The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf (Naked Werewolf 2)

Too damn right, I wasn’t. I huffed again and pivoted in the opposite direction, to make him think I was leaving. Then I feinted left. Nick only had a second to turn before I lunged, sinking my teeth into his nicely rounded butt cheek.

“Yipe!” he cried, clutching at his ass. “What the? Hey! Come back here!” He hobbled after me, wincing in pain.

I made a sort of whickering sound, spitting out a chunk of the denim from his jeans. He gaped down at me. I sniffed, stuck my nose in the air, and trotted home, feeling a lot better about the situation.

THE FARTHER I got from Nick, the more that heavy guilty feeling crept into my chest. I wasn’t used to feeling remorse. It sort of sucked. Maybe I should go back and check on him. I slipped back into my jeans and sweater inside my office. I would just amble up there and pretend I was taking a long walk around the valley. I’d just make sure he made it to his truck OK and then come right back. I slipped on my boots and was bounding out of my office to do just that when I heard a sly voice to my left.

“Maggie, Maggie, Maggie.”

I cringed.

There stood the pretender to my throne, all overdone muscle and wavy black hair. If Nick was my Aragorn, Lee was Lando Calrissian: handsome, confident, and about as trustworthy as a used-snowmobile salesman.

Lee quirked his full lips as he struck a casual pose against the wall of the community center. I was thankful that my body seemed as annoyed by Lee as the rest of me, and whatever hormones had been surging through my blood had now retreated like low tide. Clearly, despite the many lures of Lee’s exterior, my primal brain had some taste.

“Maggie, Maggie, Maggie,” Lee said again, because he was incapable of saying my name just once. He winked down at me with his wide brown eyes. And once again, I cursed Cooper and Samson for getting all the height in the family.

“Lee.” I acknowledged him, my voice as flat as Aunt Winnie’s ass.

“I had an interesting conversation with your brother the other day.”

I bared my teeth, making him take the slightest step back. “I heard about that.”

“So, Cooper told you we settled things?”

“You didn’t settle anything. Because Cooper isn’t going to arrange my marriage. I’m afraid you’re going to have to deal with me.”

He shrugged, and his voice dropped to this weird cross between seductive and condescending, as if he was trying to lure me into his van with candy. “I was just following the rules, Maggie. Cooper is the rightful alpha and the oldest male member of your family.”

“Do you really think that’s the tack you should take with me?” I demanded.

“Look, baby, when we’re married and you’ve grown up a little, you’ll see how silly you’re being.” When I stared at him, shocked speechless for once, he added, “Uncle Frank says you’ve had a human hanging around.”

“And?” I asked, wondering how Uncle Frank had heard about my interest in Nick and how many other pack members were talking about it.

“Well, I don’t know how I feel about my girl spending time with a human,” he said, stepping close enough that he could almost run the tip of his nose down the side of my face. I resisted the urge to shrink away. “You never get that smell out of your clothes.”

“What I do is none of your business, Lee.”

“I’ll never understand why so many of our females are letting humans sniff around them,” he continued, as if I hadn’t even spoken. “I mean, why dilute the blood? Just look at your brother’s little girl. She could have been the pride of the pack. And now what’s that pup good for?” He sniffed dismissively. “She’s not even breeding stock. She’ll live a quiet little life as some human’s wife, and no one will care. What a waste.”

I tried hard to remember that from Lee’s perspective, he wasn’t saying anything offensive. His pack was a little more “conservative” than mine. He was repeating the opinions he’d heard his whole life. And he just wasn’t bright enough to keep them to himself.

But I guess the way I was gritting my teeth gave me away, and Lee said, “Oh, don’t pretend that you and Cooper are back to being attached at the hip. I remember how you talked about him after he ran off. You can’t say you’re any prouder now that he’s a coward and a dead-breeder.”

I scowled at his use of a rarely spoken epithet for a dead-liner’s parent. I bunched my hand into a fist and had it half raised when Clay stuck his head through his front door.

He saw the fist and the pissed-off, uncomfortable look on my face and frowned. “Mags, you all right?”

I lifted an eyebrow. Enter Clark Kent or, at least, Val Kilmer as Batman. My packmates rarely asked me if I was OK, particularly the males. They usually assumed I was fine, as long as I wasn’t griping at them or hitting them in some way. But somehow Clay had managed to ask without making it sound patronizing, as if he was about to swoop in and rescue me. And it was sort of nice. The decency of the gesture made me feel a genuine rush of affection for him. “I’m fine, Clay. Thanks.”

This was a completely inappropriate time to be thinking about nibbling on Clay’s earlobes.

“More competition, Maggie?” Lee asked, giving Clay a long appraising look before dismissing him with a sniff.

I gave Lee a dead-eyed stare. “Clay is a member of our pack.”

Lee shot a scathing glare at Clay. My lips quirked into a twisted smile. Lee was all swagger and smirks until he realized he was on an even playing field.