“Cermak–” the chief started. He swallowed and sneered, but despite his bravado, slid back in the booth. “She was just taking my order.”
Phelan rolled his neck to loosen the bone-grinding tension there. Dennis wasn’t a shifter, but he was a wolf, and he knew better than to touch another man’s mate in that manner. He had been specifically warned to stay away from Phelan’s mate. Lola shrank away from both men, eyes wide, her hands at her chest like she was clutching imaginary pearls.
“Dennis,” Phelan growled. “You’re the chief of police. You know the law.”
The sounds of people laughing, eating, drinking and breathing lowered as if the volume had been turned down. Patrons who were members of the pack went still and stopped speaking. The human tourists looked bewildered. Phelan didn’t know if time stood still, but it sure felt like it.
“Lola.” Phelan turned his head to address his mate. “Step back, sweetheart.”
No sooner had the words left his lips than she was backing away, not stopping until she bumped into one of the stationary stools in front of the counter.
Blood pounded in Phelan’s ears, and he took deep breaths to remain calm.
“Get up, Dennis,” Phelan growled.
Dennis snorted dismissively.
“Get up,” Phelan ordered again.
“See here, I’m the chief of police.” Dennis seemed to remember his place in the pack, started to bluster, his fleshy lips flapping, spouting nonsense.
“Fine, I’ll get you up.”
Phelan yanked the man up by the front of his shirt. Like the pussy he was, Dennis protested Phelan’s manhandling of him. He proclaimed his innocence. He didn’t mean anything by it, but Phelan knew the man was lying.
He set Dennis on his feet, took a step back, and looked at him. On his own two feet, unbound, no one would accuse Phelan of not following the pack’s rules on settling disagreements between members. Dennis smoothed his khaki uniform shirt and sneered at Phelan as he retrieved his hat from the table.
When he turned around again, his cheek and nose met Phelan’s fist. Dennis staggered from the impact, then shook his head in confusion like a bear with its head caught in a bucket. His jaw went slack and blood gushed from his broken ruin of a nose. The backs of his legs met the cherry-red pleather of a nearby booth, and he went down like a log felled by a lumberjack.
Phelan hit him hard, but mostly to hurt his pride and to warn Dennis away from his mate. There would be no permanent damage, unlike what Dennis and his crew did to Bubba all those years ago. Dennis lay unconscious in the booth, head to one side, his nose leaking blood.
He had defended his mate. He had defended their bond for all to see.
Now it was time to claim his mate.
When he put his eyes on Lola again, she looked at him wide-eyed, her expression bewildered and her pupils blown as if she’d taken a hit of puta. She shifted her feet, and he scented the musky sweet aroma of her arousal. Her pink tongue poked out from between thick, sensual lips as she licked them, leaving a glistening trail of wetness on her bottom lip.
You may not believe in fated mates, but your body certainly does...
“Your eyes…” she said, wonder and confusion tingeing her voice.
My eyes must be shifted.
Without a word, he took her hand and pulled her toward the back of the diner. She resisted, and he saw the uncertainty in her eyes again. He stopped, leaned in, lips close to her ear, and whispered, “I’m not angry with you.”
He felt the tension leave her body. She had no idea what was going on, and she couldn’t see the need pulsing through his body. His adrenaline still rode him, and he needed an outlet. He tugged her hand again, and this time she followed him without hesitation.
He ushered her into the small dry goods storage closet with “EMPLOYEES ONLY” on the door and shut it behind him. He flipped the deadbolt, then turned to face her. They were surrounded by shelves crammed floor to ceiling with all manner of non-perishable food stuff and assorted supplies. The space smelled like flour and spices.
“I was just walking by and saw Twyla through the window,” she began.
He took her in his arms and pulled her close. He bent his head and lightly nipped the shell of her ear, the beautiful lines of her neck, the bow of her collarbone, then deliberately left a wet trail on her sensitive places. His dick was heavy in his pants, and he wanted her. Now. She shivered.
“She looked really busy. I mean, she was all alone, she had a ton of customers and her regular girl was running late,” she babbled breathlessly as she tilted her head to give him better access. “So, I offered to help.”
She was putty in his hands again. And he intended to make the most of it.
“Why are you telling me this?” he asked, grabbing the hem of her t-shirt to pull it up and over her head. She didn’t hesitate to help, raising her arms like a good girl.
He peppered kisses on her face, her neck. His hands slid over her warm, satiny skin. Goosebumps rose on her skin under his fingertips.
“I know this is all pretend. Kind of.”
He chuckled.
“I already told you what’s going on between us. Not sure why you want to deny it,” he teased her. “But...I don’t mind convincing you.”
He lowered his head into the crook of her neck again and breathed in her scent.
“What I mean is, I wasn’t flirting with him. You didn’t have to punch him…”
He disengaged and held her away from him. He needed to be crystal clear with her right now.
“When you take a mate, when a man and a woman declare they are mates, no one can interfere with that bond. It’s pack law. I know you don’t feel the bond the same way I do. But you will, eventually.”
She shuddered and lowered her lashes, looking away from Phelan’s eyes. A look of sadness crossed her face.
“I cannot allow another man near you, to touch you, especially before we finish our mating. It’s a biology thing. It’s just part of how we are.”
“I already told you, I don’t believe in that stuff.”
He pulled her into his arms again.
“Remember when we ran into Auntie and Jasmine at the apothecary?” he asked her.
She shrugged. “Yes…”
“You were jealous…”
“What?” She pulled away and looked up at him, her dark eyes narrowed. “I was not!”
“You were jealous,” he stated simply. “You’re already starting to feel the effect of our mating bond.”
He picked her up and hoisted her up on a tabletop perched on two large drums. His fingers slid under the waistband of her leggings, caressing her ass cheeks, then he slid the leggings down over her hips. She let him, even lifting her hips to allow him to work them off.
She was wet. Dripping wet, in fact, her body ready to receive him. He unbuttoned the fly of his jeans, shucking them off, along with his underwear. She looked down at him in all his male glory, and blinked. She looked dumbstruck.
“Oh! Ah, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this? You know– here?” Her resistance was feeble, and futile.
“We don’t have protection, but I’m clean, and you’re not fertile right now,” he said, and it was true. He could scent his mate’s fertility cycle and pregnancy was unlikely at the moment.
She gave him a look at once horny and uncertain. Given their mutual state of undress, her dripping pussy and his hard dick, Phelan couldn’t figure out her objection. So, he pulled her to the end of the table, flipped up her apron, aligned their bodies, and plunged into her, all the way to the root of him.
She gasped and arched into him. He hissed and paused, letting the feeling of her pussy throbbing on his dick surround him. Skin to skin, bare inside of her wetness, was a sensual treat. He wished he could put this feeling in a bottle.
“People can hear us,” she gasped, opening her legs wider and clawing at him, wanting him closer.
“Then they’ll know not to fuck with my mate,” he whispered in
her ear. “Dennis touched you. I already warned him to stay away from you. He knew there would be consequences.”
He began pumping into her then, his fingers splayed wide on her ass cheeks, cupping them.
“He touched you, and I gave him a beat down,” he said between pants. He bent his head and nipped at her neck, careful not to break the skin. She keened and threw her head back.
“Oh god. So good. Soooo goood,” she wailed.
“That’s right, baby. Scream for me.”
The sounds of her moans heightened his own emotions. The pleasure built quicker than he thought possible and he was close in a matter of a few strokes. He wanted her to come with him. He reached between them and touched her clit. She detonated.
“Ugnh!” she screamed.
The vibration of her screams bouncing off the walls in the confined space and the grasping pulsing of her pussy as she milked him sent him over the edge moments later and he came with a series of uncoordinated hip thrusts and guttural grunts.
They leaned together, panting and breathing hard, their breaths mingling.
Mate. Mate. Mate.
The word thrummed in his mind, bringing him comfort and agitation in equal measures. Comfort because he’d found her. Agitation because he knew on a primal level, she had one foot out the door. He couldn’t mark her yet.
Not until he convinced her to stay.
Chapter 34
Phelan helped Lola straighten her clothes and together they took whore’s baths in the employees-only restroom adjacent to the supply closet where he’d demonstrated to her the finer points of pack mating rituals.
The diner fell silent as the two of them emerged from the back rooms. Lola could feel many pairs of eyes on her. To the wolves, she supposed a claiming in the back room was no big deal. To the human tourists, well, they’d go home with a salacious tale to round out their pack town adventure. The booth where Chief Dennis had been about to “give her a message” before Phelan interrupted him showed no trace of the lawman.
No blood on the floor.
No blood on the table.
Nothing but an attractive nuclear family, mom and dad and two pre-teen girls, enjoying a late lunch as if nothing had happened.
Would Dennis try to “give me a message” at some other point?
Dennis had appeared out of the shadows the previous evening at the carnival. And now this. She hoped she didn’t see the man again while she was in Perdition. Unease roiled in her gut as she remembered how it felt when Dennis had to touched her, skin-to-skin. Like a cockroach scrambling over her body. Or even worse...like a snake crawling, slithering underneath her skin. She shuddered involuntarily. Phelan gave her a curious look, and she was quick to plaster a pleasant expression on her face.
Her fake mate punched the guy out. Surely, Dennis would not try to approach her again, right? Her mind returned to the drive into town and the expression in Phelan’s eyes when he looked at her.
He believes he loves me.
Somehow, of all the things that had happened between her and Phelan, the knowledge of his feelings for her weighed most heavily on her. Wolves mated for life—that much she knew. And that was something she couldn’t do. The thought made her gut clench. She had to protect herself from falling for him. She didn’t belong in his world, and there was a deadline on what they shared.
On the way out of the diner, Phelan handed Lola’s apron back to Twyla. Lola offered the other woman a feeble smile.
"Don’t forget about tonight!" said Twyla brightly, giving no indication of having heard Phelan’s sexual claiming of Lola in the supply closet.
"Wouldn't miss it," Lola said dazedly.
The bell above the door jingled as they left.
"I know this all seems strange to you," Phelan said, holding her hand and rubbing the webbing between her thumb and forefinger with his thumb.
Yes. Having sex in semi-public was definitely strange.
"The way we do things seems foreign to most outsiders,” he went on. “But you're my mate, and trust me when I say it's all gonna work out."
"You think it will?" she asked, frowning.
There was no way it was going to work out.
"Of course, it will, sweetheart." Phelan gave her a confident smile and a peck on the cheek. His tone gave no clue that he’d just sexually claimed her in the back room of a diner. "I know this will take some getting used to but trust me, you're going to fit right in.”
No, she wasn’t.
Lola was not good at belonging anywhere. Not in any of the foster homes where she'd lived. Not in the concubine program. Not in the shifter town of Perdition.
Surely, she, a human, non-shifting, ex-concubine, cocktail waitress wouldn’t be Phelan’s first choice, either. He had to be wrong about his mating impulse. She wanted to ask Phelan more about fated mates, but she didn't want to give him the impression she planned to stay. And so, she just nodded.
"What's on the agenda for this afternoon?" she asked. They were walking down the street, and Lola wondered where they were going.
"Well, there's a pack run tonight," he shrugged. “I’ll drop you at AJ and Jasmine’s house for your hen party and pick you up afterwards.”
She gave him a wry smile at the mention of the get-together. They’d be making the elaborate homecoming mums to sell to teens attending the homecoming dance. The proceeds would be donated to benefit the Foundlings charity.
"Will your parents go to the pack run as well?" she asked, genuinely curious.
“My father will. My mother doesn't shift and I imagine my father will drop my mother off at one of her friends’ houses."
"Your mother doesn't shift? I thought you said both your parents were shifters?" said Lola, confused.
"My parents are both wolves, but my mother can't shift,” he stated simply.
"What do you mean she can't shift?"
"Exactly what I said. She's one of the few full bloods who can't shift. It’s a recessive trait,” he said nonchalantly, as if it were no big deal.
"Is that… a problem?" she wondered aloud.
"Not really,” he said, shrugging again. "I told you before, you don't have to be able to shift to be a part of the pack. For as long as there have been shifters, there have been those who are part of the community and couldn't shift for various reasons. It's not a requirement."
Lola thought about this and frowned. She would have expected that a family that ran to alphas wouldn’t willingly mix with non-shifters. Except, maybe, in cases where that alpha thinks a human woman is his fated mate…
Her face must've shown her confusion because Phelan let out a hearty laugh and gave her a big hug. His face was open and good-humored, and his blue eyes sparkled. Still confused, she allowed herself to be pulled into the hug, which she returned.
“It has nothing to do with our situation,” he told her. Then he held her away from him to look into her eyes while she, still dazed, looked at him wide-eyed. “We are still fated mates, even though you’re human and can’t shift. The fact that we are fated probably means you have some wolf DNA.”
This had never occurred to her. As part of the concubine screening process her DNA had been sequenced and analyzed. If she was part wolf shifter, she wouldn’t be allowed to continue the training. But they would have told her so, right?
“What? Why the look?” he asked, his brows furrowed.
“Nothing,” she said. “Just taking it all in. This is a different way of life than I’m used to.”
“It’s going to be great, baby,” he told her, stroking her arm. “Tell you what, we’ll spend some time with my parents, then we’ll go back to the cabin and spend some quality time together, okay?” He waggled his eyebrows at her at the mention of “quality time.”
She nodded. They had by then passed Auntie’s Apothecary, Richards Hardware, and the Perdition Police Department. They found Phelan’s parents at a coffee and donut shop called Shifting Grounds, which Lola hadn’t noticed before.
Phelan wa
s an only child, but his parents had taken in Bubba and his sister Tori when they were small children and had raised the three together. Bubba and Tori’s parents had died in a car accident.
Lola thought about how Bubba and Phelan had seemed so similar when they questioned her back in Dallas. Two days ago, but it seemed so much longer.
“You and Bubba must be like brothers,” Lola said, looking at Phelan. “And not just because you look so much alike.”
“They are,” Bridget put in before Phelan could respond. “And I imagine you must be eager to have children of your own.”
Lola was taken aback by the tone of the woman’s voice, her eager expression, the glint in her sparkling blue eyes. Everyone went silent, awaiting Lola’s response.
“Ah, we haven’t really talked about it yet…” Lola said, breaking the silence. She looked to Phelan, pleading for rescue, but he was one of three pairs of eyes watching her intently to see what she would say on the subject of having a family.
She furrowed her brows at her “fiancé” and he seemed to remember himself.
“Mama, when we are ready to have a family, you’ll be the first to know,” Phelan said, draping an arm around Lola’s shoulders.
Lola breathed a sigh of relief when Bridget seemed mollified.
But the subject of babies became the afternoon’s theme, and Bridget brought it up as they passed a used furniture store. “Look at that crib! I bet it wouldn’t take much to sand that down to refinish it.”
And at the fairgrounds she exclaimed, “What a lovely interracial couple! And look at their beautiful children! I can’t wait to see how your kids turn out!”
“Bridge,” Johan said in a warning tone.
“What?” asked Bridget, playing dumb.
Lola looked hard at Phelan who pinched his lips together and his face went red to the tips of his ears with the effort at staying silent. Through their empathic bond, Lola sensed his frustration. As sweet and well-meaning as Bridget was, Lola was about at the end of her rope with all the talk of babies. Why couldn’t she stick to safe topics and innocuous small talk?
The Wolf's Concubine Page 20