by Camryn Rhys
He checked the egg timer that he’d set for the soufflé. Still ten minutes. Opening the oven to look at it would only release all the perfection he’d striven to achieve in temperature and moisture inside that sealed oven. It would kill the rise in these last few minutes.
Marco sighed and put his hands on the counter, his back to Aria. “Does there have to be a reason for me to bring her up?”
“You wouldn’t insist there wasn’t a reason unless there was a reason you didn’t want to talk about.”
“I didn’t understand any of that.”
She laughed. “You think I won’t ask if that timer goes off and your dessert thing comes out. You think you can distract me with food.”
Marco echoed the humor, feeling the rise of her sarcastic edge. She did love the banter. “Come over here.” He held one arm out and she walked into his side. “I love you, do you know that?”
“I know.” She picked up the whisk off the wooden cutting board and handed it to him. “And I think I know why you brought up your mother.”
“You do?” Marco began to whip the cream.
“You want to go back and see her.”
He paused the whisking motion and glanced over at her. They hadn’t discussed his mother since the last time he’d seen her. Aria had either known not to push him, or she’d been lying in wait, like a predator, to pounce on the subject when it came up. If the latter was true, he had to at least give her props for patience.
“I don’t want to go back to Vegas.” He continued the whipping.
“Then why bring her up?”
“I… I think I want to ask her to come out for the opening.”
Aria picked up the premeasured sugar and poured it into the bowl as he whisked. A fleck of cream landed on her skin and she flicked out her tongue to lick it off. Marco’s blood rushed in his veins.
“I think that’s a good idea.” She made an appreciative noise and snuck her finger along the side of the bowl, missing the whisk and catching another dollop of cream, which went right into her mouth.
“You do?” Marco put the bowl down. It hadn’t reached soft peaks yet, but he wanted to give Aria his full attention.
“Yeah, well, you never know if she’ll come or not, but it’s no use pretending you don’t have a mother.” Aria pulled her finger along the edge of the cream again and took another taste. “This is really good, baby, is there almond in this?”
Marco dipped down to take her mouth in his and the rich, sweet hint of cream lingered on her tongue. He slipped his tongue across hers and mingled his passion with his emotion. He loved this woman so much.
“I love that you get me.” He held the side of her face and rubbed his thumb across her lips.
“Well, you would want to ask her. I get that. At least give her the chance to be a mother. Now that you know more about pack life, I expected you, at some point, to at least want to reach out to her. It’s kinda the expansion of life.”
Marco was just about to kiss her again when the egg timer’s tiny bing sounded through the empty kitchen. He looked for the towel so he could pull out the magic dessert he’d been perfecting. “Can you finish whipping that cream for me?”
Behind him, the scrape of the whisk on the silver bowl sounded out, and the kitchen felt like it was finally in use. He’d just given his first order as the executive chef in his new restaurant, and he was about to serve the most decadent, beautiful dessert to the most luscious, gorgeous woman he’d ever met.
“Besides, I figure, if Mom says no, maybe she’ll invite us to come for a holiday some year, or something. I mean, she doesn’t hate me…” Marco pulled the tray out of the oven and placed it on the stove.
The soufflé was beautiful. It had risen perfectly, in a superbly round shape, and even had a delectable crack he could pour some cream into, just to complete the taste experience for Aria.
“She doesn’t hate you.” Aria had stopped whipping and Marco wiped off the last bit of bubbled-over soufflé from the edge of the porcelain dish.
“Plus, I figure, it’ll give her a chance to see what my life is like here. Now that we’re talking, and now that I’m part of a pack, maybe I’ll be less of a threat to her, and maybe she’ll want to introduce me to her children.”
“Yes, baby, I’m sure she will.”
Marco spooned a serving of the soufflé onto one of the round, clear glass plates, and dusted it with sugar. “This is so perfect, babe. I want you to have the first—”
But when he turned around, he found Aria had stripped down to her black panties and painted her breasts adorably with whipped cream. She sucked the end of one finger into her mouth and Marco almost dropped the plate. He recovered just enough to hand it to her, but instead of taking it, she dipped her finger into the soufflé and then took a little swipe at the whipped cream on one breast before plunging the whole thing into her mouth.
She moaned. “Oh, Marco. This is heaven.”
Marco set the plate down and lowered his head to one of her breasts. The whipped cream was a sweet, cold juxtaposition to the raging heat of her skin, and he began to get hard in the middle of his kitchen.
“I figured,” she said, taking another swipe at the other breast, “that we should christen this place in more ways than one.” Aria hopped up onto the steel countertop. “You’re going to disinfect it anyway, right?”
He laughed as his mouth covered her other breast. She helped him shed his chef’s coat and his pants and before the soufflé had even dropped, he had his cock deep inside his new mate, and his mouth was on hers.
Aria’s response drove him on and he climbed up onto the table, hovering over her, both of them naked, and their eyes glowing with lust. He loved that he wanted to fuck her as much today as he had on the day they met, and he secretly loved that she’d embraced his thing for food with a gusto he hadn’t expected. Even as they fucked on his new prep table, she kept sticking her fingers into the whipped cream and painting it onto his body, then sucking it off.
She was wrong. The soufflé wasn’t heaven.
This was.
* * *
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- Krystal Shannan & Camryn Rhys
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* * *
Chapter One
Las Vegas, Nevada
Rainier Dubois pulled the lever on the old-fashioned slot machine and waited for his losing combination to pop up, as it always did. He pushed a button on his phone, but there was still no text from his uncle Francis.
Beside him, one of the enforcers from Boston sipped an uptight drink and scrolled through something NASDAQ-ish on her smart phone. He still hadn’t heard her name, because like the snotty Cavanaugh she was, she hadn’t introduced herself.
On his other side, the daredevil chick from Colorado drank her beer in a can and yelled at the slot machine. Maggie, she’d called herself, like that was a human name. Maybe it was.
He didn’t do names, anyway. Fuck names.
Rain took another long pull on his shitty Scotch and hoped for the buzz to kick it up a notch. The information they’d been fed at the alpha council by some local unbonded wolf and her kid—who Aria was absolutely fucking, probably at this very moment—had Rain on edge.
Someone had been taking wolves from their packs and using them for his own sick pleasure. Like his very own werewolf harem. Heads were going to roll, and Rain could feel it coming.
He wanted a new mission.
“Shit, did you see that?” Maggie pointed at the screen of the slot mac
hine. “It stuck between two cherries and three, and I would have won…” She trailed off, her words slurring together.
A group of them had parked on the first set of slot machines they could find, which in Vegas, didn’t take long. After the meeting of the alphas, they’d all needed to erase the pictures from their minds that were on loop. Pictures of young girls getting raped by an old man, and of women huddling together in a dark, infested room, clutching pregnant bellies and praying they wouldn’t be the next to deliver.
Rain swigged the rest of his Scotch. It wasn’t working fast enough.
“You did see that, didn’t you?” Maggie poked him.
“They’re all rigged,” said Uptight Cavanaugh from Rain’s other side. She didn’t even look up from her Cosmo. “You’re an idiot to keep wasting your money.”
Some dull pull of energy had been wrapping its way around him ever since he’d sat down, and Rain couldn’t quite remember when it had started. It made his blood pound and his ears ring, and most of all, it made him want sex.
After the shit he’d heard in the alpha council, he hadn’t been sure he’d ever want to have sex again, until he got a good gawp at Maggie’s cleavage. It hadn’t taken much.
Too many months on assignment, and not enough time to get his bearings back in New Orleans, when Uncle Francis had called him home. He’d been itching to spend a good long weekend happily naked, with a pretty girl sitting on his cock, and the Vegas trip would’ve been a great distraction, if there wasn’t the threat of getting called back to the alpha council at any minute.
Maggie had decent tits for a skinny girl. She’d done nothing but talk about the BASE-jumping she’d done the previous weekend, and she seemed like she’d be up for anything.
He could use some good, adventurous sex. Maybe experiment a little with a strange wolf. Let his guard down.
It’d been a long time since he’d slept with another wolf.
“Well, fuck that.” Maggie swiped at the lever. “I could re-wire it to win every time if you gave me ten minutes and a screwdriver.” She leered at him. “You, you’re from NOLA, aren’t you?”
“Among other places,” Rain said, smiling back. He signaled for the waitress to come back around, and ordered another Scotch. She had decent tits, too. Maybe he could fuck her.
Between the itchy feeling under his skin and the energy swirling around him, he needed to get his fuck on. Soon. The alcohol wasn’t working fast enough to relieve any kind of tension, and he was almost electric with the need for release.
Maggie touched his arm. “You.” She hiccupped. “You look like you need something.”
On his other side, Uptight Cavanaugh laughed. Rain leaned back to get an eye on both of them at once. Next to the Boston girl, two of the Kentucky wolves and some cowboy from Texas filled out the rest of the chairs. They were all drinking and waiting, and there were only two she-wolves in sight. The Kentucky guy had been eyeing Uptight Cavanaugh for a good half an hour, but she was oblivious.
“What’s funny?” he asked her.
She just stared at him with these volcanic gold eyes. Her blonde hair was wrapped up in some tight bun behind her head, and the white, high-necked dress she wore would have been more at-home in some snooty bar in Manhattan than in a dirty casino in Vegas. But it made her neck look long and luscious, and it made her breasts look…lickable. Bite-able.
Shit. He wanted to fuck Miss Snooty High and Mighty Princess. Nope. No. No, sir, he did not.
“You.” Cavanaugh turned her legs around so she could face him. “You are pathetically obvious.”
Rain raised one brow. “I am?”
“Of course. You’ve been swilling alcohol, both of you, since they let us out of the meeting, and she can’t even stand up.”
He looked back at Maggie, who was pulling on the keypad of the slot machine, no doubt looking for the latch that opened the thing. “She seems pretty okay to me. Who are you to judge? That’s your third Cosmo in thirty minutes.”
Cavanaugh arched an eyebrow at him. “Who are you to watch my alcohol consumption?”
“Just observant, ma’am. That’s all.” Rain took the glass of Scotch and handed money to the waitress, who got called away immediately. Busy place, for two in the morning.
“I can handle my liquor.” Princess Cavanaugh smashed her empty glass onto the console between their machines.
He was surprised it didn’t crack into pieces. Rain wasn’t about to touch that sentence with someone else’s pole. Women who got defensive about their drinking never took it well when you pointed out how drunk they were.
The Princess may not have been falling down, but she had more of a superior edge to her voice with each drink, and he had a feeling she wasn’t at full capacity, either.
“You just want to get in her pants.” Cavanaugh waved him off, dismissive.
He also wasn’t going to touch that sentence. Rain picked up her glass and waved at the busy waitress again. “Another Cosmo for the lady,” he called out.
The Princess pressed her lips together. She wanted her drink as much as he wanted his. They all needed to do something to forget.
“So, what? Now, you want to get in my pants?” She swiped her empty glass out of his hand and for the briefest of moments, her breath caught when their skin touched.
Rain could actually see her breasts bounce inside that conservative dress. He felt like a mosquito on a collision course with a windshield in slow motion. He could see his doom speeding toward him, but was powerless to stop it. He had a boob thing, and she had fabulous tits. Plus, the way she responded to the chemistry between them… was so…surprising.
She wasn’t frowning at him, like some of the uptight society chicks liked to do when he and his Ranger buddies walked into one of their snooty bars. But she also wasn’t glassy-eyed-for-the-bad-boy.
He couldn’t help that he liked it.
“You’re not wearing pants,” he pointed out when the waitress brought the fresh Cosmo.
The Princess rolled her hazel eyes and downed the drink in a few long gulps. She slammed it back on the console and slipped out of her chair, standing so close to him, he could feel the heat of where her legs almost touched his.
“It makes for easy fucking,” she whispered. The light touch of her breath on his ear, coupled with the smell of the alcohol, and the deeper, woodier scent of a wolf, down in a darker place, called to him.
Rain turned his head quickly, so they were face-to-face, and barely more than a breath away from kissing. He held his position, willing his racing blood to normalize. The energy wrapped around him and pulled him toward her like he might fall into a black hole.
“You…you want…you said…” He couldn’t finish a sentence. All he could do was replay her saying the words easy fucking and smell the arousal rising between them.
“No need to stutter.” She blinked and the almost-touch of her lips on his made him consider leaning forward for a kiss. “I can see that you want sex. I’ve just told you I want sex. Who knows how much time we have before we’re called back in, and I like the way your body responds to mine.”
Rain’s lips curled into a smile. He liked this woman. “What did you have in mind?” he asked, keeping his voice intentionally low.
“Follow me,” she whispered.
Before he knew what was happening, she’d slipped off and around the high row of slot machines.
In one hand, she carried a black, sequined clutch, and in the other, a long, sleek smart phone. She swayed just the tiniest bit, and stopped halfway down the hall to wait for him.
Rain caught up and waited for her to keep walking, but instead, she slipped into a small alcove, where a light wooden door read Maintenance Only.
The Princess dropped her clutch and her phone onto the floor and pulled Rain toward her, turning him around so that his back was on the door, and digging at his pants. The swirl of alcohol and the pounding energetic high almost sent him reeling.
Then she put her mouth on him, an
d Rain was lucky he stayed conscious.
* * *
The man smelled like good sex, and that was exactly what Nora wanted. She swept her tongue through his mouth and moaned. He tasted as good as she’d imagined he would, too.
By the gods, there was something about him that just...she couldn’t put her finger on it. Between the buzz of the liquor and the desire to feel something besides the numbness tethered to her soul, this militaryesque enforcer from NOLA was about to get the ride of his life.
Nora made quick work of the man’s belt, undid his fly and slipped her hand into his boxers. She curled her fingers around his thick cock and a shiver of excitement skittered through her entire nervous system, starting at her pussy and radiating out to every extremity.
He tried to say something, but the words were completely garbled by their wrestling tongues. She refused to pull away. Their phones could go off any second. Her window of opportunity was now. Her father was occupied and no one was watching her.
A growl rumbled from deep in the man’s chest.
She squeezed the base of his cock, then stroked its length slowly. The growl turned into a moan and she smiled against his lips. He was putty in her hand now. She chuckled, squeezing his hard cock again. Not putty. Not even close to putty.
“What’s funny?”
She snapped her attention back to his face. What was his name? Rans. Raner. Rain! That’s what someone had called him in the conference room. “Why aren’t you kissing me?”
“I, well…you. Nevermind.” He tightened his grip around her torso with one hand and slid the other around to cup the back of her neck. His lips slanted over hers and he consumed her, stealing her breath.
When he finally came up for air, she was panting and her thighs were slick with arousal. She released his cock and ground her hips against him.