The Pretend Marriage: A Werewolf Romance

by Dawn Steele

  THE PRETEND MARRIAGE:

  A Werewolf Romance

  By Dawn Steele

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright 2013 by Dawn Steele

  Cover art by Dawn Steele

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Dawn Steele is the New Adult/romance/shifter romance pen name of Aphrodite Hunt.

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  Dawn Steele/Aphrodite Hunt is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. Her stories have been in the Top 5 of the Amazon overall bestselling charts, the 10 of the Barnes and Nobles overall charts and the No. 1 spot in Amazon's Movers and Shakers. She is a Top 50 Amazon Most Popular author.

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  1

  Jake is in the middle of a wet dream. A really, really wet dream.

  He is immersed in a tub of steaming water with bubbles frothing on its surface, and he is being licked, caressed and playfully bitten on almost every part of his body by two slinky panther shifters.

  They are in their human form. One is a redhead and the other, a brunette. They are both naked, and their bouncy breasts glisten with foam. The snap and crackle of the bubbles merge with their tinkling laughter as they dive in and out of the water to fellate him.

  “Oh God, don’t stop,” he groans, spreading his thighs wide.

  He almost wishes they were mermaids so that they could stay underwater longer to get him off.

  The brunette surfaces. Her long hair is plastered all over her shoulders and breasts. Her nipples are very red and huge.

  She licks her lips and says, “If you don’t get going to that interview, you’ll be stuck forever carrying Old Man Barton’s balls.”

  Balls.

  Interview.

  Jake wakes up with a start.

  Shit, shit, shit, shit! Why hadn’t the alarm rung? He bolts up in his bed and stares at the alarm clock on his bedside table. Nine twenty-three! How the hell has he slept so long and fitfully? And what the hell has he done last night?

  Oh right. There was that stupid project that Old Man Barton laid on him at six thirty in the evening when he was getting ready to leave the office for the feline bar on Twenty-Fifth Avenue.

  “Jake,” Old Man Barton snapped. “I need this on my desk by tomorrow. It’s the Clemens account. Geraldine Clemens wants you to redo the campaign. She doesn’t like the yellows on the backdrop.”

  Huh?

  The entire art department had gone by this hour and there was no way in hell he could get anyone to come back and work on the campaign.

  “But – ” he began.

  “No ‘buts’, Jake. If you want to make partner, you better get it done by tomorrow. I want to see it eight thirty sharp on my desk.”

  Old Man Barton was actually forty-five years old, but his employee management E.Q. had to be a quarter of that figure. He had been dangling ‘partner’ in front of Jake for two years now, and Jake was frankly fed up of waiting for it to happen.

  So he had worked on the Clemens account until one a.m. until he fell asleep in front of his graphics computer. He woke up sometime at four in the morning and dragged himself to bed. He was certain he set the alarm for seven thirty. But maybe he slept through it, if it is possible to sleep through the ‘Star Trek’ jingle.

  Now he is late for work. Old Man Barton would throw a hissy fit that would rival Mt. Etna. Barton is from the ‘Scarred Wolf’ tribe, which accounts for his prissiness.

  But there’s one more thing.

  Not only is Jake late for work, but he has an interview today at lunchtime with Peter Skarsgaard. The Peter Skarsgaard! Major shareholder and chairman of Nordic Advertising and Public Relations – which is, like, only the biggest shifter advertising firm this side of the Atlantic. Jake had been salivating for a job with Nordic for the longest time, especially since he knows that Old Man Barton would be screwing him out of the partner position.

  Jake rips the covers off his naked body and jumps out of bed. No time to shower, so he brushes his teeth, throws water over his face, makes sure his eyes are not bloodshot, and dresses quickly in a shirt and pants and jacket.

  He takes one final look in the mirror and finger combs his hair. His looks have never been the problem. Plenty enough women and quite a few men give him the elevator eye thing every day. But Jake is a corporate climber, and so he tells himself that he has no time for women. He has three things to achieve on his agenda by age twenty-eight, which he is about to turn in a year’s time, give or take a few days:

  1. Become an advertising firm partner, or a similar position

  2. Make his first million dollars

  3. Visit the shifter beach paradise village in Majorca

  in that order.

  Or maybe not.

  He could exchange No. 2 with No. 1 without batting an eyelid.

  He grabs his laptop and runs out of his apartment. His main door has a self-locking mechanism, and all he has to do is to slam it shut.

  About ten feet down the passageway, his neighbor, Terry Contralto, is bending over to pick something up which has been shoved halfway through the space beneath her door. Jake’s stomach does a flip, which annoys him. Terry is what he would consider a “hot babe”, except that he doesn’t have time to pick up hot babes these days.

  But Terry doesn’t like him, and he doesn’t like Terry either for myriad reasons which can be catalogued, like his achievement goals. At least, that is what he has been telling himself since she moved in next door.

  Terry’s butt, which is covered in a pair of frayed and faded denim shorts, is extremely pronounced. Even though he is late, Jake pauses to momentarily admire her curves. She has a killer bum. A bum which should be framed in the ‘Hall of Fame for Buttocks’, if there is such a thing.

  An image of her rump in a gilded picture frame suddenly intrudes in his brain, and he quickly pushes away the unbidden thought.

  Terry is a Grey Wolf shifter too, and that is one of the reasons they don’t get along. Jake is a Red wolf, and Greys and Reds don’t get along as a matter of principle because of something which happened in the Clan Wars of 1882 or some other historical stuff he has no recollection of.

  He is going to do something which will annoy Terry vehemently. He knows he shouldn’t do it, but he is going to do it anyway to pay her back for dumping his mail which was wrongly delivered to her address on the floor of the condo unit’s mailroom. And she did that to pay him back for –

  Oh, never mind.

  Jake whips out his IPhone and presses the camera icon. Then he frames the sight of Terry’s rounded butt and her slim, slim legs, nicely toned and contoured, and her dark, curly hair falling all over h
er shoulders and face as she bends over . . . and snaps the photo.

  The IPhone makes a clicking and whirring sound. Damn. He has forgotten to put it on ‘Silent’.

  Terry looks up sharply. “Hey, what did you just do?”

  “I’m going to post your photo on Facebook,” Jake says, sliding his cellphone back into his pants pocket.

  “No, you’re not!”

  “Well, you put my photo on your Facebook with the caption: ‘My sicko neighbor is putting a kitten in the trash’. And you knew very well I was NOT doing that. I was rescuing that kitten which had fallen in. It was the other way around, if you had bothered to get your facts right.”

  Terry has the grace to look contrite.

  Then she blusters, “How do you know what I put on my Facebook page? You’re not even Friends with me.”

  “Let’s just say I know a Friend who is a Friend.”

  “Who?”

  “I’m not telling. Trawl through your Facebook Friends if you have to. I’m going.”

  He strides to the stairs. No time to wait for the elevators, which take a lifetime and a half to crank up anyway. When were they built? 1882? When he is made a partner or when he has a million dollars, whichever comes first, he will rent a decent apartment in a decent neighborhood and get out of his dump.

  “Loser!” she throws at him.

  “Defamer!” he throws back at her.

  “It was a mistake, OK?”

  “I don’t see you taking it back on Facebook.”

  He goes out of her earshot and sight, his pulse racing. Damn. Why does every encounter with her drive him into such a hurricane state? Anyway, he is really, really late. No time to take the subway and so he hails a cab.

  He wonders grimly if Old Man Barton would be steaming enough to sprout hair from his ears. It has happened before, and he winces as he remembers the outcome of such events.

  2

  Terry Contralto was extremely disturbed to find the notice shoved under her door like an advertising brochure.

  It could be worse, of course. The landlord could have tacked the ‘EVICTION WARNING’ notice on her door and Jake Savage would have walked by, skedaddled to have a read, and have a good guffaw about her plight.

  That was when she heard the camera click of the iPhone behind her.

  Damn that man! Damn, damn, damn him!

  Of course, they had that heated exchange – the hundredth heated exchange they have shared since she moved in next door to him – and her whole morning is now ruined. Just ruined. She is about to get evicted if she doesn’t cough up the rent, and Jake just makes her so –

  Arggh!!

  He vanishes, of course, after his snarky parting “I don’t see you taking it back on Facebook”. That incident always makes her a little guilty because he really wasn’t doing anything mean to that little kitty. She just was primed to find an excuse – any excuse – to defame him, because he just makes her feel so –

  Arggh!!

  Why does he have to be so goddamned attractive? Jake Savage has a full head of glorious dark hair which falls in waves down to his shoulders, and he always lets it loose and flowing. His eyes are a marvelous green. His facial bone structure belies his Celtic roots, and he is a Red Wolf. Didn’t her mother warn her that the Red Wolves are always the moodiest and strangest of the wolf clans?

  “Never marry a Red Wolf, Terry,” her mother always said. “They are strange. Just strange. You know all those stories about werewolves howling at the moon? Well, the Red Wolves are the ones who gave us all a bad rap.”

  Having met Jake Savage, Terry can certainly attest to that. The guy seems to be on his personal hamster wheel to get someplace, wherever that place is. She doesn’t know if he howls at the moon, because the only unearthly sounds she can hear from his apartment are the constant tapping of his keyboard keys late at night.

  Clickety-clack. Clickety-clack.

  The sounds are very soft, granted, but in the still of the night, she can hear them because her bedroom is separated from his by one wall. It drives her crazy.

  She sometimes listens for other sounds as well, but Jake rarely brings women home. She doesn’t know if he prefers to fuck them outside or if he is simply gay. But the guy seems to treat his apartment like his work sanctuary, and he doesn’t seem to let anyone in except for a cleaning lady who comes once a week.

  She doesn’t think he is gay.

  Anyhow, what the hell is she thinking about Jake Savage for? It’s not as if she is ever going to be friends with him. Besides, she is about to get evicted. She won’t ever be seeing him again. Good riddance!

  Why does a pang of regret cross her chest?

  She shakes it away. She has other more important things to think about. The eviction. Ah, yes. She has to cough up twelve hundred dollars in back rent or Dwayne Tuney would throw her out on her ass.

  Dwayne did indicate – in not so many words – that he would be willing to overlook the rent if she could put out for him. OK, he said it in eighteen words exactly.

  “I’d be willing to overlook the rent if you’d take off all your clothes and suck me off,” he said.

  The thought of sucking Dwayne – who wears a straggly goatee and smells of cigarettes – off gives her the willies. Does he even have a dick big enough to suck?

  How the hell did she get into this mess anyway?

  Oh yeah. It’s a long story.

  *

  Burt Garrant.

  She never thought that those two words would mean so much trouble. Had she known, she would have taken one look at those blue eyes, that dirty blond hair, that lanky hot body . . . and run madly for the hills without looking back.

  He was her latest boyfriend. The one to make her swear off boyfriends for good.

  It was lust at first sight. She took one look at him, and her loins quivered. He took one look at her, and his penis became a stick.

  They fell into bed almost immediately – or precisely an hour after they met. Or maybe bed wasn’t the appropriate word, since Burt lived in a studio apartment with three other male models and bunked on a mattress on the floor. Terry would have been OK with the mattress had it not been for the ketchup stains on it.

  Ewww.

  And was that an anchovy on a crumb of pizza crust?

  She swore she could feel the cooties crawling on her skin from that mattress. In fact, she wasn’t going to be surprised if the whole bed sheet just rolled itself up and walked away on tiny little cootie legs.

  The next time they had sex, she made sure it was at her place.

  “This is nice,” Burt said when he finally looked up from eating her pussy. He surveyed her bedroom – the nice furnishings, the zigzag wallpaper and the pretty little china figurine collections on her dresser.

  “Yes, it is,” she said, driving in the point that they should make love here more often.

  “You know, I could move in,” he said.

  “Move in?”

  Isn’t that, uh, too fast? she thought faintly.

  Burt bowed his head and resumed eating her, and she was soon lost in a delirium of pleasure. Oh, but he was sooooo good at this! His tongue was wicked and salaciously slinky, and he made her come like no man ever had before.

  “OK,” she finally said after she had her third orgasm in a row.

  “Just OK? I don’t get a medal?”

  “I mean . . . OK. You can move in.”

  Even then, she wondered if she was making a mistake. But true love bites you in the nose and doesn’t let go like a pudgy bull terrier, right? Anyhow, this will be her good deed for the month – helping a poor but extremely sexy male model get a start in this vicious city. One day, when he wins the male model Oscars – or whatever they serve after Project Runway – he will thank her for it.

  She imagined him at the podium in a tux, looking resplendent with his blond hair neatly combed back. He leaned into the microphone and stared right at her in the first row of the audience.

  “I want to thank my g
irlfriend and love of my life, Terry Contralto.” He gave her a little wave, and the cameras closed up on her smiling face so that her larger than life image was on the monitors everywhere. “Terry . . . you were the one who gave me my break when no one else would. You took me in, fed me and clothed me . . . and I’m going to dedicate this win – ” he waved the golden trophy “ – as well as the proceeds from my multimillion dollar modeling contract to you.”

  The entire audience broke into wild applause. A few people jumped to their feet, and soon, the entire auditorium was giving her a standing ovation. She felt prouder than any mother.

  Pzzzzzt.

  Maybe she was getting ahead of herself.

  So Burt Garrant moved in with the clothes on his back and all his belongings in a rucksack. Things were wild at first. They had more sex those first few days than rabbits did in enclosed hutches. Then she began to notice little things about him.

  Like how he ate everything in her refrigerator without replenishing it.

  Like how he always left the butter out.

  Like how he never cleaned up after himself when he used his razor at her sink.

  Like how he never bothered to do anything around the apartment. Not even to take out the trash.

  Like how he never offered to pay his part of the rent, electricity and gas bills and groceries, although he was the one who left the heat on most of the time.

  Like how he always left his mug with the coffee stains on her glass table.

  Like how he never paid when they went out to eat.

  She told herself she was being a fusspot. Burt Garrant wasn’t a shifter, and maybe non-shifters behaved that way. She far preferred non-shifters anyway – shifter men tended to be territorial and possessive and far too alpha for their good, even when they were not the designated alphas of their clans. It was as if something in their makeup was always jostling for position.