Beauty and the Wolf

by Lynn Richards

  His moved her hand down the front of his pants and molded her fingers around the thickness of his cock. A cock that was ready for action.

  OMG, Sophie thought in delight. He wanted her. He actually wanted her. Sophie didn’t need his instruction anymore. Her small fingers massaged and squeezed, rubbing him from the root to the head as he continued to eat at her mouth. He wasn’t wearing any underwear and she could feel the front of his pants becoming damp with his pre-cum.

  Her pussy was wet and overflowing too. She wanted him inside her now.

  “Jake.”

  His name was spoken from the darkness, a commanding male voice. They both ignored it, continuing to kiss and caress each other, oblivious to their audience.

  “Jake, let go of her.”

  Jake stilled as though he had just now realized the intrusion.

  He lifted his head and snarled at the man who had interrupted them.

  “Fuck,” the other man cursed when he saw Jake’s eyes. “Let her go, son. You need to let her go.”

  Sophie whimpered as she too realized they had an audience. She buried her face in warmth of Jake’s neck.

  Jake came slowly back to his senses. All he could feel was the weight of his mate in his arms. All he could smell was the scent of her arousal. All he wanted to do was thrust inside her again and again.

  His father’s words slowly penetrated the sexual fog holding him captive. He became aware of the cool night air, the sound of birds in the distance. He heard Sophie’s rapid breathing. More importantly, he became aware of the claws extending from his fingertips which were digging gouges into the side of the building.

  “Shit.” He had started to shift. He had started to shift in preparation of claiming his mate. Claiming her against the side of a building in the middle of downtown Roanoke.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  Sophie, who had stiffened at his first expletive, went to draw away completely. He stilled her movement with a hand against the back of her head, keeping her face pressed against him. He was careful not to let his claws touch her.

  He realized several things during that moment. First, he hated his father. Second, there was no way in hell he was going to give up his mate. He couldn’t. Even if the man had wanted to, the wolf inside him wouldn’t allow it. Look how it had taken control.

  Right. Like he hadn’t been able to control his animal since he hit puberty. But then again, he’d never fought it over a mate.

  “Go back inside Dad.” His voice was still rough, his sexual high had been that great.

  “I’m not moving until you let her go.” The man’s stance was casual, his hands thrust in his pockets, but his words were deadly.

  Jake turned his head and felt his fangs grow and his eyes burn signaling they were glowing again. Robert just met his gaze with a calm controlled one of his own.

  “First law, Jake. First law,” was all he said.

  Jake closed his eyes and willed his beast under control. Neither beast nor man had taken kindly to the challenge over their mate. Jake knew his father couldn’t, in all good conscience leave until he knew Jake had his wolf reigned back in. The first law of pack was to protect the women and the young. As soon as Jake had made any overtures toward Sophie, she had become a woman the pack was sworn to protect. Knowing she was, indeed, Jake’s mate made her doubly important to protect. Whether the alpha wanted her protected or not.

  He lowered Sophie’s leg to the ground, smoothing the rumbled material of her skirt over her ass and down her leg. Her round, gorgeous leg. He’d been moments away from feeling both of them wrapped around him.

  He loosened his hold at the nape of her neck, but still held her close. No way was his dad going to see the kiss ravaged swell of her mouth.

  “Sophie, tell Dad you’re fine,” he ordered.

  She mumbled into his chest, but Jake knew the man had heard her.

  He left as silently as he had appeared.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Am I moving too fast, Sophie?”

  She shook her head, her lips still pursed around the straw in her drink.

  “Little liar,” he said. “It’s alright to feel something for me. Do you want me tell you want I feel?”

  Another shake of her head.

  He gently took the drink from her hands and urged her back against the soft leather of the booth. He leaned over her, crowding her space. The soft hitch in her breathing delighted him. He lowered his head until his mouth touched the pink shell of her ear. “I want to fuck you, Sophie.”

  He grinned when she drew in a deep ragged breath.

  “I want to fuck you so hard and so fast that you’re raw when I come inside you. Then I want to turn you over and do it again.”

  Jake turned her head until he could see her eyes. Her pupils were wide, almost obliterating the rich chocolate brown of her eyes.

  She was excited. As turned on and ready for sex as he was.

  “You know I almost took you against the wall, don’t you Sophie?”

  A rapid blink was his only answer.

  He nuzzled her ear again, moving down her neck until he breathed in the wonderful fragrance found where her neck met her shoulder. The place where he would mark her as his. “And you would have let me, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes.” The word rushed from between her lips.

  Jake grinned, placing a kiss just where he would bite her as he claimed her before drawing away.

  Moments later, his dad and Mary Ann appeared at the table. They had just finished a dance on the crowded floor.

  Robert looked from one to the other, noting Jake’s cat that got the canary smile or should he say the dog that got the bone smile and Sophie’s rapid breathing. He smelled no fear on Sophie, only sex.

  He’d only stopped his son before because he had no way to protect him. If he had claimed her, Jake may have partially shifted in order to mark her. It had been known to happen if the man lost control of the wolf. Plus, Jake would never have forgiven himself if he’d claimed his mate against the side of a restaurant where anyone could have seen them. Or heard them. He’d been in the same house once or twice when Jake had taken a woman to bed. Every wolf wanted to make his partner scream, but when a wolf took a mate to bed he made her beg for mercy.

  His eyes flickered to the woman beside him. Mary Ann Worthington, Jake’s secretary for the past two years and his future daughter-in-law’s best friend. There was something about her that drew him. Maybe it was the fact that she cared so much about her friend she manipulated her boss. He grinned. They’d had some revealing conversation over the past two weeks as they’d put their heads together concerning Sophie and Jake. She was younger than him, way younger if you considered his true life span, but that didn’t matter. He liked her. He liked her a lot.

  His mate, Jake’s mother, had died years earlier. He’d take the loss hard. He knew what the pack thought about his business acumen but to tell the truth, he just hadn’t given a damn. Five years ago he’d had to make a decision, one he didn’t regret. When his father had announced his ‘retirement’ he’d refused the role of alpha and given up Anderson Trading in order to entice his son away from his European home. He knew what his son needed – to be alpha. He was too much like his father to accept anything less.

  The waitress came to take their orders. Jake frowned when Sophie ordered only a small steak and side salad.

  Her friend Mary Ann seemed to order one of everything much to his dad’s amusement.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” he asked after the waitress left.

  Sophie wouldn’t meet his gaze, just looked at him from beneath her lashes. “No, not really.”

  Jake’s frown deepened. Something in her tone told him she was lying. He looked at his dad to see if he sensed it as well. The other man gave him a small nod indicating he had.

  Both men frown
ed. What was wrong with Sophie?

  Sophie cringed inside when Jake asked if she was hungry and saw the looks that passed between the two men. Of course she was hungry. She hadn’t eaten since lunch and that had been a skimpy meal since she’d spent most of her lunch break flirting with her boss on the twenty-third floor.

  Flirting with her boss. And now she was on a date with him. An actual date. When she’d thought about what would happen if they ever did go out together, she’d just assumed he would take her to some out of the way restaurant and then ask her back to his apartment where they would go at it like rabbits until he asked her to leave.

  At least that’s how she hoped this evening would end.

  After the kiss they’d just shared she was pretty sure it would.

  She glanced around the restaurant, knowing it was one of the most exclusive in town. While the atmosphere was light and lively, there was also an intimacy about the place that encouraged a man to seduce the woman he was with.

  She sighed. That wasn’t going to happen for her.

  Next to her was Jake Anderson, the man she’d had a crush on since Mary Ann had started working in the company. That crush had turned to lust and then love when Mary Ann had become his secretary. The woman had shared all the little nuances she discovered as only working with someone closely would. Of course, the lust was still there.

  She squirmed thinking about how much she wanted to jump his bones.

  The waitress brought everyone’s salads. Sophie looked at the small house salad she had ordered and sighed. She was so hungry.

  “Damn it, Sophie, I knew you were hungry.”

  Before she could stop him, he signaled the waitress and ordered enough appetizers to feed a small army. The waitress melted under his charming smile when he asked for expedited service and hastened to assure him she would bring the food as soon as it was ready.

  “Don’t lie to me about being hungry,” Jake ordered. His countenance was no longer so charming, in fact it was downright angry. “Don’t lie to me about anything.”

  Sophie’s chin jaunted out. “I’m not hungry.”

  “The hell you aren’t.”

  Sophie trembled. She hated when people assumed since she was a big girl that food was her main concern. She’d even had a man in the past state he wouldn’t be taking her to any of the all you can eat buffets because he didn’t want to be embarrassed if she couldn’t control herself around all that food. That date had needed before it even began.

  Much like this date was going to end. She’d known it was too good to be true.

  She rose from the booth and placed her napkin on the table very gently. “I can decide what I want to eat and when I want to eat it. I’ve decided I’m not eating and I’m most certainly not eating with you.”

  She turned on her heel and walked away.

  “Well that didn’t go quite like you expected.” Robert leaned back in the booth watching as his pseudo date followed her friend from the restaurant. Mmmm, he liked the sound of that, his date.

  “What the hell happened?” Jake looked at his father with bewilderment in his eyes. “What did I do?” The number two rule of pack was to keep your mate healthy and satisfied. By any means necessary. Sex, food, love. It didn’t matter. The needs of your mate were to be met above anything else.

  “I suspect you didn’t do anything, Jake. She just needed an excuse to get away from you.”

  “What?” He looked at his dad as if he’d gone crazy.

  “That was some kiss you were giving her outside. I’d say she’s running scared about having sex with you.” Robert tried to keep his expression somber. He loved the fact that his son’s mate was giving him hell. He just hoped it wasn’t too much hell, he’d like some grand pups before long.

  “What?”

  “Sophie isn’t like the other women you’ve dated. She has no confidence in her ability to attract a man. Much less a man like you.”

  “A man like me?”

  Robert laughed. “You’re damn good looking, son, even if I do say so myself. You’re intelligent, rich, and a wolf. In short, you’re a woman’s wet dream.” He frowned. “Do women have wet dreams?”

  “She doesn’t know I’m a wolf.” Jake motioned the waitress away as she started across the room with the appetizers he’d requested. They meant nothing now that Sophie wasn’t here. He motioned the barkeeper over and ordered a whiskey.

  “That’s another hurdle you’re going to have to face.”

  At a loss for probably the first time in his life, he asked his father what the other ones were.

  “First, you going to have to convince her you love her. You do love her, don’t you?”

  Jake growled.

  Robert chuckled. “That’s not going to be easy. You’re going to have to wear down her resistance. She’ll be convinced you’re only after her for sex and sex just for something new.”

  Again, another frown from his son.

  Robert sighed, how had his boy lived so long and not realize what made women tick. “Do I have to spell it out for you?”

  Jake tossed the whiskey down in one gulp. “Apparently so,” he snapped.

  “Sophie thinks you’re just bored. Trying something different in the bedroom. She doesn’t believe you find her attractive. Women have hang ups about what they look like. Skinny women want big boobs, big boobed women want small waists. Short women want to be tall, tall women want to be short, women with curly hair–”

  Jake held up a hand. “Okay, I get it. Sophie has some major hang ups because she’s not Cosmos’s body type of choice for women. She’s goddamn better looking than those skinny twigs they put on the covers.”

  “Those skinny twigs are what you’ve been dating since you came to Anderson’s. Especially the last four months. Skinny twigs no doubt Mary Ann has told her about in detail.”

  “Well, shit.”

  Jake motioned for another whiskey, a double this time. He told the man to keep ‘em coming.

  * * * * *

  Jake arrived on Sophie’s doorstep sometime after midnight. He’d spent the night in the restaurant drinking. His father had spent the night watching him drink. And grinning. The bastard had grinned at him all night. The whisky had done nothing more than irritate him. When a wolf wanted to forget, he ran. Too damn bad Jake had no where to run.

  That wasn’t true. He had the perfect place to run. Straight to his mate.

  The mate who was hurting. Because of him.

  He pounded on the door, uncaring if he woke the entire apartment complex. He wanted to see Sophie. He wanted to see her now.

  “Who’s there?”

  He heard her voice through the panel door and the soft click of a lock being undone.

  “You damn well better be checking to see who’s at the door, woman.” How dare she even think about opening a door before finding out who was on the other side? His blood boiled.

  The door was flung open. “Well, I guess I don’t need to ask now, do I?”

  She was dressed in pajamas and scuffed up bunny slippers.

  She was so beautiful.

  He was so screwed.

  He stalked inside making her back away. “Why did you run?”

  “I didn’t run away. I left. There’s a big difference.” How she wished she had stopped to put on her thick chenille robe. She needed that extra layer of protection, any protection she could get, against this man.

  After a pint of chocolate ice cream and a bitch session followed by a crying jag both women had went to bed. Sophie awake and thinking of Jake. Mary Ann had accused her of running away too. But Sophie knew she’d done the right thing. She wasn’t for Jake Anderson. She was too curvy, too plain, too, well, too just not what he wanted.

  “I don’t know why you’re here. I would think you’d be glad to be rid of me.”

  The brea
th was knocked out of her as he pushed her roughly against the wall. She found herself in the same position she’d been in earlier at the restaurant. One big man pressing against her. Damn, it felt good.

  “Rid of you?” he laughed harshly. “I’ll never be rid of you.”

  She looked up, trying to decide what he meant. His lids lowered over his eyes, hiding his expression.

  “Did you eat?”

  Sophie grunted and pushed against his chest, trying to maneuver him away. “Don’t start that again.”

  “I didn’t start it again, it was never finished.”

  When she just stood there, a mutinous expression on her beautiful face, he didn’t know whether to laugh or growl. Lord, she was stubborn.

  “It is my responsibility to see to your needs.”

  “Your responsibility? What do you think this is a romance novel?”

  Sophie looked at him as if he’d suddenly developed two heads. At least she wasn’t looking at him as if he had a tail. His animal was on a short leash, but he was under control. There would be no partial shifting again tonight.

  “I’m thinking more on the lines of an erotic novel.” He grinned at her, enjoying the flush that spread across her cheeks. He stepped closer and placed his hands beside her head, leaning into her even more. He felt each breath that she took, her large full breasts pushing against him. Lord, he couldn’t wait to push his cock between those luscious mounds, making her suck his head with each stroke. “What would you like to eat?”

  Sophie shook her head. “I just don’t understand.”

  He pulled her closer, letting their bodies touch, letting her feel his heat, his erection. He wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms around her and absorb her. “You don’t have to, not yet. Tell me what you want.”

  Sophie bit her lip. Oh, boy was that a loaded questions. What she wanted was for him to strip her naked and take her on the entry way rug. She had no idea what was going on – her boss had showed up on her doorstep and apologized. What for, she really didn’t know. She’d been the one to behave badly. “I’m not really hungry.”