“Not sure how you got him to shut up,” Vic said, “but you should be canonized for it.”
Colt ground his teeth and stared at his sandwich.
“Eventually, we all run out of things to say,” Anton said. He turned his wrist over and brought his watch up to his good eye. A patch covered his blind one. Apparently, he’d lost his vision in a nasty fight not too long before the mates arrived. “The new hires we’re supposed to shadow are due at the gates in about twenty minutes. We should head that way.”
“Are they going to be living here?” Lisa asked.
“Yeah, but in temporary housing for the moment. Up there.” He pointed to a two-story building on the corner, next to the coffee shop. There must have been apartments on the second floor. “They’re on probation for the next three months, and after that, we can look into giving them a little more space.”
“Are they wolves?”
“Nah,” Vic said. “There are a few wolves we would hire, but we haven’t been able to make anything happen. One of Christina’s brothers is a sharpshooter. We made him an offer. Discreetly, of course. We’re just waiting for it to catch up to him.”
“Where is he?”
Colt balled up his sandwich wrapper and tossed it into the nearby trashcan. “Got kicked out of his pack before turning eighteen just like all of us, and is roaming around on his own, likely looking for anyone to give a fuck about him.” He took off at a brisk pace down the sidewalk and didn’t look back.
Lisa started to follow. They needed to go ahead and get their discussion—or argument—out of the way. Anton got in front of her and put up his hands, as if to calm her, but she wasn’t upset. Not yet, anyway. “Move, Anton.”
“Just listen, will you? We’re all sensitive about being ousted. Some of us more than others, and we all show it in different ways. We’ve been a crew for a long time, and he’s never brought it up. If that’s what he’s working through right now, don’t ride his ass about it.”
Was that it? Had she said something to churn up old memories? If she’d made him feel unnecessary somehow, she’d have to work extra hard to disabuse him of the notion.
Vic joined them. “I agree. Trust me, I by far prefer the Colt who puts his head down and works without all the infuriating commentary than the one who thinks talking shit is an underutilized form of affection. But we all have to work through this garbage. We can’t keep dragging it from one generation to the next and taking out how pissed we are about what happened to us on other people’s kids.”
“You won’t send your own children away, will you?” Lisa asked. “Has anyone had that conversation yet?” She hated the idea of sending her strong sons away, should she and Colt ever have any, almost as much as she hated the wolf treatment of girls.
“What do you think, Lisa? My father is our alpha, and I’m still here. Any one of the guys could be an alpha somewhere, and Dad knew that when he scooped them up.”
“You guys have built a rapport.”
“That’s right,” Anton said. “And if we’ve proven that we can work together for a common goal, and live in a community so near each other without regularly trying to claw out each other’s throats, who’s to say it’s not possible widespread?”
“And natural,” Vic added.
“Just like with any group, you’ve got to blend personalities carefully. It’s not about how much strength a wolf has, it’s about what he does with it.”
“You have plans, don’t you?” She tipped her chin to both in turn. “About what you want this pack to be?”
Anton nodded. “We all do. Don’t make assumptions about us. About any of us. We’re in our own bubble here. What happens out there can stay out there. Got it?”
“Got it.”
The two men followed Colt’s footsteps toward the main road, and Lisa stared after them until Ashley called from across the street, “Everything okay?”
Lisa hurried back and took her former seat at the table. “Not at the moment.”
“What’s wrong? Did something happen at the mansion?”
“No—nothing’s wrong in that way. I mean in general. With—with Colt.”
“He yelled at you? You want me to find him and kick him really hard?”
Lisa laughed and brought her coffee to her lips. “Nah. He didn’t yell at me. Would probably make things easier if he did. But that’s okay. I’ve got a plan.” She sipped, smirking.
“Want to share it? I could use a little help.”
“With Vic? You’re on your own there, sistah. Your wolf’s probably got issues a lot different from my wolf.”
“That’s for sure,” Ashley said softly and slumped in her seat.
“Hey. A year from now, we’ll probably look back on this and think we did a whole lot of fretting for nothing.” Lisa hoped that was the truth and not just a wish. She’d never had an overabundance of optimism when it came to anything, but she needed to turn over a new leaf for the sake of her little sisters.
“I don’t even know why we got matched.”
“I thought the same thing at first about Colt, but Alpha said something about us giving each other what we needed. I don’t know what that is, but I think I can get him to tell me.”
And in the process, perhaps figure out what she needed from him as well.
CHAPTER SIX
Colt was beginning to see the appeal of the head-down, work-hard philosophy he hadn’t subscribed to before a certain domineering female wolf had been dropped into his world. If he was busy—kept his hands moving and eyes focused—it didn’t leave much room for his brain to chime in. He didn’t have to think so hard about what it was all that busy-ness was fixing, only that the activity kept the gnawing anxiety at bay.
There was a certain rush that came from moving from one completed chore on to the next with no gap, no downtime. Or perhaps a burst of adrenaline released from completing a challenge in a self-imposed deadline no one else knew about. He’d painted his entire house, tossed enough junk and clutter to fill a pickup truck bed, hauled sheetrock down to the basement for the finishing he hoped to get around to, dug holes for fence posts in the backyard, and even had time to make a few phone calls.
He was about to grab Anton and start on a corner of fence in his thumbnail of a yard when tiniest yank at the back of his pants made him stop. He looked over his shoulder and rolled his eyes at his wife. “Didn’t hear you.”
She pointed to his ear. “Try taking out the foam.” She overemphasized each word, ostensibly so he could read her lips.
He pulled out an earplug and tucked it into his pocket. “What’s up?”
“You do realize you live here, right?”
“I haven’t forgotten. My name is on the electric bill, after all.”
“I had to make sure. You’ve been in and out of the house so much in the past six weeks, I couldn’t tell if you’d forgotten. Where’ve you been sleeping?”
He shrugged. “Here and there.” His wolf didn’t care where he slept, really, as long as it was reasonably safe. Most nights, he found some nice overhang to sleep under with his only company being the stars and the occasional lizard. He was starting to understand what Loner saw in going off on his own so much.
“Are you running from me? Because it usually happens the other way around. Wolf women do anything to flee their obnoxious mates, so they’ll find any excuse not to come home for the night. Maybe they’re staying late watching someone’s children, so it’s just as well they sleep over. Or perhaps they stay up late working on some chore or craft project so that they don’t have to crawl into bed with a monster.”
Is that how I’m treating her? He’d been pissed at her cavalier treatment of him, yeah, but he’d never wanted to turn that back on anyone else. That would have made him no better than the institution he hated so much. He let out a ragged breath as he raked his hand through his hair. “You’re not a monster, and you’re not obnoxious.”
“Just bitchy. And I don’t mean bitch-bitch as in female wol
f, because that’s obviously incontestable. I mean insufferable.”
He leaned against the doorway and crossed his arms, eying her. Insufferable? That word hadn’t come to mind. He’d thought a lot of things in both his forms. First, that if she wasn’t so fucking evil, he’d trot her out like the princess she insisted he not call her. That wasn’t even alpha wolf bullshit—that was just male braggart crap. Any guy would do it if they had a wife like her. Wolf women had a certain appeal in general, but none of them were as showstoppingly captivating as Lisa. And none of them had made him ever second-guess himself. His own mother had been capable of that kind of allure, but his mother hadn’t been the kind of alpha’s wife Mrs. Carbone was. His mother did what she was told and didn’t question anything—not even the bullshit.
Lisa was sort of an alpha in her own right. Bossy. Take-charge and take-no-shit. Concerned for the wellbeing of others as any good alpha would be, but sometimes critical to a fault. The criticizing was what he couldn’t stomach. Seemed almost ironic.
“You’re not saying anything. Obviously you think it’s true,” she said.
He shook his head and closed his eyes to block out the visual stimulation. Her gaze was too dark, too wise, and he couldn’t help but to feel like he had all his sins laid bare and she was sorting through each and every one and ready to ask, “What’s that? And how about this?”
“You’re not insufferable, but you’re hard for me to be around.”
She laughed, and he opened his eyes. He couldn’t tell if the laugh was sarcastic, but she seemed amused enough.
“Well, thanks for being honest. Why am I hard to be around? And don’t tell me you have anywhere to be right now. I have it on good authority that you don’t have to go back to work until Monday. You’ve got the whole weekend off, whether you want it or not.”
“How’d you find that out?”
“I’ve got Alpha’s ear. I guess if you’re a little pushy and overly idealistic, he takes pity on you and gives you want you want so you can go be annoying somewhere else.”
“If you were annoying, he would have said so. Trust me. He tells me all the time.”
“Well, he didn’t tell me that.”
“Probably because he doesn’t think it. He likes you.”
“I’m glad. My last alpha and I weren’t on the greatest terms when I left.”
“Ditto.”
She cringed. “Well, not only are you off this weekend, but so am I.”
He pushed up an eyebrow. “Really? Not gonna bang away on your keyboard all day and swear about capital gains or whatever it is you’re always mumbling about?”
“I’m caught up for the moment, and all of my invoices are out. Now I just wait for the money to roll in and chase it down when it doesn’t.” She wriggled her eyebrows.
“Vicious.”
“It’s not a quality exclusive to the males of the species, you know. I turn it on when I need to.”
“You’ve demonstrated that.”
She canted her head and narrowed those beguiling eyes at him.
“What?”
“I think it’s clear I have high expectations.”
“I gleaned that.”
“You gotta understand where I’m coming from. The first guy I was paired with during a mate match was a shit stain of wolf. The kind no one would ever worry about usurping an alpha. The kind so shiftless, you’d have to roll him out of his bed in the morning so he didn’t piss himself.”
“You made that judgment pretty quickly.”
She shrugged. “After a while, you learn how to peg them. You know what to look for, and what all the earmarks are. I know too many wolves just like him. Weak, and with no ambition. The same kinds that’ll turn their daughters over to monsters and hand over their entire paychecks to their alphas because ‘alpha knows best,’ right?”
“Not a practice we have here. Alpha’s never collected dues.”
“Of course he wouldn’t, though. You guys see Adam as a sort of surrogate father. He wouldn’t start skimming off your paychecks after spending so many years raising you into something almost tolerable.”
He scoffed and yanked on the door handle. “Yeah, you can just—”
She grabbed his wrist and gently pulled his hand from the knob, squeezing it. “I usually mean what I say. You may not like the words, but they’re my truth. They’re not always meant to be hurtful, and I’m sorry if they are.”
Some of the tension in his spine eased away the longer she rubbed the top of his hand and massaged between his fingers. Her hand looked good there, atop his. Like it belonged.
“Can we move away from the door?” she asked softly. “It’s easier for me to have a conversation if I don’t think you’re going to bolt.”
“I’m not to going to bolt. I just have some things to do.”
“There’s a film of dust on your videogame console. I considered cleaning it, but I figured you wouldn’t notice.”
“I would have thought you wanted me to work hard. Isn’t that what you said?”
She pulled him away from the door—or rather, he let her—and he followed her inside. She didn’t move to the sofa, though, but through the living room and down the hall. They went the past the office and into the bedroom, where she stationed him at the foot of the bed and had him sit.
“Great job painting in here, by the way. You have good taste in colors.”
“I don’t have any taste at all. I asked Mrs. Carbone, and she told me to ask you, but—”
“But you didn’t want to talk to me.”
He shrugged. “If I want to be yelled at, I can present myself to Alpha for a proper berating. He does it better than anyone.” Alpha could have a guy shaking in his boots and regretting the day he was born, but Lisa…Lisa was just too fucking efficient at getting to the quick. Her cuts were deep and deadly, and they weren’t the kind he was used to bracing himself for. He couldn’t use acerbic barbs and preemptive insults on her like he did on the guys. She and Colt were too intimate. Her words were too personal.
He leaned back onto his forearms and watched her tug at his belt buckle. “What are you doing?”
“I find it easy to get a man to talk when I’m touching him, but it’s even easier when he’s naked.” She had his button open and fly down before he could think to grab her hand.
“Number one, how many men did you go through before you learned that? And number two, what should I be talking about?”
“None of your fucking business, and you.”
He disagreed that it wasn’t his business, but wouldn’t press. It probably wouldn’t be a great idea for them to start spitting out numbers because of that “jealous wolf” thing. It didn’t matter if she was Colt’s now. He’d want to eliminate everyone who’d come before him just in case she changed her mind. “What about me?”
“Let’s start at the beginning—you as a kid. That seems to be the smartest place.”
Releasing her wrist, he groaned and let his head fall back. “Depends on what your goal is. If your goal is to get me pissy and agitated, that’s a pretty good place.”
“It’s hard to be pissy when you’re naked, so take off your clothes.”
“You’re kidding me.” He straightened up and found her leaning onto the bed’s edge with her dark gaze leveled at him. No smile, no smirk. In fact, she seemed to be grinding her teeth a bit. His mate didn’t like to be kept waiting, apparently.
Well, go ahead, his inner wolf said. She’s waiting.
Standing, he pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it toward the closet. He cringed, picked it up, and carried it inside to the hamper. No reason to create more work for myself. While he was in there, he got rid of his boots, socks, jeans, and underwear. When he returned to the room, covering his shamefully erect cock, she gestured to the center of the bed.
“On your belly.”
“Why?”
She folded her arms over her chest and stared at him.
“What’s that stern look for
?”
“Sometimes, why is just a cowardly way of saying no. If you want to say no, say no, and tell me you don’t trust me.”
“I do trust you.” He really did, in spite of her managing to shake him to his core with every fucking conversation. She was difficult to be around, but she wasn’t untrustworthy.
“I’m glad. I want to trust you, too, but you need to teach me that I can. You haven’t been around, so I don’t know you. I need to know you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re my mate.”
Such a simple fucking answer. The right answer.
He crawled onto the bed and settled into the middle, adjusting his cock beneath his belly.
He looked over his shoulder and found her perched on the edge of the armchair, wriggling out of her jeans.
Are we going to…?
He hoped they were. He’d been aching to make love to his mate for weeks, and it’d been so fucking hard not to just ask her to take him out of his misery. Her scent had nearly driven him insane, and his inner wolf blamed him for everything that kept him from her. He wanted to be inside her, holding her—holding her, fuck’s sake—and letting her convince him he wasn’t as big of a fuck-up as he’d always been told.
She skimmed soft, warm fingers up his calves and as far as she could reach without climbing over the bed. She rubbed the backs of his legs and sent prickling pulls up to his crotch that made his ass clench. “How tall are you, Colt?”
“Why?”
“Christina said the subspecies of wolves you guys originate from seem to be taller on average. I think she’s right.” She climbed onto the bed and straddled the backs of his thighs.
“I don’t know if it’s the subspecies or if it’s just that people with enough power to be alpha tend to be larger than average. And I was six-three, the last time I was measured.”
“Wolf average is five-ten. Ask me how I know.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I love numbers. Data. It’s orderly.”
“Unlike real life?”
“Yeah.” She pressed her palms at the base of his spine and worked upward, undoing every tight knot and sending tightening tugs around to his groin, which was already tight enough as it was. “I can’t imagine you as an alpha.”
Idler (Norseton Wolves Book 3) Page 6