An Education in Business: A Somerset Novel (Somerset Series Book 3)

by Heather C. Myers

  "Of course I was," he seethed. "You..." It sounded like he was going to say something but stopped him from finishing it. "You don't know what you do to me."

  And then his lips crashed onto hers.

  11

  Avery didn't know how long they were connected at the lips in that secluded hallway of Hades. Was it wrong if she didn't particularly care? Because the minute he kissed her, time stood still. Everything slowed down, everything froze, save for just the two of them. She didn't hear the pounding music emitting from the adjacent dance floor, she didn't feel the vibrations shaking her body, she didn't feel that tightness in her ears when something was too loud and she was trying to acclimate to it, she didn't smell the stale cigarettes from smokers or the body odor from sweaty dancers.

  It was all him. She was surrounded in him.

  It was getting more natural to kiss him now. Her fingers slid into his hair and tugged on the dark tresses. It was her hair to pull, no one else's. She loved the soft feel of them between her fingers, she loved the sound he made when she tugged it with her fingers. She felt his hands on her waist, running up and down her back, pulling her even closer to him like he couldn't get enough of her and needed her in his space. He wanted to be congested with who she was and all that she had to offer, which was such a new and odd feeling. To be wanted. To be desired.

  When his tongue slid across her bottom lip, she opened like he waved a wand over a lock and allowed him to explore this new personal piece of her. He took complete advantage of the opportunity and ran his tongue everywhere without slobbering. If anything, he wanted to dance with hers while exerting dominance. She refused to be so easily taken over and put up a decent fight. But Lucas was stubborn and whatever he wanted, he fought for until he had it. She relinquished control of her mouth, and she was so happy she did because once she did, the feeling in the pit of her stomach was like starting a fire on a cold night and she all but melted into him. But it didn't matter because with his arms securely around her body, she felt strong and stable. She was going to be okay.

  When they finally had to break for air, Lucas rested his forehead against hers. It was like he wasn't ready to be apart from her. Not yet. Avery attempted to catch her breath, sucking in air desperately. She probably looked like a fool but she didn't care. In all her years of kissing, she had never been kissed like that. It felt liberating, exhilarating, mind-bending. She was glad his arms were still wrapped around her because her knees would surely have buckled underneath her. Even now, she trembled. Even now, she couldn't control her erratic heartbeat.

  "Wow," he murmured, his lips grazing the column of her throat.

  It tickled her. It also shot bolts of lightning straight to her core and she felt herself moisten under his lips. She had never experienced this painful throbbing that sent quakes of pleasure throughout her body. It was as though her pelvis and his were magnets that were attracted to each other because now, it was pressed into hers and she found she liked the feeling of it against her. She wasn't intimidated. She wasn't even shy.

  She nodded her head in response to his rhetorical statement. She didn't have anything much to say; she felt like she was in a haze. Everything was so slow motion; everything was a dream.

  "So that's what jealousy feels like?" she asked, tilting her head up so she could look at him. She still clutched his body tightly, balling the material of his expensive shirt into her hands. He didn't seem to mind and if he had, she would have bought him a new one. She liked the feel of it between her fingers.

  He cocked his head to the side, his hair messy and falling into his face. God, he was gorgeous. This was what Heaven must feel like. "You've never been jealous before?" he asked. "I find that hard to believe."

  Avery shook her head and shrugged her shoulders. "I just don't see the point, to be honest," she said. The thump of the music was like an obnoxious fly buzzing around her head but it wasn't loud enough to be distracting. She didn't have to shout over it. "If Rick is going to cheat on me, he's going to cheat on me. I can't stop him from cheating on me, so why worry about it? It's a negative emotion I want no part in."

  "A negative emotion?" Lucas leaned his head back against the wall behind him. "See, that's where our cultures differ. Wolves don't believe that jealousy is bad. We look at it as a positive; feeling it tells us that we care about something."

  "What about trust?" Avery asked. She wasn't defensive, just curious.

  "Jealousy has nothing to do with trust," he explained. His hands were on her shoulders, his fingers tracing patterns on her skin. "Don't get me wrong, there is a line we shouldn't cross. But we don't view jealousy as something we should be ashamed of. We look at it as an integral part of a relationship. If I get jealous, it means I care." He pushed stray strands of hair from her face.

  "And when you say jealous," Avery said, "what do you mean by it?"

  "Not anything crazy," he said. "I'm not going to toss you over my shoulder and forbid you from leaving the house unless you like that kind of thing and it adds to our sex life. I'm not going to control you. Jealousy isn't an emotion about you in our culture, it's an emotion about me. I shouldn't act on it; it should be an educational tool that allows me to dig deeper into my feelings for this person. Does that make sense?"

  Avery nodded. "Yeah," she said. "I suppose."

  There was a comfortable silence that hung between them. Their hands still clutched each other, their bodies still invading space. Avery didn't want to leave but she knew Rick would wonder where she was and there was only so much time a busy women's restroom allotted her – if he even bought that after Lucas grabbed her from him.

  “We should head back,” she murmured but she sounded like that was the last thing she wanted to do.

  He nodded his head once. “We should.”

  They said all the correct things but they weren’t moving. They had no intention to. Not yet. Why should they, when their touch was paralyzing?

  “Rick will be” –

  “I don’t give a fuck about Rick, to be honest,” Lucas said. Another lightning bolt struck her core, causing ripples to vibrate throughout her body. Her knees almost buckled from underneath her. Luckily, his hands still gripped her waist so tight, like he was worried she might disappear on him.

  “Your date will be waiting for you,” Avery pointed out but her heart wasn’t in it. Her eyes were clouded with something – a desirous fog that blinded her from her environment, caused a dark haze to crawl over her thoughts and priorities. The only thing that mattered was being with him, touching him, tasting him, memorizing his breathing when she ran her fingers through his hair and dueled with his tongue.

  “I don’t care about her, either,” he said. His eyes were black, a color she didn’t think irises could possess. Perhaps werewolves were different. “She’s just someone I brought here, knowing you were coming, knowing how you would feel, seeing me with her.”

  Avery perked her brow upon hearing this, her tongue moistening her bottom lip. “You put a lot of weight in the fact that I may or may not have reacted to seeing you with someone else,” she said, her voice taking on a hint of a challenge.

  He cocked his head to the side, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “I should teach you more about werewolves,” he said, tilting his head closer to his. He bit his bottom lip and Avery almost lost it. It was such an off-hand gesture but it was the most sensual thing she had ever seen. And then he said, “We can smell it on you. I can smell how wet you are for me, how much you want me, how seeing me with another woman makes you crave me even more.” He clenched his jaw, causing it to pop, his eyes lifting from her collarbone to her throat then back to her lips, lingering like a suntan, making her skin start to boil under his scrutiny. “But it’s okay, because I feel the exact same way about you. You might not be able to smell my desire, but you sure as hell can feel it.”

  Without warning, Avery clawed at him, wrapping her legs around his waist, forcing him to lift her up and slam her against the wall behind her. He pre
ssed into her and she could feel his hardness push into her thigh and she let out a garbled moan. Yes, she could feel it. No, she was not afraid. She wanted him. God, she wanted him.

  Her eyes rolled to the back of her head and she had no problem if he took her right there, against the wall, like they were animals, like they didn’t care where they were and who was watching. Like they didn’t care they each had significant others here, as dates, who could walk in on them at any time. Yes, they were in a secluded hallway and Rick never particularly cared before about coming after her when she slipped away during the parties he would take her to. But he just might now..,

  And honestly, it wasn’t fair to him. This wasn’t right – it felt so right – that she tilted her head back. The fog had lifted; she was getting her senses back. And one of them was compassion. Consideration. Guilt.

  Guilt was a big one.

  “What’s wrong?” Lucas asked in a heavy whisper. His brown eyes were still at half-mast and he regarded her with a territorial smile on his perfect face.

  God, he was perfect. Why had they stopped…?

  “Rick…” His name on her lips felt wrong. It sounded hollow. It sounded like it wasn’t hers to say.

  His eyes narrowed, and his senses sharpened as well. “Rick?” he asked, his tone sharp. It came out like a growl, his eyes bronzing. His inner-wolf was coming out.

  “He’s out there, waiting for me,” she said. “He could catch us. That’s not right, Lucas.”

  “Why do you care so much about him?” Lucas asked, furrowing his brow. “Don’t you think it’s problematic that you’re here, hiding away, making out with me instead of him? That doesn’t bode well for a healthy relationship.”

  “Of course I know that,” she snapped, her eyes flashing at him. “And why do you suddenly care? It’s not like you love me. It’s not like this, whatever this is, is going anywhere.”

  “I care about you,” Lucas said.

  Avery’s widened, but not because of what he said. Something dawned on her, something big. “You’ve always had problems with Rick,” she said. “There are some unresolved issues between the two of you and, in order to get back at him, you’re using me.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” he said, and to his credit, he did seem genuinely offended.

  “Is it?” Avery raised a brow. “Deny it, then.”

  Lucas clenched his teeth together. She could feel his anger roll off in waves, but she didn’t care. The pieces fell in place and her eyes burned with tears, blurring her vision. She refused to cry. Not for Lucas. Not for anything.

  “I can’t believe you would even think I would do that to you,” he said. His voice was like a knife, deep and cutting, but stealthy and soft. She heard him perfectly, as if there was no music pounding in the adjacent room. “That you think I’m that type of person.”

  Avery bit her bottom lip hard to keep from saying anything. That wasn’t a denial. Without another word, she pulled her body away from him, turned away, and got lost in the crowd. She would not look back at Lucas, but somehow, she knew he was watching her as she left.

  12

  When Rick saw her, he smiled. It was like a punch to her gut and she had to look away. She was chicken-shit. Rick deserved better than her. She couldn’t even rationalize that she started this whole thing with Lucas in the first place because of him, for him. Rick all but told her he didn’t want to be with someone inexperienced and being a virgin basically screamed inexperienced, like a big scarlet A on her chest.

  No. Now, she was doing this for herself.

  She liked Lucas. She liked him a lot. And God, she was attracted to him. The way her pelvis pulsated whenever he was near, whenever she thought about him, really. In all her years with Rick, she had never felt that way before.

  Maybe it was because he offered her something Rick couldn’t. He had his own business, he was a self-made man – wolf. The fact that he was a wolf was also a bit of a turn on, though she couldn’t quite explain why. It was almost like being with a wolf was different. Exotic. Dark.

  Her family – rather, her mother – held a very strong bias against wolves. It didn’t matter that nocturnal species had successfully integrated with humanity. Somerset had two wolf packs – the Sterlings and Cruz’s – and there was even a wolf pack on the outer edge of the city – the Summers. The NDS – the Nocturnal Defense Society – was the bridge that kept each community – the vampire, the werewolves, and the humans – from killing each other. There were rumblings that there was another species beyond the Outer Edge, south of the city. A dark species that wanted to rid the world of everything else, which was why they wanted this app created in the first place – to keep track of the different species. Avery always believed those were lies parents told their kids for misbehaving.

  There was no way anything was going to happen between them. Seriously, anyway. Besides the fact that she was with Rick, her family – rather, her mother – would not approve. And while Avery didn’t particularly care one way or the other about her mother’s opinion, she didn’t think she wanted to deal with her mother’s snide comments about Lucas’s heritage – to his face, no less – every single time there was a family function that required her presence. She also wouldn’t want to subjugate Lucas to that.

  “Av?” Rick asked, furrowing his brow and shouting over the music. His hand rested on her should and she had to blink at the touch. It was almost as though she didn’t recognize it, which was odd, considering Rick had been touching her for years. “You okay? You look upset.”

  “I’m just ready to go,” Avery replied, forcing a smile. If Rick had been paying attention to her at all during their relationship, he would know she was lying. She was a terrible liar. She didn’t have any semblance of a poker face.

  But Rick furrowed his brow and started playing with her hair. “Ah, come on, babe,” he said. “We just got here and you like to go out.”

  Avery pulled away from him sharply – too sharply. She didn’t know if Lucas was watching them, if he could see Rick touching her, but the last thing she wanted was any unnecessary trouble brewing because of her. Rick was allowed to touch her – he was her fiancé, after all – but that didn’t necessarily mean Avery wanted him to touch her. It felt wrong and…

  She shook her head.

  They needed to leave. Now.

  “I wanted to talk to you about something,” Avery said, forcing herself to take his hand. Rick might have been scrawny but he was sturdy enough to control his weight if he didn’t want to leave. As such, Rick held firm in his stance and Avery nearly toppled forward. She threw him an exasperated look on her face. “Rick, come on. Please?”

  “What’s your problem?” he asked, his tone taking on slight anger and frustration. “You want me to come here, now you want to leave before we’ve even danced. You look phenomenal and I want everyone in this place to know you’re my girl. Is that so wrong?”

  “I’m not a piece of property, Rick!” she exclaimed, so loud she started attracting attention. “I just… I just want to” – and then an idea hit her. It should have been the first thing she said; she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought about it before. “I just want to go somewhere where it’s just the two of us. It’s too crowded.” She bit her bottom lip and widened her eyes. She watched as Rick’s eyes turned big at the gesture. So Lucas was right about some things. “Do you know what I mean?”

  “Hell yeah, I know what you mean, Av,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I’ll get the car. You stay at the entrance. Don’t worry, baby. I’ll take care of everything. I’ve got you, babe. I’ve got you.”

  And without another warning, he disappeared from the dance floor and headed out of the club. If Avery wasn’t feeling a whirl of emotions, she would have smirked smugly. Rick was acting just like Lucas said he would and all she did was say she wanted to be alone and bite her bottom lip. And he reacted. She hadn’t realized it was so easy to manipulate him, and maybe she should feel a little bit bad about it, but s
he couldn’t be here any longer. Not after what happened between her and Lucas. Not when her head was filled with thoughts and her body was filled with feelings she didn’t understand.

  It didn’t take long before Rick retrieved the car from the valet. Once Avery was inside, Rick rested a hand on her bare thigh with his fingers brushing her flesh. Under normal circumstances, she was certain the intimate gesture would have given her goosebumps, but with Rick… She just felt tension in her body and tried not to think about his attempted caress.

  When they got back to her place, Avery followed Rick into the house and locked the door behind them. She quickly changed into her pajamas before meeting Rick out in the kitchen so she could munch on some Oreos.

  “What happened between you and Lucas?”

  The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them and her eyes were cast to the floor. She wasn’t ashamed for asking the question but there had always seemed to be this unwritten rule of not asking about the past, living in the moment, planning for the future. In fact, Avery realized she didn’t really know much about who Rick was before they met at Somerset University and she had always thought that that was normal. Couples didn’t typically discuss stuff that happened before, did they?

  Rick furrowed his brow as he turned to look at her.

  “Lucas Cruz?” he asked. “The werewolf?”

  “Lucas Cruz, the businessman,” she corrected, her tone more defensive than she anticipated it being. She should have blushed at the attitude she was giving him on behalf of another man – another man she was fooling around with, no less – but she didn’t feel the familiar feeling come. Huh. “Lucas Cruz, our schoolmate from SU.”

  Rick clenched his jaw so it popped. “Why?” he asked. “What did he tell you?”

  Avery felt her heart clunk, like footsteps of a drunk girl in stilettos. “It doesn’t matter what he told me,” she said slowly. She knew the old Avery would have admitted outright that Lucas had yet to tell her anything. However, this new Avery, one she didn’t recognize but wanted to get to know, stopped her. Somehow, she could manipulate this to her favor. “It’s just, I know that something happened. He hinted at it. And I want to know your side.”