aged slowly after the
change. Their dispositions, not so gracefully.
And yet Will doubted there had ever been a
time, alpha or not, wolf or man, when he would have tolerated the tone of voice
he was hearing a strange man using on his mate where she’d shut herself off on
the front porch.
“Of course I’m sick,” she protested, and
Will stalked up to the window and blatantly pulled down a couple of the plastic
blades of the blinds to peer through at the confrontation with the wiry blond
man.
With a puffed up chest, the stance of a
bully, the trespasser (as far as Will was concerned) folded his arms and
glared. “This just looks to me like more of the stalling that always comes up
when I’ve instructed you to file your field report on Wolf A217.”
Kim chewed her plump bottom lip while
obviously considering her answer. Because he was mated to her now, having
tasted her thoughts as well as her blood, Will knew she was fighting back her
anger and a decidedly defiant dislike for… Northrup, it said on the ID tag
below the man’s collar.
“What are you accusing me of, Daniel?” she
asked in a cool monotone.
“That’s Mr. Northrup. Don’t be
insubordinate, Kim. You can’t afford it. I’m saying it’s obvious you’re not
doing your job. Do you even have any field notes on the wolf, or have you been
up here the whole time watching television and eating junk food and sitting on
your….?”
Good thing this Northrup trailed off before
finishing the insult, or he might have had a naked shifter in his face, holding
him two feet off the ground by his neck. Of course, both Kim and Will knew the
bastard was trying to make a crack about her weight and the lazy, chubby girl
stereotype. They both also knew that dear Ranger Northrup had taken one look at
Kim all flushed and sensually mussed and sprung an erection in his snug
polyester uniform pants.
“You’re threatening to terminate me again,
is that is, sir ?” she asked with caustic emphasis.
“I am.” When the woman didn’t dissolve into
a puddle of solicitousness befitting his attempt to terrorize her, her peacock
of a supervisor nodded more firmly. “I mean it, Kim. You are going to have a
full write-up on A217 on my desk before I get into the office tomorrow morning,
or I start your termination paperwork and have it faxed to regional
headquarters before lunch.”
Kim didn’t argue, just fumed quietly. Will
gathered from Northrup’s perplexed reaction, as the man lingered there
awkwardly when he should have just walked away, that she was usually more of an
arguer who stood up for herself. And Will liked that idea just fine. Though
none of them would ever have said so, alpha male shifters thrived on the
challenge, the sass, the passion of mouthy little mates who weren’t afraid to
put them in their place.
When the woman stepped back inside,
clenching her jaw and slamming the door, Will met her with a cocked brow. “You
never slept with that asshole, did you?”
Kim blinked at him, her pretty mouth screwed
up in an expression of disgust. “I hope you don’t think I hate myself that
much. Why would you even ask?”
“I didn’t think so,” Will said, admitting to
himself that her reaction pleased him, soothed the possessive streak in him.
“But it’s not for lack of him wanting you. A man can’t get much more passive
aggressive than that without being a woman.” Will grinned for the first time in
years, a lot of years, at the nonplussed look his mate gave him.
“He’s a miserable, sexually frustrated
bastard, for sure,” she agreed. “All the more reason not to give him any
information on Wolf A217. That’s you, ya know.”
“I figured.”
“Need to give him something, though,” she
said, tugging on the luscious pad of her lower lip with her teeth again. Will
wanted to do that. “If I give him nothing, he’ll send someone else around.
They’ll keep after you, maybe attract the wrong kind of attention. I can’t have
anything I’ve