Jaxson (River Pack Wolves 1) - New Adult Paranormal Romance (7 page)

Olivia sighed. It was late, and her eyes were starting to cross. She should go home and start over in the morning. She needed a fresh mind to tackle the mountainous task of organizing Riverwise’s business into something halfway logical. But she knew exactly why she had stayed at the office way past when the rest of the pack had left—Jaxson River was on a date with a hot redhead, and that image would just fester in her mind if she went home to her empty apartment. There was nothing to distract her there, not the way a thousand misfiled receipts in the office could do.

So she buried herself in paperwork and tried not to think about her gorgeous shifter boss bringing home a hot female wolf to see if they had “chemistry.” Or maybe gazing deep into her eyes and finding his soul mate there.

Olivia groaned. Who was she kidding? Even the office accounting mess couldn’t keep her focused. She ran her hands over her face, rubbed the blurriness from her eyes, then clicked through to the folder she’d put together on the three female shifters Jaxson would be dating.

For a year.

She didn’t know why that bothered her so much—it was literally
her job
to find him a mate. And she wholeheartedly wanted him to find happiness; there was way too much sadness in those gorgeous blue eyes. But there was a small, selfish part of her that simply squirmed at the thought of him putting his hands on another woman.

As if he would ever put his hands on her.

She was plump, only moderately attractive, and most importantly…
not a wolf.
Even if Jaxson, for some reason, missed all those rather important details, there could never be anything more than a hot kiss in an alleyway between them. Because she was half-witch, and eventually that would come out. Jaxson’s work was high-end cyber security, for god’s sake. He would find out what happened to her parents if he bothered to look. And he was too smart not to look.

Olivia sighed and clicked open the file for Morrigan North, the female shifter from the Northern pack. Of the three contenders, Olivia liked her the least. She was all wrong for Jaxson, at least on paper. Her MBA project was a long dissertation on how to pull companies out of bankruptcy and reorganize them for maximum efficiency. Olivia supposed it was useful for a law firm like Northern Peaks, but it sounded like dry legal wrangling to her. And quasi-sleazy business speak as well.

The second candidate wasn’t much better—Thea from the Blue Mountain pack was a brown-haired accountant and the least attractive of the three. Although, to be honest, all three were ridiculously good looking. Must be the shifter gene—Olivia noticed every shifter in the office, which was the vast majority of employees at Riverwise, was supernaturally hot. She’d spent the entire first day staring at her feet in order not to gape at the bulging biceps and powerfully-built rear-ends of the Riverwise staff. The women were gorgeous, too, but only a couple of them were shifters. Jaxson was right about female wolves being relatively rare, at least in the office.

Which made it all the more unusual for three female shifters to be competing to be Jaxson’s mate. But that didn’t surprise her at all—he was brilliant and funny and panty-meltingly hot. His time in the SEALs only made him more swoon-worthy. And he was a natural alpha—commander for his unit in the Navy and now CEO of Riverwise as a civilian. Olivia had created a file on him in the course of her match-making, and it just highlighted how much Jaxson had to offer a mate. A mate who would definitely not be
her.
In spite of that obvious fact, she couldn’t help wanting him every time he stepped into her office. It wasn’t her fault
—
he was all alpha, with a natural ease that would be irresistible to any female. And she’d grown to simply
like
him as well. He was funny and kind and…

Olivia sighed. She
had
to stop crushing on her boss. She flipped through the files again.

The third shifter hoping to become Mrs. Jaxson River was the one Olivia both admired the most and feared would be
The One
for Jaxson. Terra was a raven-haired beauty with soulful dark eyes. An artist with a wild streak, she spent most of her teens roaming the streets of Seattle and taking pictures of the homeless or other denizens of the street. She had just turned twenty-one, and she was already one of the city’s up-and-coming artists, with three gallery exhibitions this year alone. And her pictures were
good.
Olivia had checked them out online, and they somehow brought out the bright inner light of even the darkest, dingiest corners of the city. 

Terra’s pack was different—a collection of shifters tied together by bloodlines but not in business with each other. The Wilding pack had a research professor at the university, an entrepreneurial inventor with his own company, and even a colonel in the Army among their scattered count. Their pack operations were looser, with each individual striking out independently to make their marks upon the world.

That sounded more like Jaxson. And Olivia was certain, once he had a chance to spend time with the beautiful and passionate shifter girl-artist, he would find the mate he was looking for.

Then he’d likely never look at Olivia again.

She covered her face with her hands and leaned back in the black leather chair of her new office. She really had to stop thinking about him that way. One hot kiss in an alleyway didn’t mean anything. Which didn’t stop her from playing it over and over in her mind… another thing she
really
needed to stop doing. But that only brought the heat back to her face—

“That bad, is it?” a deep voice said from the doorway.

It jolted her and made her chair squeak. Her hands flew away from her face, and her mouth fell open. Jaxson stood in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb with his arms crossed, a smirk on his face and a laugh dancing in his brilliant blue eyes. His white silk shirt—the one she had helped pick out for his date—was just thin enough to cling attractively to the strong muscles of his arms where he’d rolled up the sleeves.

“What are you doing here?” was all she managed to get out. She glanced at the screen. “It’s only nine o’clock.”

Jaxson unlocked his arms, strode over to her desk, and leaned against it, stretching our his long legs. They almost brushed against hers dangling off the edge of her chair. “The date was a bust.”

“Already?” But her heart wasn’t unhappy about that, not really.

Jaxson shook his head and glanced at the screen. She had left the image files open with pictures of the three candidates. A flush of embarrassment swept across Olivia’s face, but Jaxson just sighed when he turned back to her.

“I don’t know if I can keep this up for a year.”

“Wow, that painful, huh?” Olivia bit her lip. Maybe she shouldn’t have lined up the least likely of the candidates first.

Jaxson’s gaze dropped to her lips, so she untucked them. Then he frowned and pierced her with a hard look. “You
knew
it would go badly, didn’t you?”

She tried not to cringe, but she was sure the guilt was printed across her forehead in forty-eight point font. “I didn’t
know…
but I kind of suspected.”

He wagged his finger at her. “You worked overtime to convince me to give her a chance.”

Olivia held up her hands. “Well,
did you?
I mean, really? There’s only so much I can do here with elegant restaurants and candle-lit dinners.”

“There were no candles.” He scowled. “And I’d rather take a knife to the chest than sit through another dinner with Morrigan North. Less pain, and at least the scars would be visible.”

“Jaxson.” 
She gave him an exaggerated look of impatience. “You’re never going to find a mate with that attitude.”

He frowned and dropped his gaze to study his polished black shoes. The worry lines were back on his face again, and it twisted her stomach. It was like the creases in his forehead were fissures in his soul, weathered and worn, but only she could see them. It propelled her up from her chair, and she was standing in front of him before she knew what she planned to do.

“Hey,” she said, teetering because she was suddenly too close to him but couldn’t really back away without making it
more
awkward. “Don’t listen to me. I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m the last person to know anything about mates or even dating, really. You should probably fire me as a dating consultant. I’m much better at filing, though, I promise.”

He smiled, but some of that sadness he carried inside leaked out and poisoned it. “But it’s true. I’m never going to have a mate.” His voice had turned soft.

“Don’t say that.” She dropped her voice, whispering now, like him. “There’s someone out there who’s
The One,
and you
deserve
to find her. Besides, we’re just getting started. I’m not giving up, so you’re not allowed to, either. I may be the world’s worst dating consultant, but I’m going to find you that soul mate, if it’s the last thing I do.” And at that moment, she meant every word. She couldn’t stand the lost look on his face.

He stood up from leaning against the desk—which didn’t help with the
standing too close
part—but he smiled a little more, and it lifted her heart. “You’re a very stubborn woman.”

“You have no idea, Jaxson River. So don’t tell me—” Her words were cut off when he raised his hand to touch his fingertips to her cheek.
What was he doing?
His gaze dropped to her lips, so she shut her gaping mouth. She had no air to form words, anyway.

“You know…” He leaned closer, his voice a husky whisper. “It so happens that I’m between dates at the moment.”

“You have a date with Thea on Saturday,” she breathed, but she couldn’t bring herself to pull away. Her heart thumped so loudly, she wondered if he could hear it.

“I’m a free man for two days, then.” He drew closer and slipped a hand behind her back. What was he doing? Was he really going to kiss her?

“You’re… you’re supposed to be…” She tried to protest, but she didn’t want to, not really. And his nearness, his electric touch on her skin, was scrambling her brain.

“I’m big and bad, remember?” he whispered as his lips brushed her cheek. “I don’t do what I’m supposed to.” The last words crashed against her lips along with his mouth. His arms encased her body in a steel cage of muscle, but the last thing she wanted was to escape. The shock of his hungry lips on hers made her forget to kiss him back—but her body responded instinctively. She melted into his chest, her hands clawed at his back, and her mouth opened to him. He plunged his tongue inside, and by the time she tried to return the kiss—to counter the total domination of her mouth by his—he just groaned, twirled her around, and pushed her rear-end against the desk, trapping her between his rock hard body and the unforgiving wood of the desk. She was consumed by his lips, and she didn’t think the kiss could get any hotter, but then his hands started mapping her body. His fingers trailed hot lines of fire down her arms, around the small of her waist, and up her back. She gasped when he brushed the side of her breast, then rounded the palm of his hand against it, lifting and squeezing it and moaning against her mouth.

The heat was gushing between her legs, and every part of her body was fully alive under his commanding touch. She could barely breathe, and she had
no idea
what he was thinking, but his touch and his strength and his overwhelming masculine
need
for her was destroying any attempt at rational thought.

His mouth broke from hers, allowing her to gasp in air, but his urgent nips at her neck made her head tip back and her eyes roll up.
Oh God, it’s been so long…
and no man had
ever
touched her the way Jaxson River was right now.

His hand slipped under her shirt, where his fingers played electric fire on her skin. “Olivia.” He was panting against her neck. “Why do you taste so good?” The tip of his tongue flicked across her skin. “I want to touch every part of you.”

His words clenched the muscles tight and low in her belly. His fingers slipped inside her bra. Her breasts were large, but his hands were more than big enough to cup them. When his fingers found her rapidly hardening nipples, he growled a low sound, deep in his throat.

Yes. 
She dug her short nails even deeper into his back, feeling his muscles tense and flex through the thin fabric of his shirt. None of this made any sense. There was no reason for Jaxson River to want her like this—her of all people—but she wasn’t going to stop him. Even if it was just a quick tryst on her desk. She ached for every touch and panted whisper he would give her.

Footsteps sounded outside her office, followed by a rushed voice, saying, “Olivia, do you know where—”

The words cut off as whoever it was reached the door and swung to a stop inside. Olivia’s whole body jerked with the shock of being caught, and Jaxson suddenly stilled in his fervent explorations of her body. They both turned at once to look at the door.

Jaxson’s brother Jace stood there, slack-jawed, but with a slightly horrified look on his face. Olivia’s face flamed, but it was made worse by the way Jaxson shoved away from her so fast it was almost like he magically transported a foot away.

He was embarrassed. 
Caught making out with a human when he’s supposed to be looking for a female shifter mate.

Olivia wanted to sink into the floor.