To the Edge and Back [The Royal Wolves] (Siren Publishing Allure)

by Honor James

  “Damned pesky human laws,” Max said, the look on his face almost comical, just managing to keep his face straight when those hunter eyes turned toward him. The growl from deep in Janos’s chest had him chuckling though. “Down, boy,” he teased, laughing even harder when the growl turned feral.

  “Sometimes I really wish that you humans were under Wolf law,” Janos said. At the questioning look he shrugged. “I’d be able to call them out and turn them into mincemeat like I want to do.”

  “Damn,” Max breathed out. “Harsh.”

  “We’re not like you, Max. We have to have laws applicable to our lives,” he pointed out with a sigh. “I need you to go over to Edge tonight and run the show, let everyone there know about Ernie and Dahlia. I’ll handle things here tonight,” he added so that Max wouldn’t worry about the Full Moon. “Place the liquor order before you head over, while I go through and make sure I remember what I’m doing,” he ordered, pushing off the bar top and moving away. “And no flirting with the chick that takes the order. It’s bad enough you make eyes at her while she’s here, none of that over the phone.”

  Shaking his head, Max rolled his eyes and internally muttered nasty names at his boss’s back, knowing better than to speak them even under his breath. One thing he’d learned early on was that the Wolf had incredibly sharp ears and could hear just about anything, including a pin dropping in a chaotic machine shop. Picking up the phone, he made the call.

  Two hours later, an hour before the liquor truck would arrive with the night’s requirements, Janos lay down on his sofa. He was exhausted and knew it wasn’t just physical exhaustion. He’d been feeling old of late even though he was only six years short of celebrating his second century without his parents, after the escape.

  Resting an arm over his eyes, his mind turned to the woman who was their liquor distributor representative. She was a cute little thing, for a human, a tempting little bit that would serve as a delightful appetizer for a Wolf’s hunger. And he’d always had a bit of an interest in her, but knew better than to actually approach her. Humans were not on his particular menu.

  Slipping into sleep, he wasn’t surprised when she came to be the main attraction of his dream, her delightfully naked body spread under his. Licking and nibbling at her smooth flesh, Janos growled softly as he shifted on the sofa. Smoothing his hands over her soft curves, he inhaled the heady scent of her flesh, moving ever lower on her body. He had a goal, to taste her, as he truly couldn’t wait to lap at her warm juices. He was almost there, her body quivering in need for his touch when a buzzer sounded, snapping him awake.

  Sitting up sharply as the buzzer sounded again, he snarled as he stood, his body having reacted to his dream more than any other. “Damn fine time for a hard-on,” he grumbled as he headed for the stairs and the back loading dock. Shifting his erection slightly in the suddenly too-tight jeans, he let out a breath. “Better not be dreaming about humans, too fragile and they just scare too easily,” he muttered, pushing open the door.

  Chapter 2

  The here and now…Mina

  The name plaque on the desk read “Mina Tremayne,” and behind it was the woman herself. With a phone to her shoulder, a quick click-clack-click of a keyboard, sultry laughter, and then the click and sigh as the phone was once more placed on the cradle, she went about her day.

  Leaning back with a grin, she twirled her pen in her hand as she watched the order being processed. She loved her job. She didn’t have to think too hard. There were no corporate ladders to climb. For now she was perfectly content to simply be a “Cube Farm Worker” as she termed her position.

  In truth Mina was a customer service representative for the largest beer and liquor firm on the East Coast. She was a specialized account manager who dealt only with those businesses that ordered in massive quantities. With each customer she built up a strong rapport. They were her family to her. However, she would never tell them that.

  Mina was alone in the world, having been orphaned when she was first born, and had grown up in a state system that was more than a little flawed. Emancipated at the age of fifteen, she got a job sweeping floors at the company she was with now and, once she graduated high school, she was offered an office job.

  Her cubicle was the first real “home” she had, and it showed in all of the bobbleheads she had lining the metal shelves surrounding the fabric walls, right down to the file in her desk with birthday and Christmas cards from her clients and boxes of blank ones she could send to them.

  Clicking her pen a couple more times, she stood from her chair and stretched, looking over the wall to the other cubicles and, seeing only the tops of heads, gave a shake of her own. She worked in an office with five other people. However, they seldom even spoke.

  She had been with the company for seven years. However, she didn’t know where one of her coworkers lived. The strange part, however, was she knew where every single one of her clients lived, their birthdays, their religions and political views, everything. That was what made them her family and not her coworkers. Her clients were really her world.

  Sitting back down as the phone rang once more, she answered with a smile on her face. “Mina Tremayne, how can I make your day a glorious one?”

  Yeah, she knew she was supposed to answer with the company’s name and a very cold and impersonal greeting, but she never had been able to do it. It was because of her personal touch that she was the most sought-after CSR in the office. Clients were lining up to have her personally take their orders. Not only because she was chipper and friendly, but because she had a one-hundred-percent accuracy in orders. She had never once gotten one wrong, and one had never been shipped wrong.

  Taking the order for the club that she actually visited, she teased with the bar manager a moment before laughing with a shake of her head. “Max, I swear, you are the bright highlight of my life.” She heard him laughing and then heard another masculine voice say something to Max, and that voice, never in her life had one affected her the way that that male voice had.

  Her whole body went tight, moisture gathered between her legs, her nipples puckered, and she had to bite her lip to stop a moan, and all from the deep husky timbre of the voice yelling at Max.

  Swallowing hard, she said, “Hey, Maxi, I will let you get back to it. The booze will be there by five tonight. I will be here till six, so if it doesn’t make it or anything is wrong, give me a yell.”

  She heard him mutter agreement and then something about a “rabid dog” and then said, “The boss will call you if something is wrong, sweet cheeks. He is checking in tonight’s order here. As for me, seems I am being sent over to the Edge, so wish me luck.”

  Mina just shivered. The Edge was a hot spot and mecca for all of the creatures of the night and for those humans who didn’t give a fig who they were around at any given time. She wasn’t against the Wolves. Hell, she was alive because of their lifesaving blood. Thanks to medical science and the way that the blood of the Wolves seemed to heal, she had been saved when she was five years old. Just thinking of that time had her shivering and rubbing her hands over her arms for that brief thought. She had been taken into the hospital by her foster family when she was five; a simple test, however, had revealed that Mina was far sicker than they would have even believed she was. However, after a blood transfusion from a Wolf, Mina had recovered from the disease that would have killed her within a few simple months. However, they still terrified her, no matter that their blood had saved her life.

  Wolves were, by nature, extremely tall, normally all well over six feet in height, and all built like brick houses and looked like they could bench-press a Mack truck in their human form, and she shuddered to think of how they looked in their animal forms. She had never seen one and likely would faint if she did.

  Mina was petite by any standards and very thin, mostly because she didn’t eat as much as she should. But when one only made a certain amount of money and had to pay for an apartment, utilities, and transportatio
n all on their own, there never was much left over for a frivolity like food.

  “All right, Maxi, leave him my number, and if he calls before six, I will be here. Otherwise he will have to wait to yell at me Monday morning at nine.” She was one of the only people in the world without a cell phone or home phone, but again, she had to prioritize where the cash went each month.

  “I will tell him, love. Be safe on the bus, Mina. If you can, walk to your apartment with a group getting off, but if you can’t, just hurry, all right, doll?” There was worry in his tone as he spoke.

  “I will, Maxi. Be safe, my friend,” she concluded as she hung up the phone and turned back to her computer to finish out the order.

  Order complete, she tugged her long curly red hair back with a rubber band and contemplated cutting it with the scissors, but she remembered the last time she did it and she didn’t have a spare dime to go to the local Great Clips, let alone pay the ten bucks to have them fix her mess, so she just tucked back some strays and sighed. Maybe soon, maybe this year they would get a larger Christmas bonus, maybe.

  Chapter 3

  It was four p.m. and everyone else was out of the office. She was the only one staying until six, mostly because the bus in front of the office didn’t run until six thirty, so instead of waiting two and a half hours, she would only wait a half hour.

  Sitting before her computer and making the final series of orders, she suddenly paused mid-keystroke and shivered.

  Her whole body screamed in pleasure, and it was as if the office fell away and instead she was lying in the middle of a large, no, a massive bed with silk sheets under her. She felt callused hands, ones that were so large they covered her fully from thumb to thumb and pinky to pinky as he splayed his hands around her waist.

  The silky long hair fell over her breasts, making them ache in need. His lips moved over her stomach, lightly teasing her navel before moving his head to the juncture of her thighs, and when he licked, his rough tongue moved down her weeping slit and her body convulsed. Her left hand gripped the sheet and the right one gripped his long dark hair. “Yes,” she breathed out on a loud moan, arching her hips up and toward his mouth.

  He devoured her like a man starving, and when his finger slipped into her pussy, she screamed in orgasm, eyes flying wide and standing up so fast that she set all of her bobbleheads bobbling. “Oh. My. God!” She breathed as she fanned herself.

  She tried to walk, to go to the bathroom and splash water on her face, but her legs wouldn’t carry her. She felt the wetness that had more than soaked her panties and had gone through her jeans as well, and for once, for once she was glad she was alone.

  Dropping back into her chair, she dropped her face into her hands and tried to think of the faceless god that had given her the first orgasm of her life, and all from her imagination. Snorting in laughter and then crying, she thought to herself, of course, leave it to me to have my first lovemaking session only in the confines of my imagination.

  She wasn’t afraid of sex. She was, however, not a casual-sex kind of person. Pregnancy terrified her, not because she didn’t want children, but because she couldn’t afford a child, and she would never dream that a man who knocked her up on a casual experience would ever remain around.

  When she looked at the clock, she saw it was just after five p.m. and, ever so curiously, wondered if the owner of the bar Maxi worked in had gotten his delivery yet.

  * * * *

  It was five till six and she was about to turn off her computer and start to pack up her desk to leave when she decided she should call to check on the liquor order that Maxi had called in. Normally she wouldn’t, but with the owner putting it away, well, it would be best. Flipping through her Rolodex, she pulled out the number for the bar and dialed it, sitting back and watching her heads bobble as she waited for him to pick up.

  Growling as the phone rang, Janos grabbed it in passing and pressed it to his ear as he rebalanced the keg he had on his shoulder. “Full Moon, Janos speaking. We thank you for your call but we don’t open until eight. If you’d like to call back then, please feel free to speak with any of our helpful staff,” he said less than cheerfully.

  Ready to hang up, he heard a soft sound that had him pressing the phone back to his ear and pausing. “Hello?” he asked softly, his every sense on guard, the small sound having alerted the Wolf to the fact the caller was female.

  “Hello, this is Mina, Mina Tremayne from North East Liquors. I was just calling to ensure that your full order made it without any issues?” Why was she doing this? Just hearing that man’s voice was making her stomach quiver. “I will be leaving in five minutes and you won’t be able to reach me until Monday, so I just wanted to make sure there were no troubles?”

  “Other than the broken case of Glenfiddich and the dented keg of Coors that is leaking, just peachy.” His tone dripped with sarcasm. He was having a rotten day and to have the woman of his dreams on the phone was seriously screwing with his head.

  Letting out a sigh, he shook his head. “Look, it’s fine. We’ll survive without it until Monday night.” Doubtful, but he wasn’t going to make her stay. He wasn’t a complete asshole…most days. “I’d suggest though that your drivers actually ensure their cargo is properly restrained and that they try not to drive as though the streets of New York are NASCAR tracks.”

  And just like that Mina knew she would be walking home, again, since she knew that she would end up missing the final bus. “I apologize for that. You do not have to wait until Monday. The driver has to return here, and when he does, I will make him bring out two cases of the Glenfiddich and two kegs of the Coors, no additional cost to you.” Putting her coat down and sending out a quick message to the driver on the SMS system of her PC, she got his return reply that he would be back at 9:00 p.m. “He will be back at the warehouse at 9:00 p.m. I will personally watch him load the truck and then I will give him a small talk about his driving. Again, I am so sorry for this inconvenience.”

  Pausing, Janos set the keg down one handed and shook his head. “Go home, woman. I am fine with what I have. If I need anything I can pull it from one of the other four establishments I own. You have done enough and can’t do more, go home,” he ordered. “If I see the driver return tonight, I’ll know you ignored me and we will be looking for a new company to supply us,” he threatened, well, not really a threat. He’d do it just because he could.

  Shaking her head, she said, “Then you should at least leave us knowing we will always give the best service.” Damn, that would get her fired to lose the Farkas account, but she refused to allow there to be any mistakes in her customers’ orders.

  “You will receive the replacement items as soon as I get the truck back here and loaded. I will go home once I am sure that everything came to you intact and whole, sir.” Not allowing him to argue, she finished with, “Thank you for doing business with North East Liquors. We are sorry to lose your business, sir. However, our quality will never be compromised.” And with that, she hung up the phone on him.

  Staring at the now dead phone in his hand, Janos cursed evilly at it and the woman at the other end. Putting the keg down, he moved to the loading dock to talk to the driver.

  Chapter 4

  Standing and moving from her desk and down toward the warehouse, she was mentally calculating how long it would be until she was sure that the delivery was made and sighed. It would be well after eleven when the driver got there and around midnight before he got back, because no way in hell was she calling that man back. Not with his sexier-than-hell, godlike voice.

  Plus she really didn’t want to hear the last customer she had with the company curse her out for not listening. So if she was lucky, and she walked quickly, she could be home by three a.m. Good thing tomorrow was Saturday.

  Finishing the off-loading fast, Janos sent the driver off with strict orders not to go and get his liquor. Going to his truck with the warehouse address in his pocket, Janos soon headed off to find the place an
d rip this woman a new one. He hated people not giving him what he wanted. He really hated stubborn females. Damned twenty-first century.

  Parking at the loading area that the driver said he normally got his pick-ups from, Janos rang the buzzer and waited for her to show her face. He’d get his liquor, get her home since she’d, according to the driver, missed her last bus, and then he’d deal with his threat later. Tapping his fingers against his leg, he inhaled the night air and knew that there were only humans in the area, no other Wolves thankfully. He didn’t want to stomp on any toes, and with the way things were at the moment it would be all too easy to do.

  The driver was back before she had expected him. Frowning, she brought the hydraulic pallet to the loading dock and pressed the release to roll up the garage door for the truck, simply trusting that it was the driver back early. It wasn’t even fully raised as she said, “Tommy, I can’t believe you. You know how particular I am with anything that I have placed the order on. This is the first time ever that…” Her voice trailed off as she came face-to-face with the living and breathing figure of the man who had given her her first orgasm while sitting in her office. Dreams were really a bitch sometimes. “I’m sorry, Mr. Farkas, what are you doing here?”

  Lifting a brow, he looked to the pallet. “I’d say you’ve already guessed why I’m here,” he said in as normal a voice as he could manage, which was still pretty rough sounding. Moving around her, he hefted the two kegs easily and moved to his truck, setting them down before going back for the boxes of scotch. “Get your jacket and purse. Since you missed your bus because you didn’t listen to me I’m driving you home.” Now that came off oh-so friendly.

  She just looked at him and shook her head. If he even thought she was getting in the truck with him, he was insane. “Thank you, but no. I think that I will just call my cab now.” Yeah right, that was so not going to happen. “Again, I’m sorry for the mistakes. Hopefully with whomever you go to next you won’t have that issue. Now if you don’t mind, I would like to lock up and call my cab.” There was something about him. Good grief he was huge and made her whole body remember every second of that dream, causing her to blush.