realized. Great. Because my life wasn’t already complicated enough, between trying not to fall in love with the man made to be mine and also trying to make him hate me.
“Okay, Mount Edge is basically a civil warzone and I bought a house in the middle of it.”
“My dad’s pack is starting to come around, but it’s slow-going. The way people think doesn’t change in an instant.” His voice was even and calm.
He pulled into a parking space in front of a four-plex apartment building that looked like it was at least sixty years old, maybe more.
“You don’t seriously live here?” I wrinkled my nose.
“I do.” He opened his door and stepped around to the bed of the truck to grab my suitcases.
“I’m getting a hotel room.” I said, though I got out of the truck too.
“Good luck with that. The nearest hotel that meets your standards is at least an hour away.” He said, heading toward the stairs between the two basement apartments. “And I’ve seen the houses for sale on Mount Edge, I don’t think you’ll be any happier with your place than you are with mine.”
I’d looked through the pictures my realtor had sent me, and if they were real, Cody was right. My house was just as dumpy as his apartment. I’d figured I would fix it up and flip it when I moved, but living there until it was fixed was going to suck.
“How do you live here?” I muttered, stepping up on the old stairs. Everything smelled like mildew, and the stairs were creaky as we made our way up to the apartment.
The light in front of the door Cody was unlocking wasn’t on, but the neighbor’s light three feet away was flickering on and off. If the wolf in me hadn’t been making me feel so calm just because I was with Cody, I would’ve worried I was stepping into a scene in a horror movie.
The door swung open, and we stepped inside.
Though the inside wasn’t much nicer than the outside, it was clean and smelled faintly like peppermint. Peppermint, and trees.
Part of me decided then and there that it was the perfect smell for Cody’s place, but I reminded myself that I liked my houses like I liked my men—crisp and modern and stylish.
When I stepped inside, Cody closed the door behind me and I noticed a man sitting on the faded red leather couch. He had dark messy hair a pair of stylish glasses perched on his nose, and he barely glanced up from the when we stepped inside.
I brushed a loose strand of hair out of my face, and he dropped the book on his lap.
“Sebastian, this is Quinn. Quinn, this is my roommate Sebastian.” Cody gestured to the man on the couch.
I gave him a quick smile, and he nodded.
“We’ll only be here until tomorrow morning as long as everything goes alright with my dad’s pack.” Cody explained quickly.
Sebastian nodded again, and then picked his book back up. So he wasn’t up for a conversation, I could respect that.
Cody led me past the kitchen and bathroom. There was a tiny strip of hallway and then the apartment branched into two bedrooms. He went into the one on the left, and I followed him.
There was a mattress on the floor with a black blanket tangled in a pile with the black sheets. Some clothes were on the ground, next to a white hard hat and an orange safety vest and a big bag of tools.
“You’re a construction worker?”
When he nodded, I wanted to groan. Even if by some miracle my parents changed their mind and accepted that I was soulmates with a shifter, they would never be okay with me being in a relationship with a construction worker. In my parents’ minds, they were the scum of all scum.
Which was just another reason I needed to make him hate me.
“Let’s just go to bed.” Cody muttered. He wasn’t in the mood to talk, and I couldn’t blame him. He’d been driving for twenty hours straight so he needed to sleep.
He tugged his t-shirt off over his head, catching me completely off guard. Those rippling muscles, the deep ridges that made up his abs, the way his body tensed when he noticed me watching him…
Oh, that.
“You can’t look at me like that and tell me you don’t want to be with me.” Cody said, his voice gruff. This time, the gruffness had nothing to do with his wolf.
“Actually, I can.” I shot him a quick glare and then stepped out of the jean shorts I’d been wearing. While he was taken aback by the shock of the movement, I stepped right out of his room and headed straight toward Cody’s roommate.
I knew I was about to be a real hoe, but I had to do what I had to do.
Tossing my shirt on the ground as I passed the kitchen, I didn’t hesitate even a second.
I grabbed Sebastian’s book and tossed it to the couch beside him, and then I sat down on the poor guy’s lap in my pink lace bra and underwear.
He gaped up at me like I had two heads, so shocked he was frozen in place.
Biting back a laugh, I grabbed his face in my hands and pressed my lips to his. I didn’t expect him to respond, so when I felt a pair of hands on my waist, it surprised me a little.
When the owner of those hands yanked me off of Sebastian and tossed me over his shoulder, I realized my mistake.
When Cody slammed the bedroom door behind us, I finally spoke up.
“I told you I was going to make you hate me.”
He set me down on both feet, and then his lips were on mine. As hard as I tried to fight the attraction and push him away, all I could do was wrap my arms around him and kiss him back.
This wasn’t like any of the other kisses we’d shared. The kiss wasn’t one of attraction or passion, it was one of desperation. Cody kissed me because he needed me, and when I kissed him back, and I could feel that in the way his rough, large hands blazed trails of fire on my skin.
The kiss was all bare skin and barely-contained desire. I had never wanted anyone the way I wanted Cody.
My back hit the door as he pinned me to it, and I moaned.
He went still. Without asking, I knew he was worried he’d hurt me.
“Take me to bed.” I breathed, assuring him and urging him to keep going.
Instead of complying, he stepped back. When his hands left my skin, air whooshed out of me and I felt an ache at his absence.
“We’re not making love while you’re trying to get rid of me. I don’t believe in casual sex.” Cody grabbed his t-shirt off the floor and put it back on, which I figured was so he would be less tempted to grab me and keep going. That was a pity, because I wanted nothing more than to do exactly what he didn’t.
He was wrong when he assumed that there could be anything casual about having sex with him. If we slept together, all it would do was cement the confidence I felt that he and I had something unique and special.
It was
actually a good thing that he’d stopped us before things went that far, because I was still struggling to accept the inevitable outcome of my plan. If I fell too hard for him, too quickly, I might not be able to go through with everything I’d been planning.
“I’m going for a run. Don’t even think about looking at Sebastian again.” His words were short and harsh, and he left without waiting for a response.
“I was only kissing him to piss you off.” I muttered. “Not that it changes anything for me.”
Sighing, I grabbed my phone to facetime Beth. She was typically up at all hours of the night reading, so chances were good that she’d answer.
“Hello?” She answered the call with crazy hair and mascara in rings around her eyes.
“Are you okay?” I sat up straighter.
“Just PMSing.” She moved around so she was lying on her stomach, and then fluffed a pillow up to rest under her chin. “Garrett left me alone so he could go watch another baseball game. It’s research, of course.” She did air-quotations around ‘research’. “But this is the twenty-third night in a row that I’ve slept alone. I have a count on my tablet.”
She lifted her mini tablet that she pretty much only used to read books, and showed me an app with a big 23.
“Is that why you were crying?”
Beth shrugged.
“Kind of. You know I hate being alone at night, and thanks to my PMS hormones, when he turned me down I just kind of lost it. How’s it going for you?”
I laughed humorlessly.
“Well I jumped his roommate and then made out with him until he got so horny he had to leave to resist me, so good I guess.”
Beth groaned and laughed at the same time, covering her face with her hand.
“Girl, you’ve got issues.”
“Tell me about it.” I rolled onto my back and lifted the phone over me. “Do you have any idea how these wolf shifter packs work? Cody’s throwing out words like Alpha and cotie and I’m pretending not to be interested.”
“Well if the paranormal romances I’ve read are correct, the Alpha rules the pack with dominance. If someone is out of line, he kills them.” Beth made a face. “His Luna is the soulmate that kind of rules with him, and she’s the most treasured in the pack. Cotie is the word for the mate mark on your neck, the one you tattooed over. Hey, show it to me.” She ordered.
I closed my eyes and turned my head so I wouldn’t have to see it.
“Wrong side, Quinnie.”
Groaning, I turned the other way.
“How do I keep forgetting?” I muttered.
Beth just laughed.
“It’s a pretty tattoo, but the cotie was prettier. What did Cody do when he saw it?”
I grinned at the memory.
“He was pissed. It was so sexy.” Sighing, I threw my free arm over my eyes. “I’m in so much trouble, Bethie. That man is irresistible.”
Cody
I shifted and ran through the forest until every ounce of desire for Quinn was gone. It took so long that the sun was coming up as I was heading back home, but when I walked back through that door, I was confident that my emotions were trapped in an iron cage.
Then I saw her asleep on my bed, tangled in the blankets I’d never bothered to smooth out. Her hair, tangled and falling out of the bun she’d half-heartedly created the night before, the loose strands fanned out on my pillow. She was so peaceful, so calm and soft and vulnerable.
That iron cage? It cracked like an egg the moment I saw her face.
I swallowed, hard, when I caught her scent in the air. She still smelled citrusy and sweet, the way she always did, but this time I could smell something else entwined with her scent.
She smelled like me.
The pride and joy that filled me when that realization hit me was so strong that I had to turn right around and walk out of that door before I took her up on the offer she’d made to me last night.
I sat down on the couch next to Sebastian, who was still lost in the book he’d been reading since I’d got home.
“Quinn seems nice.” He offered, putting down the book for a second.
“Liar.” I muttered, fighting off the memory of her sitting on his lap in her underwear. “She’s a sexy piece of work.” I leaned my head against the wall.
Sebastian didn’t respond to that, and when I looked over at him, he was back in the book. Mine and Sebastian’s friendship worked well. We both kept to ourselves for the most part, but he got lost in fiction a lot and tended to forget his common sense. I was a logical opinion he could bounce ideas off of, and he was much more laid-back than anyone else in my family or life.
“She wants me to sign away my rights as her soulmate, like some kind of a divorce.” I spoke again. He dropped his book and his eyebrows raised high into his forehead. “She’s determined to piss me off until I hate her enough to sign.”
Sebastian grimaced.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” I admitted. “What would you do?”
“Well I wouldn’t sign the paper.” He pulled off the glasses that I knew were only for reading, so his eyes wouldn’t hurt when he stayed up all night with his nose in a book. “I guess I’d try to convince her that I could be worth more to her than whatever reason she wants the paper signed for.”
I nodded. That was a better idea than mine. I’d just been planning on waiting her out, hoping she’d underestimated how important she was to me.
Sebastian and I both looked to the door when we heard a car door shut in the parking lot, and we waited as there were feet on the stairs. The doorknob turned, and Tanner stepped inside the apartment. Hallie followed him inside, holding his hand.
“Why aren’t you with your woman?” Tanner frowned. “She can’t piss you off while she’s asleep.”
“She smells like me.” I shrugged and folded my arms. “She’s tempting enough when she’s fully-dressed and not in my bed.”
“Ah.” he grimaced.
Hallie let go of him and crossed the small room to give me a quick hug.
“She’ll come around.” Hallie promised. She let go and took Tanner’s hand again.
“Dad wants us there now, before most of the pack is awake. Can you wake up your soulmate, or is that too much of a temptation?” he grinned, and Hallie rolled her eyes at him.
With my luck she was probably naked at that point, thinking I’d climb into bed with her before I realized it.
“I think I’ve got it.” My voice was dry and sarcastic.
When I walked back into my room, I closed the door behind me in case she really still wasn’t dressed.
“So I’m a temptation?” Quinn’s lips curled up in a sleepy smile, and she stretched her arms over her head. When she stretched, I saw that she was wearing one of my t-shirts. That was just as sexy as when she’d only been wearing underwear.
“Eavesdropper.” I ignored the question and offered her my hand. She took it, her mouth still slightly curved.
“At least I’m a tempting eavesdropper.”
She slipped out of bed, and I noticed that she wasn’t wearing any pants.
If I hadn’t heard Tanner’s and Hallie’s voices in the other room, I would’ve yanked her to me and kissed her.
“Here.” I let go of her hand long enough to grab a pair of basketball shorts out of my dresser. “To complete your outfit.”
Her smile grew, and she stepped closer. As she took the shorts, she stood up on her tiptoes and pressed a kiss to my cheek.
The gesture was so small and cute that the wolf in me rumbled in satisfaction.
“Thanks.” She pulled them on without stepping away, so her body brushed mine as she moved. “Ready?”
She opened the door and stepped outside, leaving me to grab both of her suitcases. My backpack of clothes was still in the car, and I wasn’t going to bother bringing any more of my stuff to her house until I knew if she would be safe on Mount Edge.
I left in time to catch Hallie
giving Quinn a huge hug.
“It’s so good to meet you.” Hallie smiled at my soulmate.
“Then Cody must not have told you much about me.” She smiled, but I could see in her body language that she was uncomfortable.
When Hallie laughed, Quinn relaxed a little.
“You’re my sister now, you can give my brother as much of a hard time as you want.” She wrapped her arm around Quinn and steered her out of the apartment. I could hear them talking and laughing like best friends, despite having just met.
“With Hallie and Emma on the welcoming committee, how could she ever leave?” Tanner grinned and slapped me on the back.
“Hopefully she can’t.” I agreed.
“You guys take Cody’s truck.” Hallie called out, as she and Quinn opened the doors to Tanner’s. “We’ll follow you there.”
I bit back a protest. Tanner was right. If Quinn became close with my sisters, there was a better chance she’d decide that we didn’t need to part ways after all. I had to use everything I had going for me, including my family.
Cody
On the way to Mount Edge, I caught Tanner up on all the ways she’d tried to get rid of me already. He got a kick out of the stories, and we were both laughing when we pulled up to my parents’ house.
Growing up, other wolf shifters living on pack land had never needed to stop at the Alpha and Omega’s house before they moved in. My parents’ had told Tanner we needed to stop by before going to check out Quinn’s place, but I knew that stopping by wouldn’t ensure her safety. They knew that too, so I figured the real reason they wanted us to come by was so they could meet my soulmate.
I couldn’t be mad at them for that. Up until a few days earlier, my parents had been separated from all of us kids because of the pack split. At the family dinner where we’d finally agreed that we could be close despite being in different packs, the Quinn GPS in my head had kicked into gear and I’d gone after her.
The peace we’d made was tentative, but my parents still deserved to meet my soulmate. Even if she was determined to make me hate her.