Sassy Ever After: Bonnie Sass (Kindle Worlds Novella) (2 page)

Letty breathed through her set teeth. “But we’re supposed to be taking care of both clients together.”

Angie shrugged. “As far as anybody else has to know, we are.”

“Angie, if Monsieur Black finds out….” She took a heavy breath. “We make better money here than hosts anywhere else in Las Vegas, and that’s saying a lot. Is avoiding this man really worth it to you? I mean, how do you even know him? Who is he to you?”

A pathetic heartache she’d been holding onto for seven years? Not the amount of candor Angie was willing to provide at that point.

“I told you, Lord Calum Ferguson. He’s a minor noble in Scotland.” She chewed her lip for a second before adding, “And a shifter, an alpha wolf. A Highlands wolf lord, to be specific. All those famously unruly warrior clans of the Highlands claim lineage from the wolves of Scotland, and that means werewolves. And before you ask, it was just something that happened when I was in college on a semester of foreign study. He was going to university in London, and I….” She shrugged.

And I lost my fricking mind thinking that a chubby American commoner had any business dating and sleeping with—being seen with—one of the most eligible royal shifters in Europe
.

“Was it really so bad that you think you can’t even work—?”

“Please don’t argue with me about this, Letty. I know who to ask downstairs. All of this suite’s calls will get routed to you and the adjoining suite’s to me, unofficial but also perfectly effective.”

“Pure dead brilliant, lass.”

That familiar brogue again rolled through Angie’s chest. Calum was standing in the open doorway to the suite. God, he was broader than he had been at twenty-three, more muscular. Only those eyes hadn’t changed. They were still those of a mischievous boy.

He was shaking his head no. “And totally unacceptable. You have me for this week that I’m here,
and I have you
.”

C
alum knew
Letty was a smart girl when she excused herself and disappeared into the elevator, leaving him alone with the flushed, glaring firebrand he remembered all too well—Angharod Maddox. He tilted his head appraisingly, knowing it was going to enflame her to see him doing so. How could he not take a few moments to appreciate the bright pink glow along the apples of her cheeks and what he could see of her luscious cleavage at the neckline of the silk blouse she wore under her blazer?

“Angharod,” he breathed out low, slowly, probably revealing too much about the effect the unexpected encounter with her was having on him.

“Don’t call me that. I go by Angie.”

“Not with me, you didn’t, lass.” He didn’t mind the sound of it, though. Angie in public, Angharod for him alone.

“I’m not
with
you, Calum. I am
with
the hotel you are staying at, an
employee
, sir.”

Because it helped keep up the pretense that he hadn’t really felt the sting of that little barb she’d thrown at him, Calum smiled and prowled forward a few steps, hands innocuously stuffed into the pockets of his slacks. “You used to like it when I called you by your given name.”

“Used to,” she enunciated, just as the air-conditioning vent above and behind her kicked on, stirring the wayward strands of her hair like a Highland breeze.

Like a Celtic goddess, this one, wrathful and passionate. And wild, he reminded himself. Last time he’d had her, she’d wriggled out of his arms and right out of his life. A life that’d had a lot less color since then.

Inside Calum and less patient than the man, his wolf rose to the surface, hungry for its prey—its mate. The beast was growing stronger than the man as he stalked another step toward the bonnie, dark-haired lass.

“Aye, and you used to like arguing with me, too, I remember. Some things don’t change.”

Looking at her now, still as beautiful with those dark waves of hair and stormy gray eyes, with such strength in her shoulders and such promise in those curves, he thought,
no, nothing changes
. Seven years hadn’t changed a bit of what he felt for her. Or what his wolf wanted from her.

“And some things do change,” she insisted pointedly, but that was just her mouth. Her luscious, silky lips and that sexy little tongue that was forever reminding him she was his equal to be won. Damn any man who would ever take her for granted even for a second. As he had.

But her hardening nipples pressing tantalizingly at the flimsy material of her blouse, so easily shredded should Calum have lost control of his beast? The heated flush of her skin? The smell of her wet, ready pussy, all too obvious to the senses of his wolf? These told a different story, of his Angharod somewhere still inside, the girl who remembered the passions and vulnerabilities they’d shared—in bed as often as in argument.

God’s truth, he’d started most of their arguments on purpose, teasing her, because he loved seeing her passions run so high. And the angry sex. He loved the angry sex. And the makeup sex, too.

When Calum—and his wolf—had closed the distance and finally loomed up over Angie, face-to-face, breath-to-breath, heartbeat-to-heartbeat, he made himself…. He made himself slow down to take in the smell of her. Of fruit on her breath, of the strawberry and champagne body wash she used on her skin, of the coppery warm blood in her veins. This more than anything called to his wolf. Her scent didn’t lie. She was his mate back in London, even though he’d never claimed her either publicly or with his mark. And she was his mate, however unwillingly, standing in that hotel hallway in Las Vegas.

They were breathing into one another’s mouths, his lips tingling and warm with blood pumping under the skin. Was she feeling the same? Her eyes were slightly unfocused, pupils dilated huge and dark, lashes fluttering languidly. Yes, she was feeling it, the pull between mates, no matter how many reasons she used to tell herself she had to fight it.

“I’d missed that sassy streak in you, my lass. My Angharod,” Calum said as he bent his head forward to brush his lips against hers.

Angie jerked her head back, stepping away. “ I— I’m working. I don’t have time for this,” she said haltingly, unsteadily, and utterly without conviction.

But it was too late. Calum’s wolf….

It might’ve been Calum in human form standing there before the woman, but it was as much his beast that struck out with lightning speed to catch the lass by all that beautiful sable hair coiled at the back of her head. He jerked the cascade free, hairpins flying. With his fingers tangled in the waves to get a good grip, Calum pull her forward.

Angie let out a breath that was part gasp, part sigh, part moan as Calum took her mouth with his. His warmth and his tongue slipped deep between her lips, tasting her. The woman might not have wanted to admit she desired this kiss, but her tongue did, sliding against Calum’s. Did she realize that even as she was pushing him away by the shoulders she was also digging her nails into his shirt and the skin beneath, gripping him furiously?

Calum’s free arm slid around Angie’s waist under her blazer and then up under the back of her blouse. His hand, rougher than a noble’s touch, calloused by the work of an alpha wolf, caressed and then kneaded the warm flesh of her back and enticingly curved hips. She began to wriggle, away from him, against him. A wild thing in his arms.

When he stepped forward again and claimed that last space between them, his erection pressed demandingly into the soft flesh of her belly through their clothing and made his whole groin burn to take her the way he used to.

No, Calum thought then, as he bent down harder into the kiss and slipped his hand down the back of Angie’s slacks. His fingers teased and caressed the crevice of her lush ass under her panties. No, this was more urgent than before. These two people were no longer the innocent American girl and the carefree Scottish boy pretending their season of youthful passions would never end. Or pretending it didn’t matter to anyone that he was a noble and next in line for alpha of one of the most powerful packs in Europe.

Calum had lost Angharod once already. Was it because he’d known instantly she was his mate and had come on too strong? Because he had failed to give her the time and space to find out who she was as a person before expecting her to become Lady Ferguson, the wolf lord’s mate? He didn’t know and maybe never would. But this wasn’t like before. Calum was going to savor every moment. Every wriggle against his aching cock. Every sigh and mew from her lips against his own.

“What is that, Angharod?” he breathed heavily against her lips as they searched for his to return to the kiss. “Have you stopped sassing me, lass? Do you still like it when I warm you up and then tease you? Or when I tell you in glorious detail how I’m going to make you scream my name and come on my tongue? How I’m going to take your sweet, tight pussy inch by inch with my cock, little by little, to stretch you slow and wide and deep, lass? Or do you like it better when it’s rough? When it’s my wolf in control?”

That did it; he’d known it would. Calum wasn’t going to settle for coercing Angie into submitting to him in the foyer. He wanted her there in the moment with him, his equal.

“Control?” she asked, incredulous. Her gray eyes widened in a flare of temper. “You think you’re in control of me,
your lordship
?”

Now Angie took control, as he’d known she would. Yes, Calum had to help out a little bit, to cooperate when the lass pushed one of his shoulders and pulled the other. She put his back flat against the wall next to the elevator. Her hands darted to grab a fist full of his hair and his shirt collar to bend him down hard to her mouth, to her kiss.

Calum had never forgotten how they fit together, back then and again now as Angie kissed him hard and rough. Like the she-wolf she would become when he’d claimed and marked her at last. Even as a human, she had the spirit of a she-wolf, nipping his lips and tongue as she ravished his mouth. As she ground the juncture of those soft thighs against the steely ridge of his stiffened cock. As she pulled his hair and scratched his neck.

And at the moment when they might have started at one another clothes, heartbeats away from going at it—full shag—in the hotel suite foyer, Calum tore his mouth from Angie’s. Then he untangled himself from her embrace while simultaneously slapping her ass. He only just barely managed not to laugh aloud when her eyes shot wide and round at the playful but hard smack.

Calum wasn’t looking at Angie, couldn’t look at her, as he affected a casual tone he didn’t truly feel at all. “That’ll be all, lass. We don’t want to be getting you into trouble with your boss. Away with you.”

The shifter locked the suite door behind him just in case Angie wasn’t done with him. Inside, Hew ran a hand over his furrowed brow and short waves of gold hair and blinked quizzically at his alpha.

“What was that?” Hew asked.

“Angharod Maddox,” Calum breathed out triumphantly. The unsatisfied hunger of his wolf had him pacing the living room of the suite like a caged beast.

“Is that her? I mean, the one that you….”

It was obvious that Hew was trying to find a respectful way to ask if Angharod—

Angie—was the one Calum had gotten out of sorts about back at university. Right before Calum’s father, the last true Lord Ferguson as far as Calum was concerned, had fallen in battle as a wolf. Before the vampire trouble had spread from London to Inverness and even north of that.

After a moment and a rough breath taking in everything that happened since those blissful months with Angie back in London, the last days of his youth, Calum nodded. “That was her.”

Hew shook his blond head and released a long breath. “That’s an impressive one. She’s already got a she-wolf’s fire.”

From behind the man, from the door of the suite, a voice called out in a decidedly more bitter tone. “We must be talking about Angharod Maddox, again.”

Calum intentionally straightened his shoulders before turning to regard his steely-nerved, fire-haired beta. Ewan often forgot he was only second in command of the pack, and this was one of those moments. “I know you’re not starting shite with me right now, at the summit,” Calum told him.

“You know I’m far too canny for that, Calum. I trust my alpha to keep his mind on business when he flies halfway around the world to an international summit of packs that he called himself.” Ewan glanced at Hew, then back to Calum. “Especially with the matter so grave we’ve even lost pack brothers to it.”

The alpha flinched at the mention of Hew’s brother by blood and his own brother, brother to them all, by virtue pack law. Hew, having heard this argument too often before, shook it off with a small shrug and the shake of his head. The two years since his loss had softened Hew’s rage. But not so for Ewan.

Calum stepped up to Ewan, not as aggressively as they had tangled in incidents past, but still. “Aye, thank you, fine. I hear what you’re saying that you’re not saying.”

“Do you?” Ewan arched his dark reddish-brown brows at his alpha. “Because all I’m really saying is that a pretty face suits a dishcloth.”

This was an old Scottish saying that would have been about the same as the American quip that pretty faces were a dime a dozen.

Ferguson clamped his hand down on his beta’s shoulder so hard that Ewan winced. Talons came out just enough to make the insolent wolf feel it.

“You’ll watch how you talk about your alpha’s mate and the future Lady Ferguson.”

Ewan refused to betray the amount of pain he was in or the self-control he must surely have been exercising to keep his wolf from engaging Calum’s directly. A fine sheen of sweat broke out in a thin line just below his reddish hairline from the effort.

“Why can’t you get that American girl out of your system?”

“You wouldn’t say that if she were your mate,” Calum told him and was sure that was the truth.

One of these days Ewan was going to find that she-wolf, and she was going to knock him on his ass. And, by God, how Calum was going to laugh at him then.

“Is that what your
instincts
are telling you now?”

The question was a blow so well-played, so well-placed, that Calum released his beta and took a step back. The alpha felt the distinct drain of the strength in his shoulders, his spine, from this particular challenge.

“Because we know none of our instincts are infallible, don’t we?” Ewan pressed knowingly.

“Ewan,” Hew said cautioningly. He frowned with disapproval at his pack brother.

“Really, Hew? You aren’t wondering the wisdom behind our alpha allowing himself to be distracted by a female, by a human woman, while a dozen of the most powerful packs in the world have been called here by him to talk about the vampire menace?”

Calum did not try to defend himself from a charge he knew to be true. At the wet bar in the suite, he poured himself a whiskey. Good hotel, to have a real Scottish whiskey available in the room. Calum wondered if it was regular stock or special order for his stay.

He emptied the glass, then two, enough to make a human man really feel it. Calum wasn’t human, though, and a hard-drinking Scotsman like most of his brethren to boot.

The bickering behind him went back and forth at length, until Calum brought the glass down on the granite bar counter with enough force to shatter the crystal.

“Enough,” he growled as he turned to face his pack brothers. More softly, he said, “You’re right, Ewan.” When the red-haired wolf’s brow perked again, Calum added, “About me needing my concentration for the summit, not about Angharod. When our business with the packs is done here, I’ll have personal business to finish with her, and that will be none of your concern. Is that understood?”

Feigning innocence that he would expect anything else, Ewan tilted his head in deference.