“Looks like my plan worked. I got you down to your underwear now. I wonder how much more I can convince you to take off. And don’t lie, I know you’re dying to sneak a peek at the below-the-belt alpha genetics that I mentioned last time.” He winked at me.
“You’re so arrogant.”
“I call it confident. I can’t help it if I’m fucking gorgeous and well hung and I know it.”
We spent the remainder of the afternoon swimming and then lay out on a blanket that Blake had brought in his backpack. I was feeling more comfortable about being in a state of undress around him now. Our bodies were turned facing each other, just inches apart.
His eyes scanned my entire body, then he looked in my eyes and said, “You know, you have a really nice body.” While this normally would have made me feel exposed, I instead felt sexy and desired, elated by his attention, as his eyes trained themselves on me.
He then reached out and began tracing the contour of my face as we continued to look into each other’s eyes. My chin jutted forward in reaction, and my breathing shallowed as he moved his fingers slowly down under my chin and onto my neck. I was simultaneously nervous and soothed by how intimate his touch was as my heart raced in my chest. He brushed his fingertips against my shoulder and all the way down my arm, goosebumps trailing. I closed my eyes, relishing in the moment we were sharing, so close together. He skimmed his fingers so gently on my skin he was barely touching it, but my senses were so roused that the light touch shivered through my body, warming my thighs.
The cool breeze skimmed my wet skin, causing my nipples to harden under my bra. He must have noticed because he began slowly running his fingers up the center of my torso, provoking me to flex my core in reaction. His hand moved under one of my breasts and then lightly over my nipple, now erect and tingling with desire. I gasped quietly, succumbing to his caress, loving the feeling of his hands on my body. Realization hit that I didn’t even care that what we were doing was completely wrong. I was ready to surrender myself to him if he kept going.
He abruptly stopped, lifting himself up onto his elbow, and said, “We should go. It’s getting late.” My eyes shot open in shock, and while a part of me may have been relieved that things hadn’t progressed further, I couldn’t even say that with conviction. If I were being completely honest with myself, I was disappointed that he hadn’t continued what he had started.
I grabbed for my phone and noted it was already almost four o’clock. I had to get home to start dinner but almost didn’t care. I wanted him to keep going. My body needed him to keep going. He stood up to get dressed. I followed his lead and did the same. I observed the contours of his back muscles when he slid his shirt on, feeling a strong sense of desire for him, tempted to touch his hard body.
We hiked back to the car, where he opened the door for me again. He drove me home just in time to get dinner started. But the hunger I felt inside me was not for food.
Chapter 7
Lucy
Itwaswellintosummer and hot as hell. We didn’t have central AC in our house, so we relied on window air-conditioning units. It also didn’t help that our gas oven was old and baked the entire kitchen every time I went to use it. Today I was making cookies to put in a care package for Luke—something I had done weekly for two years. I chose today to bake because it was my day off but was now regretting my choice as I unstuck the front of my shirt from my wet body. We were in the midst of a heatwave, and I felt as if I had just showered, sweat dripping down my face and back.
I, with all my brothers, still lived at home. There were seven of us living in a small, old four-bedroom house. My parents had five kids that they had to support on just my dad’s modest warrior salary. That’s why everything we had was old and in need of updating. Our windows were drafty, and many of the tiles in the bathroom and kitchen were cracked and in need of repair.
I was the middle child and the odd one out. While my four brothers all took directly after my father with their athleticism, I feigned period cramps to get out of training at school. However, being the only girl did have one perk—I was the only person in the house that got my own bedroom, a place I could be alone in a chaotic household.
My brothers were all constantly competing against each other and playing sports games with my dad. When I was younger, I tried to fit in and find my place in the family but eventually gave up. Now it was easier to tell myself that I just wanted to do my own thing than to admit that I felt left out.
When I was thirteen, soon after I had shifted for the first time, my mom took me to the casino in town to see a show to celebrate the occasion. I was already 5′7″ at that age, taller than every girl in my class. We had both dressed up and my mom had helped me do my hair, so it looked really nice. We were walking through the resort part of the hotel, since I wasn’t allowed in the casino, when somebody stopped us. A man told us he worked for a modeling agency and he thought I had potential. After being the forgotten one for so long, I was excited for someone to finally notice me. My mom was polite and took his card.
I begged my mom for weeks to call him. I had already started imagining myself in magazines and on billboards. Maybe I could even move from the middle of nowhere to New York City. But my mom refused and finally sat down to tell me that, because we were werewolves, we could never do anything that could make us famous. It was too risky because it could expose our entire pack. I was devastated and cried myself to sleep for weeks. That was the first time being a werewolf felt like a curse.
By the time I turned fifteen, I had gotten even taller and developed breasts. My face became more defined with high cheekbones. I started to realize that men noticed and liked me. They loved my attention. If I received a bad grade on a test, I could talk to my male teacher, laugh at his jokes, and touch his arm. Suddenly my D became a B. While my best friend Jasmine breezed through school, I just found I couldn’t concentrate. When teachers would explain something, I would find my thoughts drifting to more interesting things like boys and school gossip. Jasmine would constantly try to help me and motivate me to study, but it was honestly just easier to engage in a little harmless flirting.
I came to relish my power. Wherever I went, people would justgiveme things. If I was ordering a sandwich at our local sub shop, a man would appear out of thin air and offer to pay for my meal. Or the cashier would just hand me a cookie or brownie I didn’t order. Boys at school would bring in gifts and leave them on my desk. When I’d go to the mall with my friends, cashiers would just offer me discounts on whatever I was buying, deducting an extra 10 or 15 percent off with a wink for no specific reason. One time my mom asked me to stop by the grocery store to grab something she needed. As I was walking back, a warrior took my bag from me and helped me carry it all the way home. Jack wasn’t very happy about that one.
A couple months after the grocery incident, I spoke to Luke for the first time. I had known the future alpha, Blake, for a long time, him being friends with my older brother, Jack. But he was much older than me, and my brother never let me hang around him and his friends. However, the future beta was closer to my age. I’d always known of him, since our school was small, but our paths never crossed.
However, that all changed one night during my sophomore year when I’d been invited to a high school party. Someone’s parents had gone out of town and the party was being held in their house. It was conveniently located in the outskirts of the pack territory where the neighboring houses weren’t so close to each other, not far from where Jasmine lived. I’d forced Jasmine to go with me, and she grudgingly agreed to stay for a couple of hours until she had to be home for curfew. I constantly tried to get her to let loose—she was always so stressed about this or that. I thought if she finally let her hair down maybe she’d relax and not take everything so seriously.
The night started out rough. The party had begun early, and we got there when many people were already drunk. I’d taken Jasmine into the kitchen, and she refused to drink anything alcoholic.
“Why’d you even come, PJ, if you weren’t planning to have any fun?” one of the girls in our class, Alyssa, slurred at her.
“I don’t need to drink to have fun,” Jasmine replied swiftly.
“I thought all you did was study.” Alyssa snickered. “Go home, this is for fun people.”
“Shouldn’t you be at temple or something anyway?” Tina, a junior that I’d known to get around, chimed in.
“Shouldn’t you be sucking someone’s dick right now?” I snapped back at her.
“Too bad you can’t Photoshop your ugly personality, Lucy.” Alyssa laughed.
“Where’d you get that one, some internet meme?” I responded. “Goddess, even my little brothers can come up with more creative insults than that one.” Alyssa glared at me, scrunching her face. I laughed at how ridiculous she looked and said, “Don’t do that or your face will get stuck like that. On second thought, it’s a huge improvement over how you normally look so maybe you should.” I grabbed a hard seltzer out of a bucket of ice and took Jasmine’s arm to take her out of the kitchen.