Page 4 of Hunted Mate (Stalked Mates #1)

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That did not go as planned. I thought for sure she would capitulate. Most people do when confronted with a beast twice their size who knows what they’ve been up to and threatens their lives.

She was such a pretty little thing, her pink pussy working so hard to take my cock. I can still remember her scent, and the way she sounded, how soft she was, how my fingers sank into her ass when I pulled her onto my cock—and how bright, deep red her cheeks got after I punished her with my belt.

She’s so much more than another annoying little journalist looking for a weird story. She feels like she was made for me. Made for my cock, for my hands. Fuck. Maybe even for my heart.

This is not how it was supposed to go. I was supposed to scare her. Wasn’t even supposed to actually fuck her, but when I mentioned it and the air filled with desire, what was I going to do? It was all instinct from that point on. From both of us.

I like the idea that she’s out there right now, walking around with my cum deep inside her, trickling down her legs and drying sticky between her thighs because she doesn’t have panties on anymore.

Next time, I think I’ll fuck her ass.

And there will be a next time because we both know she’s not going to stop. I felt her obstinance like a force of nature.

I go back to the van, step past the cot I have been sleeping on, and get behind the surveillance equipment. She’s still in her office, rubbing her butt and cursing to herself. I smile as I pull the wolf’s head off. She’s cute. A little too cute, actually.

Later that evening, I continue my surveillance. I don’t really need to. It’s well past ten p.m., which tends to be her latest bedtime. But I can’t help myself. I want to see her again. The need to look at her is the most intense need I’ve felt in a long time.

The camera I tap into is the one located in the smoke alarm in her bedroom.

She is asleep in bed. The camera shows her tossing and turning, turning over onto her stomach and throwing a pillow across the room.

Her bedroom is well appointed, as one would expect from an heiress, but not as ornate or full of useless crap as I would have expected.

She spends money like someone who knows she has all of it she needs, but doesn’t really care about what it can get her.

She gets no thrill from obtaining material things, because she’s always been able to have all the material things she wanted.

That doesn’t mean she’s not missing a lot in her life, and that there is not a kind of poverty gnawing at her sweet little soul.

Calista has more money at her disposal than most people could ever dream of, but very little in the way of social outlets.

Lots of people want to talk to her, outside of the paper, where the other journalists take particular glee in borderline bullying her, but it is obvious that people are interested in her power, money, and clout rather than her.

So she eats dinner alone in a dining room made for at least twenty, and she sleeps alone in a bed that could sleep four, and she wanders around the big house at what feels like random times.

When I started this job, I assumed I was dealing with a spoiled brat who didn’t understand there were some things in this world left alone because that’s what’s healthiest for all concerned. Now I think she just needs something to keep herself sane.

Life isn’t exactly easy when you don’t really need to support yourself, and when you can’t really trust anyone to be a friend. I’ve had her phone tapped for a long time. I was going to tap her friends’ phones too. But she doesn’t have any.

She has a lot of acquaintances. She has people who owe her favors, and who she owes favors. She has connections. But she does not have friends. And she does not have family.

I know everything there is to know about Calista Hart. My research into her has been as deep and intense as her research into the wolf packs that it is my job to protect.

Nobody can be allowed to reveal the truth of wolf shifters.

The danger to those with the cursed blood cannot be overstated.

Every time wolf shifters have been discovered throughout history, death and disaster have followed.

It is not simply a matter of protecting the pack. It is a matter of protecting everybody.

I am charged with ensuring that curious humans don’t ever get close to the truth. There are a lot of ways to do that. Mostly, I go for misinformation and disinformation. Filling the space with noise so that anybody looking for anything real would never be able to find the signal.

But that hasn’t been working with Calista.

She’s too smart, and too dedicated. She’s been able to isolate a few pieces of specific information from newspaper articles and microfiche files of all things, dating back through the sixties, seventies, and eighties.

Then she’s used that information as a filter.

Anything that corroborates it or fits the pattern, she keeps.

Anything that doesn’t, she dumps. It’s been terrifyingly accurate.

She’s getting close to discovering some of our ancient sites, and that cannot be allowed to happen.

I have made Calista Hart the sole target of my attention. I have lived and breathed her for months on end. She has no idea. She thinks tonight’s little encounter was impromptu, perhaps the act of a madman.

I had hoped to scare her off the story, take advantage of the weaknesses I’ve gathered about her, but I don’t think I achieved that effect. I think I’ve stoked her interest. I think I’ve given her one more clue.

I go back to the drawing board of distraction, flipping through my journal of notes about her. Maybe there’s some basic fact I am missing, some pain point I could use to get her away from the wolf story.

Calista’s parents were killed when she was thirteen.

They were very rich people who left behind enough money to ensure that their only daughter would never have to work.

A tragedy followed by a windfall that did absolutely nothing to help the girl who was left behind.

Reports indicate she was never the same after the loss of her parents as she had been before.

There was a stay at a private residential center in her early teen years.

A mental health facility by another name, designed to save the pride and image of the rich people who go there.

She was released after three years, her estate sent her to a Swiss boarding school, then she came back into the Ivy League. By the time she graduated at twenty-one, her trust had matured and she suddenly had more money to hand than most people have in a lifetime.

She gave a lot of it away, but even that wasn’t easy. The competition for her aid was intense, and as a young woman, many have tried to take advantage of her. She’s twenty-three now and basically a hermit.

She’s lost. She’s lonely. And she’s mine.

No , I tell myself. She’s not yours. This is a job.

But all the internal lecturing in the world won’t change how I feel. I knotted inside her. I filled her hot, tight pussy up and I watched it drip out of her swollen pink lips afterward. Fuck. The memory of that sight will not leave my mind for a very long time.

She was beautiful, responsive, and even submissive. I think that shocked her more than anything. She didn’t understand why her body was responding as intensely as it was, or why she came so damn hard she nearly passed out.

I keep watching her after her breeding. It’s been just over twenty-four hours and I want to get close to her again, but I know I am supposed to be keeping my distance. I’m surprised I didn’t blow my cover in that first encounter.

It’s six p.m. and she’s home, making herself a dirty martini.

She drinks more than she really should, always serving herself from the bar that used to belong to her father.

I bring up his picture from the file on my phone. He was a handsome man, and an intelligent one. He seems to have loved his family very deeply, and to have provided for them. If he had remained in her life, I am sure she would be a happy, stable young lady now.

Her mother was beautiful and deeply involved in charities of all kinds, including ones that did not at all relate to popular causes.

She appears to have been deeply kind and have had strong moral fiber.

She was also an absolute tycoon, taking the Hart fortune from strength to strength.

If Calista could redirect her attention to making money the way her mother did, she’d soon forget about the wolves.

It’s possible that telling her what she is doing is wrong would be effective.

I thought if she knew the harm it could cause, she might stop.

But I already penned her a letter to that effect and she did not respond to that.

You have to trust someone to explain a vulnerability to them, and as much as I am entranced by her, I do not trust her.

“Fuck,” she curses to herself. “What the fuck did I do. What the fuck did he do?”

She sits down, then squeaks and gets up again almost immediately.

She has a sore ass, clearly. I smirk to myself, watching her try to come to terms with what happened.

She’s not used to being told no. Ever since her parents died, the combination of people feeling sorry for her, along with her having more money than God has made her pretty damn spoiled. She doesn’t know it, but she is.

She opens her phone. A screen pops up on my laptop. Because hers is hacked. I can see everything she says and does on her phone. She’s a naughty girl.

“Werewolves who fuck women,” she types into the search engine.

What comes back is a set of explicit results that I expect her to swipe past, but to my surprise, she clicks on one.

I watch the woman I fucked to multiple rough orgasms perch on the edge of a couch that is worth more than most people’s cars and start pleasuring her pussy to a story written by someone online.

Goddamn.