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10

RILEY

Alice and Wendy were my two closest friends from high school, after Lila, of course. Wendy went to the community college with me. She was taking pre-nursing classes with the plan to transfer to the state school next year, so she was crazy busy with labs. Alice worked at her family’s real estate office. She got her real estate license over the summer and had spent all summer showing land to interested out-of-state buyers. I took classes and worked part time at a local preschool. A night of bowling had been hard to coordinate, but we made it happen. It was what we all needed right now .

As my besties, I was dying to tell them about what happened with both Tyler and Cody, but I couldn’t. I’d promised.

Halfway through the first game, Alice’s boyfriend Chris showed up with two friends, Andy and Pete. While Chris said they weren’t staying, they hadn’t left yet. Andy was no big deal. He spent all his time on his phone–total dud–but Pete spent all his time trying to pick me up. Again, total dud but in a different way.

Wendy had found Pete’s interest in me amusing. I found it and him… childish. Especially after my afternoon with Cody. All I could do was compare. With Pete, all I saw was a baby face, not a hint of whiskers. Breath that smelled like beer they snuck somehow. Sweaty hands. Yeah, I knew how sweaty they were because he kept setting one on my bare forearm. His touch was like kiddie foreplay.

“My turn.” I slid around the bench seat and grabbed my ball from the return rack. I waited for a man in a league to take his turn in the lane next to ours before I walked, swung, and flung my ball down the alley.

I tossed my arms up when nine pins fell, and one teetered then finally fell, too. Wendy cheered. Alice high-fived Chris.

As I stood and waited for my ball to be returned and the pins reset so I could take my second shot, I caught a glimpse of Rob Wolf and, I assumed, his wife.

I’d never met them before, but Tyler had talked about him all the time because he got a job on his ranch and was now living there. He and I saw him in town once, and Tyler pointed him out.

They were by the shoe rental counter… watching me.

Me.

I stared. They stared back. Well, Rob stared back. Willow smiled, then popped a piece of popcorn in her mouth, plucked from a striped paper bag I hadn’t noticed her holding. They sold them at the snack counter because I’d seen them when I bought us all sodas.

The thrill of getting a strike was gone. My mind went to my earlier guess. Was Rob a shifter too? He had to be. Cody hadn’t directly answered when I asked him, but his last name was Wolf. Of course, he was a shifter! Then was Willow? I stared at the woman who was so much more sunshine-y than her seemingly grumpy husband. She seemed so… normal.

Was he here for me? No, that was silly. It was a small town. I ran into too many people I didn’t want to see on a daily basis. Grocery shopping was often like a social hour, and I’d started ordering tampons and girly stuff online not to give away anything personal to the snoopers and looky-loos of the community. It wasn’t that bad, but I had to deal with a smothering dad and a close-knit town. One I could control, and one I couldn’t.

Pete came over and gave me a hug, lifting me off the floor and spinning me around. Once my rental-shoed feet were back on the wood, I stepped back and grabbed my ball, which thankfully just appeared. “Nice job, killer.”

“Dude, let her breathe,” Chris called.

Pete gave his friend the finger but went back to his seat.

When I next lifted my gaze to Rob, his head was down, and he was typing on his cell.

“Go, Riley! Knock ‘em all down again!” Alice shouted.

I smiled, spun on my heel, and took a breath. Focused on the next shot and not about shifters. It didn’t work out too well because I only knocked down five pins. By the time I turned back, Rob and his wife were gone.

It was, at most, five minutes later when Alice was taking her turn that Cody showed up. No, he did more than show up. He came through the front doors on a mission. He barely looked left and right before zeroing in on me as if he had some kind of homing beacon on me.

That look.

Panties destroyed.

He stalked over. Yup, stalked. But he wasn’t eyeing me any longer. He was giving Pete the death glare. More specifically, his arm casually–and very intentionally–flung along the back of the row of plastic seats behind me.

How did I know he’d arrived? There was a disturbance in the Force, or my nipples just knew. Hell, every woman in the place stopped and stared, he was that hot.

Or they’d all been with him and were salivating for more.

I was.

“Hey Riley. Who’s your friend?” he asked when he stood before me, looming.

I swallowed hard, not in fear, but in arousal.

He was here for me. ME.

I cleared my throat. “This is Pete. He’s Chris’s friend.” I raised my hand lamely and pointed through Cody to where Chris was sitting at the scoring table.

“Mr. McIntire, you looking for Tyler?” Wendy asked.

Internally, I winced .

Cody’s gaze met mine. Held.

“Does your friend Pete want to live?” he asked me, and I sucked in a breath.

Pete laughed. “What?”

I popped to my feet. This was not good. This was a new side of Cody. A very possessive side. Was this jealousy or just plain territory claiming?

Either way, I wasn’t going to find out in a filled bowling alley. I hustled up the steps away from the lanes, my rental shoes sliding on the carpet with the Vegas-like pattern. Veering around a group of kids with birthday party hats and a few men carrying bowling bags and wearing matching league shirts, I made it to the bathrooms then ducked inside.

I knew Cody followed. Not because I could hear him–which I couldn’t over the rock music that the place played, the arcade noises next to the restrooms, and the clack of falling pins–but because I felt him.

By the time I pushed open one of the unisex restroom doors, he was right behind me and shut the door behind us. Flipped the bolt.

He hooked a hand behind my neck and tugged on my ponytail, forcing me to look up and meet his gaze. They were stormy blue. Wild.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, loving the little tug on my scalp. “I thought you were working. ”

“I was until Rob Wolf texted and said my mate’s with another man. No, a boy. ”

He left work and rushed over here because Rob saw me? His bar was only a few blocks down Main Street, but still. “Cody, I?—”

“Who is he?”

I frowned. “Pete? He’s a friend of Alice’s boyfriend.”

“He seems to want to be friends with you.”

Cody was here because Rob saw me with Pete.

“Yeah, well, I’m not interested,” I told him.

“He know that?” Using his hand, he steered me around, so my back was against the wall, and he was pressed into my front.

Every very hard inch of him.

“He know this pussy’s mine?”

I gasped when he cupped me through my clothing. “Cody,” I whispered. Holy hell, this was hot.

He leaned down, ran his nose along the side of my neck. “That I’m the one who makes you come?”

“Pete who?” I asked, angling my head for him.

He nipped the spot at the juncture of my neck and shoulder. “Exactly.” His breath fanned over my heated skin.

“You want to be around boys, that’s fine, but it’ll be with an achy pussy. Ruined panties. And cum drunk. ”

“You’re going to fuck me now? Here?” I glanced around the bathroom that had bowling ball wallpaper and smelled like fruity air freshener. I’d do it, I was that turned on.

That thrilled.

His hand slid up my bare thigh and beneath my skirt. Then into my panties.

I gripped his corded forearm, not to push away, but to make sure he didn’t stop.

He licked the side of my neck then murmured, “I’m not claiming my mate in a bowling alley bathroom.” One finger slid into me, hard and deep, driving me up onto my tiptoes. I gasped at the sudden action. My eyes fell closed. While Cody had put his mouth on me–which was substantially more intimate than this since I still had all my clothes on–this was the first time a guy had ever finger banged me. “But I sure as hell can make it known that you’re taken care of.”

“Oh my God,” I breathed, rolling my hips as he fingered me. I’d used a vibrator before–only recently because there was no way I’d have a sex toy in my dad’s house–but this was so much better.

“You’re going to be nice and quiet and come all over my hand. No one hears you but me,” he growled. “Otherwise, I stop and leave you on edge all night. ”

I bit my lip and nodded. I wanted to come so, so bad.

He slid a second finger in. “So fucking tight.”

I was so wet, the sound his actions were making was a little embarrassing. Except his palm rubbed over my clit, and I forgot about that. And my name.

“You’re going to go back out there, and Pete’s going to know you’ve already got a man.”

Cody wasn’t gentle. He was almost rough in his actions. Fierce. As if it was his primal need to get me off and quick.

I rocked my hips, practically riding his fingers.

“Good girl,” he praised as I came. “You look so fucking gorgeous when you come, sugar.” He thrust some more, wringing another orgasm out of me. “That’s right, your body knows who owns it. No one else can make you come like this. Who can give you what you need?”

“You can,” I moaned, delirious, trying to catch my breath.

He kissed my neck, slipped up the panties, then patted my pussy gently over them.

“Mine.”

Then he flipped the bolt and left.

If that wasn’t staking his claim, I didn’t know what was.