The Bucklin Wolves Next Generation: Return Read online

Seth laughed again. “You break everything down to numbers, don’t you? I told you before, honey: you can’t break wolves down to numbers like that. We defy logic.”

  “I suppose you do. Normally you’d have an eighty-three percent chance of crashing your motorcycle after a stiff drink like this, but I guess your chance is zero, isn’t it?”

  “Guilty,” he said with a smile. “I’ll be fine driving home.”

  “You’re so confident and sure of yourself,” she said, feeling the alcohol beginning to talk. “I’ve never met someone so brash yet so in charge.”

  “It’s the alpha in me.”

  “Do you want to keep the bloodline diverse?”

  He seemed to be caught off-guard by her query. “Excuse me?”

  “I asked if you want to keep your bloodline diverse. You know, like your father did?”

  Seth seemed a little bit embarrassed by her question, but eventually the cocky smile she’d gotten used to returned to his face. “Of course not. I’m a different kind of wolf. I don’t live by those old ways. I’m only mayor until the people are willing to accept someone else. But no, I haven’t even seen anyone naked since I’ve become mayor. Except myself, of course.”

  “Are you being serious?” Maribel should not have drunk her whiskey so quickly. Her lips were getting looser.

  “Unfortunately, I am,” he said.

  “You must not have much alpha in you,” she said while running her hand down the collar of her shirt.

  “Oh, yeah?” he asked, setting his drink aside. “Why don’t you find out?”

  “How would I do that?” she asked, feeling the knot in the pit of her stomach grow. This was it; if it was going to happen, it would happen right now. She had never been more nervous in her life. She was paralyzed with fear as his beautiful azure eyes bored into her.

  “Maybe you need a little alpha in you to find out how alpha I am,” he said, leaning forward, stopping just inches from her face.

  “I remember you at the meeting,” she said. “It’s not a little alpha.”

  “You’ll find out soon enough,” he said, then grabbed the back of her head and planted his lips firmly against hers.

  Whoosh! That was all it took for her basement to flood as his tongue searched inside of her mouth. It was just as strong and powerful as the rest of him, she realized as it explored every inch of her mouth, stopping to glide against her own tongue before continuing its mission.

  This is wrong, she thought as his hands began to explore the front of her shirt, stopping to pay special attention to the two large mounds she had hidden behind the neck of her low-cut shirt. It didn’t take long for Seth’s hands to work their way into the shirt and into her bra. She let a tiny moan escape her mouth as his fingers deftly rubbed against her ever-hardening nipples.

  Before she knew what she was doing, and before her stupid sense of morality could protest anymore, she found herself climbing onto his lap. His cock was massive and she could feel it desperately trying to escape his pants as she began to grind slowly back and forth on it.

  Seth smiled and continued to kiss her as she rocked back and forth. She could feel his powerful head rub through his pants and hers to bump her swollen clit, which was begging for him to massage it with his tongue.

  “I hope I’m not crushing you,” she gasped. As soon as she said it she regretted it. It was a stupid thing to say, and in normal cases a mood killer. Hey, buddy, I’m enjoying dry humping the fuck out of you, but I hope my fat ass isn’t crushing you.

  Instead Seth laughed and bit her bottom lip so hard she felt her pussy quiver with excitement. His hands found their way up her skirt and he firmly grabbed her ass, squeezing with all his might. She moaned as his hands massaged her cheeks, threatening ever so slightly to move between them and explore her most sacred place. But Seth never moved them there; instead, he left the erotic threat there to make her entire body shiver as his mouth explored her chest.

  She was in heaven, and she could only imagine what it would feel like once he’d slid his monster cock into her tight pussy. She shuddered more than she had the previous times when she felt Seth’s sharp incisor run down her neck, lightly scraping her skin as it went. She wanted him to bite her, mark her, claim her as his own. She’d read about claiming more than once in articles about werewolves and she wanted to bear Seth’s mark.

  The worlds were ready to escape Maribel’s lips when the sharp sound of a human fist banging against solid wood rang through the house.

  “No, no, no!” Seth yelled.

  “Who could be knocking at this hour?” Maribel asked, turning back towards the door.

  “They’d better have a damn good reason,” Seth growled, moving her off of him and standing up. He took only a moment to compose himself before he stomped off across the house, ready to bite the head off the poor soul who stood on the other side of the door.

  That got out of hand, Maribel realized. I almost gave myself to him completely. I almost let him mark me. What the fuck, Maribel? You have a life, a career.

  Whoever was knocking, she might have to thank them—they’d prevented her from making a huge mistake.

  Chapter 8

  Motherfucker, Seth thought. His brain was littered with curse words that wanted to escape his lips when he opened the door. He’d been so close to having Maribel, so close to claiming her. It had almost happened; he’d almost had her as his mate now and forever. Instead, someone had chosen this very moment to knock on her door.

  As mean and nasty as the thoughts running through his head were, they were nothing compared to the rage his wolf was feeling. The animal had been in pure heaven as it urged Seth to mark Maribel, but now it was so furious it wanted to force him to shift. It wanted him to shift and rip the intruder to shreds with its large claws and knife-like teeth.

  His shirt was tangled and his erection was beginning to fade as he yanked the door open and screamed at the person on the other side, “What the fuck do you want?”

  Standing on the front door step was Ms. Wilson, clad in a pair of tight running shorts and a tank top. As she stood there, her mouth hanging open as she stared at Seth’s crotch, he began to grow angrier. What did this uncouth, sadistic harpy want, anyway?

  “Well?” he demanded.

  “I….I….” Ms. Wilson stammered. It was probably the first time in her life she had ever been speechless.

  “She’s probably looking for me,” Maribel said as she reached Seth’s side. As Ms. Wilson caught a look at Maribel, a smile began to creep across her face. Seth’s brain was still addled by the anger of his wolf and he wasn’t one hundred percent there just yet. He turned and looked at Maribel, who was shyly trying to cover her half-torn shirt. Had he done that? Oh, well, he could buy her a new one.

  “Well, I see your business meetings generally go well,” Ms. Wilson said, nodding her head at Maribel.

  “What?” Seth asked.

  “I have to hand it to you, girl. I never knew you had what it took to seduce the mayor. You did it kind of backwards, though. The deal is already closed.”

  “What is this foolishness?” Seth asked. “I came on to her.”

  “Sure you did,” Ms. Wilson said, winking. “And her low-cut blouse and short skirt had nothing to do with it? That was all innocent?”

  “I asked her to have drinks with me,” Seth reiterated.

  “Shut up,” Maribel said.

  Seth turned back to her, his eyes growing wide with shock. He knew her words were not directed at him, but nonetheless he was shocked by what had come out of her mouth. In the week that he had known her, he had figured out her personality pretty well—it was a gift most wolves had. Humans were easy to peg. Females were a little more difficult than human males, who were basically an open book to a shifter.

  “It’s not like that at all,” Maribel protested. “I don’t use my body to close deals like you do. I genuinely like Seth.”

  The words coming made Seth smile, but the cocky grin on Ms. Wilson’s face ke
pt his rage level high.

  “Of course not,” Ms. Wilson said, rolling her eyes. “You’d never close a deal.”

  “Speak now about the meaning of this interruption,” Seth growled, barely able to contain his dislike for this woman. Was this the kind of person that Sokolov Enterprises employed? To this point he hadn’t really cared about anything except the money, but he wasn’t sure he wanted these people wandering around his town and interacting with his people. The protective alpha instinct he’d tried to squash for so long was finally scratching its way to the surface.

  “The security team found something,” Ms. Wilson said, turning her attention back to Seth. “I saw your motorcycle, so I came to get you.”

  As he stood there staring at the intruder, his ears began to pick up on something—something they should have been picking up on from inside the house. Was a woman this much of a distraction? Did having a mate really dull your senses this much? He knew the answer to his question. His wolf had been so consumed by its animal instinct and he by his lustful desires that his other senses had dulled. It wasn’t until Ms. Wilson had pointed it out that he’d begun to detect the sound of gunfire and men shouting several houses down. They were trying to use suppressors, but those never silenced a gun completely.

  “My god,” Seth said, springing into action as soon as his senses returned. He sprang off the porch past Ms. Wilson and began to run towards one of the houses down the street. His nose had kicked into high gear now and he could smell the gunpowder in the air. He vaguely heard Maribel and Ms. Wilson shouting for him to slow down and wait for them, but there was no time for that.

  The security team was shooting at something in his town. The agreement he had signed had given them carte blanche to do something like this, but he still didn’t like this kind of wild firefight occurring without his knowledge.

  The house in question stood still and dark. The gunfire was emanating from the back yard, which was surrounded by an eight-foot wooden fence. Seth sprang from one foot, clearing the fence completely, and landing in the back yard behind three men led by Jacko who were firing into the alley behind the house.

  “Stop this!” Seth screamed, but the gunfire continued.

  Finally, after his subsequent commands were ignored, he walked over to the closest man and grabbed the barrel of his handgun, forcing it towards the ground. The man turned in protest, a foul word beginning to originate in his throat. Seth chose instead to head-butt him as hard as possible in the nose. The sound of the man’s nose breaking rang through the yard almost as loudly as the gunfire.

  The man never got a chance to get his curse out of his mouth. His eyes rolled back and he hit the ground. He’d had it coming, Seth decided. This was Seth’s town, no matter what Jacko thought, and he wasn’t going to allow them to put so many people at risk by indiscriminately firing in a residential area.

  “Hold your fire, goddammit!” Jacko screamed at the other two. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Stopping you before one of my citizens is killed in your insane crossfire. You tell me what the hell you think you’re doing!”

  “My job!” Jacko shot back, bowing up to Seth. He was at least a foot shorter than Seth, but that didn’t stop him from getting right up in Seth’s business. “You signed the security agreement. We were attacked, goddammit. I was defending us.”

  “Your agreement didn’t say a damn thing about turning my town into a warzone. Whatever you’re shooting at obviously isn’t there anymore, yet you’re still firing. Do you really think you can take the combined force of Bucklin? Because that’s what you’d have to do if your Rambo horseshit killed one of my people.”

  “I’m not scared of any wolf,” Jacko said with a smile that sent a chill down Seth’s back, a sensation no man had ever made him feel before. “Bring them on.”

  “That’s not why we’re here!” Ms. Wilson shouted. She and Maribel had come through the gate and entered the back yard, finding Seth and Jacko ready to throw down. “We aren’t here to kill werewolves. We’re here to build a casino.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Jacko said, turning to Ms. Wilson. “Not as long as we’re under fire.”

  “Explain,” Ms. Wilson demanded.

  “See for yourself,” Jacko said, then pulled out his flashlight and shone it on the other side of the yard.

  “Oh my…” Maribel began before turning away to throw up the alcohol Seth had filled her with.

  Seth shook his head in disgust and looked back at Jacko. One of his men lay on the ground, ripped to shreds by what appeared to be a very large animal—at least the size of an alpha wolf. It wasn’t a good sign—it was a terrible sign, actually.

  “What happened?” Seth asked somberly.

  “A wolf attacked us while we were running drills,” Jacko said. “A very big wolf. It was on Chalmers there so fast we didn’t know what was happening until he was dead. We shot at it, but I don’t think we hit it. It ran into the alley, but it taunted us for a bit before it disappeared right before you got here.”

  “How did you alert Ms. Wilson in all that commotion?” Seth asked. “She came and got me at your behest.”

  “I have a radio,” Jacko said. “It runs directly to her cell phone. I started shouting commands and she went on the move.”

  Something isn’t right, Seth thought, surveying the scene and trying to put it together. Something isn’t adding up here. Why was she…

  His thoughts were interrupted by Maribel sidling up to him and burying her face in his side. “It’s horrible, Seth. I can’t look.”

  “Go home,” he whispered. “We’ll meet about this tomorrow. We’ll get it figured out.”

  “You’d better get it figured out soon,” Jacko said. “We’re going after the monster tomorrow.”

  “Monster?” Seth asked. “You’re talking about my people.” Although for the life of him he couldn’t figure out why any of them would attack the security team.

  “Your people?” Jacko asked. “No, mate, that wasn’t one of your people. I would recognize the description of that big-ass wolf anywhere.”

  Seth didn’t like where this was going. He winced as Jacko said the name and smiled—obviously deriving some sort of sick pleasure from the name bomb he had just dropped in Seth’s lap.

  “Rowan,” Jacko repeated. “It was Rowan, and that’s a fact.”

  Seth gritted his teeth and shook his head. “Impossible. He’s at least a hundred miles away and has no claim to this place anymore. How would he know what was happening here, anyway?”

  “I don’t know, buddy,” Jacko said. “But it was him. I always know a job before I go on it. That was your half-brother.”

  “We meet at eight in the morning, sharp,” Seth said, turning to walk out of the yard. He had to process this and call William.

  “I hope you have a plan, Seth,” Jacko said. “Otherwise I’m going to do my job and there won’t be any family reunions after I finish. Bank on it.”

  Seth could only nod. He had signed the agreement, and there was nothing he could do to hold Jacko back. He had to figure this out before Jacko did, otherwise there would be a lot of dead wolves in Bucklin…or a very dead security team.

  Chapter 9

  “And that’s why I’m recommending we receive clearance from corporate to go on a special mission to hunt Rowan and his warriors down in the national forest so they won’t cause us any additional problems. I’m talking scorched earth here. No survivors. It’s my belief that they’ve placed a territorial claim on this place and they wish to defend it to the death.”

  Seth leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes as Jacko laid down his plan to hunt down and kill Seth’s half-brother. He still refused to believe that Rowan had been involved at all. Ever since Jacko had set foot in his town he had been uneasy and the events of the night before had done nothing to assuage those feelings.

  “Very good,” a voice on the speakerphone in the middle of the table said. It was a voice wi
th a thick Russian accent that carried power and finality with it. “I approve of the extra force needed, and of course I approve of the mission. This job is going to be a big money maker for us and I don’t want any distractions.”

  Seth rubbed his temples and tried to tune out Mr. Sokolov’s voice. He only had the information Jacko was giving him—which was dubious at best.

  “This is all of, course,” Mr. Sokolov continued, “with the approval of our partner in this: the City of Bucklin.”

  “I think we can easily approve that,” William said. “We can’t let anything interfere with the operation we have here in Bucklin. Isn’t that right, Seth?”

  Was this the moment he would stand up and create his own legacy? It was now or never—he had to say something. Seth leaned forward in his chair and placed his hands on the table, taking a deep breath as he prepared to make the statement that would probably define the rest of his life. “No.”

  “Excuse me?” Mr. Sokolov asked as a murmur went through the room, coming from the city council and Sokolov’s representatives.

  “Yes, Seth,” William said, leaning forward and talking through gritted teeth. “What do you mean, no? I love your brother as much as anyone else, but goddammit, he’s stepped over the line. He has to be stopped.”

  Seth stood up and looked down at William with all the fury and might of an alpha. Seeing Seth’s searing intensity, William sat back and almost shrank in his chair. “Are we really going to believe everything this mercenary has to say without verifying it? When did we become so alarmist and weak that we refuse to get our hands dirty and solve problems on our own?”

  “Are you calling me a liar?” Jacko asked.

  “Not at all,” Seth said, giving him the most disingenuous smile he could muster. “But I don’t know you; you have to admit that. You’re asking me to take something about other wolves at face value. Something very critical, something that could shape our future. Do you really want me to believe you without verifying these facts on my own? I would be a terrible leader if I did that, wouldn’t I?”