Denied Mate by Roxie Ray
Liv
Muscle, sweat, a low-rumbling growl that made my insides twitch. Heat was curling in my core even before I fluttered my lashes open. I bit the inside of my cheek, trying to keep a smile from curling up the corner of my lips as I pressed my thighs together, squirming against the heat that rolled through me. A single growl shouldn’t make me slick, and I certainly wasn’t about to give him the pleasure of knowing just how much such a simple action affected me.
I rolled over onto my side, the sheets slipping away from my skin as I reached for him. The morning’s first rays of light and last headlights before morning traveling by cut through the blinds and made a cheap coastal art print over his shoulder glow. I tracked the lights as they slid over his dark skin as he growled again and moved over me.
Fuck, he was hot. Rough like a wolf—like me. Humans were easy to seduce, but we knew how to make it fun. Not necessarily violent (well, not unless you were into that sort of thing, but that wasn’t the sort of mood I was in), but he still grabbed my hip hard enough to leave a mark. When he leaned in to kiss my neck a moment later, I could feel his teeth scrape over my skin. A gasp fluttered free as I wedged my elbow underneath me and pushed upright. I splayed my slender fingers over his chest and pushed him back, grinning as his rough growl ran through me. I felt electric.
I couldn’t make out his face in the shadows, but I didn’t care. If I’d brought him back to my room last night, he’d clearly passed the first test. With him flat on his back, I straddled his waist and dragged my nails over the tattoo on his chest—it was hard to make out in the low light. I leaned forward for a closer look. Long, lean, and nimble. He lifted his head and caught me, pressing a kiss to my jawline. To my cheek. I tipped my head back, allowing him the pleasure of worshiping my throat. His strong hands smoothed down my ribs and over my back. His fingers traced my spine, light enough to tickle. He dragged callused fingertips back down and gripped my hips; hard enough to bruise, even temporarily. His ability to dance the line between gentle and controlling made my blood sing.
I pulled back from another searing kiss, breathless; I kissed his neck in turn. Traced my tongue over his rapid pulse. I smirked against his throat and tilted my hips, grinding as I rode his lap. When I shifted back to move to the other side of his neck, I finally got a glimpse of his face.
Cal Meyers.
He felt like a wolf because he was a wolf. Not just any wolf; the one who was my best friend when we were kids—sneaking out to play in the woods behind our houses and making blood oaths. We were the I’ll-never-tell-your-darkest-secrets kind of best friends. A boy who’d known me better than my own family. A man I hadn’t spoken to in years… Since the incident.
He grabbed me and tilted his hips, pushed inside me and I—
I bolted upright in bed, sweaty and disoriented. Where there had been peeling outdated wallpaper now was fresh white paint. There was no faded floral bedspread, just cozy percale Egyptian cotton sheets; the headlights strobing through the blinds were now simple midmorning glare. I glowered at my window.
I was home. Or something like it. I’d lived in the new loft apartment for six months—a factory conversion with high ceilings and exposed brick feature walls—and no matter how much of my childhood paraphernalia my mom foisted on me, it still felt like a television set I was walking through every day, just pretending to be myself. It was nice, naturally, but it felt…sterile. The large house I’d grown up in wasn’t exactly cozy, either. It hadn’t felt like any sort of home in the months before I’d finally moved out and it certainly wouldn’t now without my father there.
A quiet knock on my door broke me out of my thoughts and back to the hammering in my chest.
“Liv?” Maren, my quick-talking roommate asked through the door. “Your phone’s out here and it’s buzzing like a leaf-cutter bee.”
“A what?” I tied my tangled mess of blonde hair up with a hair tie and frowned. “A bee?”
The door creaked open and she poked through the gap with my vibrating phone in one hand. “I think it’s your boss.” Her face scrunched. The phone stopped buzzing and she shrugged.
Shit. The dream had been so hot I hadn’t wanted to wake up and now I was late for work, thanks to Cal Meyers and the fact that he now lived in my dreams. Asshole.
Maren pushed the door open a little farther with a grimace as she stared down at the screen, but the expression didn’t look convincing with her bright eyes and tiny upturned nose. She was always so… perky. She didn’t even drink coffee in the morning. What sort of person woke up that…well, awake? “He sent texts too. I think you’re fired.” She tossed the phone at the foot of my bed.
“Again?” I picked up the phone and scanned the messages. Yep. Ten missed calls, and texts saying I should come in and get my last paycheck because I wouldn’t be put on shift again. I couldn’t exactly blame the guy—I wasn’t cut out for waitressing, or café work, or answering phones. Anything where I needed to be there on time, or know how to use a cash register, or count change, or make small talk with paying customers. Or smile when someone was being rude. Or balance like three tasks at once. Twenty-eight years of being the pack alpha’s daughter was clearly paying off.
“Great.” I sighed and slumped back against the headboard with a defeated sigh.
“Sorry, Liv. I know you liked this job better than the last one.” Maren leaned on the doorjamb, ink stains on her fingers. She must have been up for hours already; she worked as a freelance calligraphy artist, but I’d never actually seen her go more than a day without a gig. We must have been around the same age, but she’d managed to find a passion and cultivate a skill set to back it up. Ugh. I thumped my head back against the wall. Life could be so unfair.
“I mean, it was…whatever.” I scoffed and shrugged like it didn’t matter that I’d been fired from three entry-level jobs in the past two months. Who was counting?
I wished the whole world was aware of wolf shifters— it would be a lot easier to hold down a job when people understood you had late-night obligations beyond the simple party. I mean, yes, obviously I enjoyed a good party and good partygoers, but it wasn’t the only thing I did at night. Maybe middle-aged women would stop huffing at me when I got their order wrong.
I scowled at myself and shook off the thought. It was exactly the type of privileged, spoiled shit I was trying to grow out of.
“You want coffee? I’m heading downtown but I can put on the pot...” She tucked her razor-sharp chin-length bob behind her ears with long, delicate fingers and nodded toward the kitchen.
I rolled my head to the side and nodded. “Yeah. Thanks, Maren.”
With the door shut gently behind her, I sighed deeply into a pillow and pulled the covers back over my head. I groaned from my soul, mashing my face further into the poly-fill—Not down. Not even fake down. The whole idea of moving out of the Burns’ family home was to find my feet—maybe even some purpose. We were lucky, growing up under the protection and privilege of being the alpha family in Bridgehaven. The privilege didn’t escape me, and neither did the gnawing feeling telling me I hadn’t earned an inch of it. If anything, that feeling was only getting worse the longer I lived in this apartment.
I was born into it and benefited from the lifestyle without any of the responsibility. When Dad passed away a month ago, it was my older brother, Ben, who filled the role as pack alpha. He’d been training and studying and working or whatever with our father for years. There was never any doubt what Ben would do when he ‘grew up.’ Me? I just kept collecting my checks and tried to find something to do with my life. Something worthwhile. I sort of envied the certainty he’d always had built right in.
I sighed and stared up at the ceiling, mind starting to drift. Calum. The memory of the dream. It had felt real. So real my heart was still sped up just at the recollection. Tingles lingered between my legs, and I gasped when I slid my fingers under my pajama shorts. I was wet. Wildly, impossibly wet. A thrill ran up my spine; there was something illicit about it. My own private show.
I bit my lip and considered finishing what Cal had started in my dream. It had been so long. Slipping my fingers deeper made me shiver, but my breath snagged as I suddenly remembered why it had been so long. I woke up one morning with a boyfriend, a best friend, and a father. That day had ended short of all three. The morning before, Stephen—my then boyfriend—had gone out and slept with Caroline, who I’d mistaken for best friend material. My libido had been rock-bottom since Stephen—my then boyfriend—had broken the news while I paced the Bridgehaven Hospital waiting room, an hour before my dad passed away. For Stephen, watching his girlfriend wait for her father to die must have finally done his guilt in. One final selfish act, wasn’t it? Relieving himself of the burden and washing his hands of me before grief complicated anything else.
My hand settled on my thigh as the heat in my stomach curdled. Yeah, the Calum dream must have been an anomaly, a final dying gasp of arousal from the depths of my psyche before I officially sunk into celibacy.
Mood completely ruined, I threw back the sheet, wrapped myself in my silk kimono, and shuffled out to the bright kitchen to drown my worries with coffee. It wouldn’t do much to wake me up, but I still loved the taste. More than the taste, I loved the smell. There was coffee percolating on the countertop every morning when I woke up and tumbled down the hall to ask for breakfast. But Maren, with all her human naivety and good intentions, brewed it too weak. The woman insisted that if I kept putting coffee away at the rate I was going, my heart was going to explode. I snorted. As if. She was nowhere in sight, so I dumped the pot in the sink and started the process over with the appropriate amount of grounds as I considered what to do with my day.
A key fiddledin the front door lock. Maren must be coming back from taking out the trash or some other got-it-together adult activity. Getting the mail. Talking to the neighbors. Sweeping the stoop. Rescuing kittens and helping little old ladies across the street.
“Have you seen my mug?” I asked, still elbow-deep in the dish cupboard.
“Oh, Liv. Hey,” a deep voice rumbled behind me.
I spun around, knocked Maren’s favorite Scrabble mug from the cupboard, and caught it just inches before it would have smashed against the white tile.
“Shit, you scared me.” I scowled at my brother. Ben managed to take up the entire doorframe with his height and bulk. “What are you doing here? Get inside before you scare the neighbors.” I waved a hand and motioned him in.
“I thought you’d be at work.” He took a gulp of something undoubtedly proteiny from a sports bottle before setting it down next to me. I wrinkled my nose. He had a spare key for emergencies or, well, just dropping in. We were kind of close. I didn’t mind.
I turned back to pour coffee into Maren’s mug. “Day off. Last minute schedule change,” I sniffed, setting the pot back and taking a sip.
“Right…” Ben sauntered into the living room and snatched his jacket from the back of our brown leather sofa.
“Liv, I have to run—” Maren stopped short in the middle of the living room area with her messenger bag half slung over her shoulder. Her face twitched between a smile and a frown and ended up somewhere in between. “Hi, Ben.”
“Maren.” Ben’s monosyllabic vocabulary had really taken hold since he’d become the newly minted alpha. Dad had never been like that. I wondered what he thought he had to prove to me.
I must have really been out of it. I hadn’t even noticed Maren was still in her room when Ben had walked in. “You want coffee to go?” I held up a Thermos, but Maren was already racing across the living room area, leaving a wide berth around Ben.
“No, I’m good.” She stopped short at the counter and peered at Ben’s sports bottle. “Is this—”
“Mine.” He snatched it and took a gulp. “Protein shake.”
“Uh huh. Looks like it’s working.” Maren looked him over, then hurried out without another word.
Ben chuckled and flexed. “Humans can’t resist.”
I rolled my eyes. He didn’t need any encouragement, regardless of the truth behind his statement. “Guess your alpha powers are coming in right on cue. Or are you drinking something stronger than whey isolate?” I waggled my brows in his direction.
There were rumors of witches cooking up anabolic concoctions and pushing them at the local gyms, but I was just kidding. It was fun to yank his chain; frankly, it was amazing the same things that bugged him as a teenager still bugged him now. Once an alpha died, his heir naturally came into his powers, which I assumed included getting ripped as hell, going by the throbbing veins in Ben’s biceps. I didn’t remember Dad looking like a bodybuilder, but then, I didn’t remember him hitting the gym with the same religious intensity Ben did, either. Maybe that’s just how alphas looked these days. I didn’t really have any comparisons outside of my family.
He scoffed and pointed the spout at me. “You look like shit.”
“Aw, thanks.” I smiled sweetly and fluttered my eyelashes as I took a gulp of coffee.
“Sleeping okay?” He pulled on the jacket and didn’t look at me, making it impossible to tell if he was actually concerned or just making conversation.
But Ben had always had my back. In fact, he was always overly concerned with my well-being. He’d had an eye out for me when we were growing up; he’d even threatened to kill my first boyfriend for slipping his hand up my shirt when we were fourteen—as if I needed the help, but it was sweet of him to offer. His new position as alpha and my failing attempt at independence didn’t change the fact that I was his little sister.
I wandered over to the sofa and sat down heavily, coffee in hand. “Just some weird dreams.”
“Weird how?” His voice had a paranoid undercurrent to it, and he stared down at me intimidatingly. I frowned. Maybe the alpha powers were like a second puberty, a burst of testosterone making him antsy. Or maybe the power was going to his head. Whatever it was, he needed to chill.
“Sit down. The dream was just… Old stuff.” I shrugged and stared into my coffee. When he stayed silent, I reluctantly added, “Cal.”
He eyed me like I’d suddenly sprouted a second head. “Calum Meyers?”
“You know another Cal?” I raised my eyebrows.
Of course he didn’t. He finally sat down on the ottoman and hunched over with his elbows resting on his knees. “You’re dreaming about Calum Meyers?”
“It’s nothing. Just a lot of old stuff coming up after Dad died.” I sighed and leaned my head back on the sofa. “Do you think we were too harsh after what happened? Casting Cal’s family out of the pack?”
He took a sip from his sports bottle and shook his head. “It was the right thing to do. What David did to Dad? What Cal did to you?” Ben stared straight at me and I squirmed. I already regretted bringing this back up.
I closed my eyes as my stomach knotted. My wolf whined, soft and aching at the mention of Cal. I ignored it—it wasn’t easy, but the last fifteen years had given me plenty of time to practice.
“There’s nothing more important than loyalty. Loyalty to your pack. Loyalty to your friends. Loyalty to your own mate. Without loyalty, being part of the pack is meaningless.” His tone was all alpha, it was almost like he was channeling Dad. I couldn’t look at him. “And we have to put the pack before everything else. Even before personal feelings. Especially before personal feelings.”
I snapped my head up and my eyes narrowed. “I’m not having personal feelings about Calum Meyers. I haven’t even seen him for… years.”
Cal and his mom had moved to the outskirts of town after the incident and didn’t bother trying to get back in with our pack. The last I’d heard, he’d gotten a GED and finished community college and was making good use of his creative writing degree by working as a bouncer at a seedy bar. The thought bit me with guilt. The Cal I’d known as a kid would have gotten into an Ivy League School if he hadn’t dropped out of high school. Luck was a cruel bitch.
“Keep it that way.” Ben slapped his knees and stood, our deep and meaningful chat apparently coming to a close. “You showing up tonight?”
“You think I’d be allowed to miss a Friday night dinner? Mom would send me off to live with the Meyers.” I grinned at my joke, but Ben didn’t find it funny.
He frowned down at me and gently sloshed the protein shake back and forth in his sports bottle as he pointed it at me. “Seriously, Liv, forget about Cal and his loser father. That’s ancient history. Okay?”
“Sure. Yeah. You’re right.” I started to stand to show him to the door, but he motioned for me to sit.
“I let myself in, I can let myself out. Get some rest and try not to look half-dead tonight.” He paused as he opened the door, glancing over his shoulder. The corner of his mouth curled up. “Oh, Mom’s on a chrysanthemum kick. Hint, hint.”
“Got it.” I waved as he headed out and made a mental note to pick up the biggest bunch I could find before I dared show up at the house.
And in the meantime… Drink my coffee and forget Calum Meyers and his dad. It should have been easy enough. I’d kept my childhood friend off my mind for the better part of fifteen years while I’d finished school, partied my way through college, and liaised with Bridgehaven high society. Until last night, I’d almost forgotten about the hollow pit where my heart was supposed to be. But after the way he’d slid between my legs in my dream last night? I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to stop thinking about him again.
