Wolfmates: Ruff & Ready Read online

  Wolf Mates: Ruff & Ready

  Dakota Cassidy

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright ©2006 Dakota Cassidy

  No part of this e-book may be reproduced or shared by any electronic or mechanical means, including but not limited to printing, file sharing, and email, without prior written permission from Changeling Press LLC.

  ISBN (10) 1-59596-347-2

  ISBN (13) 978-1-59596-347-5 Formats Available:

  HTML, Adobe PDF,

  MobiPocket, Microsoft Reader

  Publisher:

  Changeling Press LLC

  PO Box 1561

  Shepherdstown, WV 25443-1561

  www.ChangelingPress.com

  Editor: Sheri Ross Fogarty

  Cover Artist: Angela Knight

  This e-book file contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language which some may find offensive and which is not appropriate for a young audience. Changeling Press E-Books are for sale to adults, only, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

  To the many people involved in making this series such a success — this is for you.

  Again, for my dear friend Michelle, who helps me find the answers to all of my crazy plot dilemmas when I’m cornered. You’re the best, babe.

  And for my pal Erin, who calls me a perv but is the best test reader this side of the planet and makes me smile a lot. This one’s for you, cookie!

  To Candy — an unwitting participant in this whacky series, who left me with the wonderful surprise for an ending.

  Last, but surely not least, my editor Sheri, who lets me cry on her shoulder when I’m blocked, calls me to be sure my status is still listed under “alive” and most of all is, bar none, not only the best editor in e-publishing, but one of my very best friends.

  Love,

  Dakota

  Chapter One

  “Fucktaaaaard!”

  “Tree hugger!”

  “Jack off!”

  “Grow up, Emerson!” was the heated return response, followed by mocking laughter.

  “Grow this!” she yelled back to the slam of the flimsy trailer door.

  “Oh, Emerson! I don’t see how being a potty mouth is going to help us here. I mean, we want to be civilized, don’t we? Who’s going to take us seriously if we resort to name calling? It’s petty and well… sooooo kindergarten.”

  Emerson Palmer gave Hector Adams a pointed look and then hung her head, rubbing her temples. “You’re right, Hector. That was childish of me.” But hey, every once in awhile it was okay to let your inner child out Emerson decided, throwing a pine cone at Lassiter Adams’ trailer window with fastball speed. “You hear me, you needle dick? You’re a condo loving, landfill snarfing, brick laying ’ho!”

  The trailer door remained closed.

  Palmer versus Adams, round one bazillion and one was officially over.

  For the moment.

  Emerson Palmer, environmental groupie, defender of all creatures great and small, had had this argument with Lassiter Adams for three months now — ever since he’d parked his stupid construction trailer/bachelor pad on Adams land and declared it his.

  Every bloody day for three months.

  Emerson blew a strand of long, platinum blonde hair that had escaped from her ponytail out of her face. Her cheeks were flushed with anger and frustration as she stood, looking at Lassiter Adams’ trailer door.

  He peeked out of the small window along the right side of his temporary quarters and waved to Emerson with a smug smile, further infuriating her.

  “Arghhhhhhhhhhhhh! He makes me insane! I just can’t figure him, Hector, ya know? He’s been here for three months, digging stuff up, and not a single apartment complex to show for it. You’d think he’d want to get moving. Yet, he does the same thing day after day. Dig holes and cover them back up. He’s like a dog looking for a bone and he can’t remember where it’s buried.”

  Hector smiled at Emerson, snickering while petting his beloved rabbit with a gentle hand. “Well, that dog likes your butt.”

  She snorted. Lassiter Adams didn’t like anything but money. The money building an apartment complex in the middle of nowhere would bring him. Young city dwellers looking for a bit of suburbia would swarm here for a taste of town and country. Thus killing the animals Emerson fought so hard to protect.

  Defeated for today, she began the long walk back to the Adams house with Hector close behind her.

  Once more, for posterity, she shrieked into the now bulldozed clearing, “Animal killer!” Her vicious accusation echoed through the open space.

  Hector clucked his tongue at her with reproach. “Emerson, I really don’t think this has gotten us anywhere so far. Maybe you should try being nice to him? He doesn’t hate animals. He has a parakeet. You saw him talking to it through the window when we spied on him. So he must not hate all animals.”

  Emerson’s eyes flashed at Hector and he cringed ever so slightly. “If he didn’t hate them, he wouldn’t want to build stupid condos on their homes. If we don’t stay tough, Hector, we’re going to lose the fight.”

  His snort was all Emerson needed, but he went ahead and said the words out loud anyway. “I don’t wanna be the bearer of bad news, but we are losing the fight, Em.”

  Turning on him, she threw her hands up in the air. “And so what? You want to just give up?”

  “No.” He shook his dark head vehemently. “I never want to give up, but how can we fight the back taxes owed on acreage this size, Em? Max didn’t know about them and he couldn’t come up with the money to pay it, so the town took what they were offered from Lassiter. He sure has plenty of money.”

  What a mess. How could it be that the taxes had been left unpaid for so long? The Adamses weren’t rich — well, maybe Julia was — but they weren’t poor either. So who forgot to check the little stub on the mortgage bill? According to Hector’s cousin Max, no one had known the taxes hadn’t been paid. Adams land had always been Adams land. Period. Which led Emerson to believe that the town of Columbia, in the fine state of New Jersey, was dicking the Adamses around for some cashola and they’d decided that the first person to come up with said money was as good as any — and that money came from Lassiter Adams.

  Greedy corporate bastard that he was, small town USA had let him grease their palms.

  Yet, he hadn’t built a single thing to date. He dug around with lots of machinery while Emerson and her group of environmental activists chained themselves to bulldozers and trees to protest. His answer to that was to simply choose another portion of the vast Adams acreage to dig up, surprising them each new day that dawned with a new location. It became like a daily game of cat and mouse to figure out where he’d dig next.

  However, none of that explained his claim to be an Adams. Adams was a common last name — as common as Jones or Smith. So where was the proof that Lassiter was an Adams? Of the were variety, no less?

  There wasn’t any proof like documentation, other than he shared the same last name. And, due to the fact that asking Lassiter might reveal a secret about the Adamses they didn’t want to reveal — no one said anything. They grumbled, they shook their fists at him, but they didn’t make him prove he was really an Adams from the infamous werewolf pack, better known as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

  Yes, the Adams family was rare and unusual. They didn’t care if your mate was a penguin, so long as you’d found love. They didn’t care if you didn’t like to hunt and run with the full moon or lived on a strictly vegetarian diet and married a cat. They loved you for who you were, not what the typical werewolf pack thought you should be. That was what made
Emerson fight even harder on behalf of the Adams, because they accepted her for who she was — an avenger of small creatures and animal lover extraordinaire.

  Emerson’s family couldn’t accept what they considered her quirks and so, at the age of twenty-one, she’d left. Now she only saw them occasionally, because she couldn’t accept their rigid werewolf rules and regulations.

  That might have made her a rebel in the eyes of most wolf packs. However, not in the eyes of the Adams family. The Adamses didn’t care that the very idea of hunting a small animal made her queasy. Just because she was a werewolf it didn’t mean eating meat was essential to her well-being. She was, after all, half human and found she shifted just fine on broccoli, thank you.

  It was simply another factor in her quest to help the Adamses. Their unconditional acceptance of her.

  And that brought her back to the stalemate they were in with the newest Adams and where this land ownership nonsense remained. Lassiter Adams dug up the surrounding acres like a kid in a sandbox and the Adams clan couldn’t stop him.

  But it wasn’t for lack of trying. All of the Adamses, in one way or another, had attempted to drive Lassiter away.

  Even Julia — wealthy from her designer pet clothing boutique — didn’t have enough liquid assets to stop Lassiter.

  He was a monster.

  An ass-tastic monster, but still a monster.

  Emerson ignored the call of her hormonal whining and the reminder that Lassiter was crazy hot, and set about focusing on her newest form of protest.

  Maybe she could find all the keys to his stupid bulldozers and swallow them? She’d shit brass for a week, but it might be worth it.

  * * *

  Lassiter Adams let the curtain of his window fall, shutting out Emerson Palmer, and set about looking once again at the map of vast Adams acreage. Shit, there was a boatload of land to cover, but he’d dig and dig until the twelfth of never if it meant that he’d find what he was looking for.

  For the first time in the many years since he’d been searching, he felt hopeful. An end to this disaster in life he’d been dealt would be welcome.

  Crossing the room, he looked into his parakeet Bud’s cage and winked. “Well, little guy, I think we shut up that Emerson for today. Looks like she’s off to fight another cause. Christ, I’m sick of her yap.”

  “Sickofheryap. Sickofheryap,” Bud chirped back.

  Though, she did have a hot yap. Lassiter rather liked to watch it move when she opened it and called him some of the most vile names he’d ever heard. It was full, lush, ripe and very red — very kissable and in the three months since he’d been here at the Adams stead, he’d, on more than one occasion, wondered what it would be like to have them wrapped around his cock.

  She was a feisty one.

  A feisty pain in his long drawn out search for a needle-in-a-haystack ass.

  He looked at Bud and chuckled. “You know, I feel lucky here, Bud. I think this just might be it.”

  “Ititit,” Bud chirped back, fluttering his multi colored wings from his perch.

  “Yeah,” Lassiter said out loud, more to reassure himself than anything else, “it. We’d better hope this is it. We’re running out of options.” His stomach grumbled, making him momentarily forget the shitload of work ahead of him. It was feeding time.

  Pausing for a moment, he wondered what Emerson would taste like. The creamy arch of her neck against his lips when he…

  Rolling his head on his neck to relieve the tension Emerson never failed to create, Lassiter ignored the flare up from all points tropical just thinking of her evoked and went to his fridge for nourishment, planning the next day’s dig.

  And how, yet again, to outwit, outlast, outrun Emerson Palmer.

  Chapter Two

  Emerson cooed at baby Quinn and shoveled another spoonful of goop into his mouth. His gummy smile gave Emerson a reason to smile too, rather than hang onto her anger.

  “He’s a messy one, huh, Em?” Derrick Adams remarked while grabbing a roll of paper towels and cleaning the floor surrounding Quinn’s high chair.

  “He’s definitely a team player when it comes to messy,” she giggled, taking some of the paper towel and wiping at her jeans.

  Derrick ran a hand over Quinn’s head with fatherly affection. “He gets that from his mother. Have you seen her eat?” he joked.

  “I heard that, Derrick Adams, and I’ll have you know, cats are the cleanest creatures on earth. You dogs are another story altogether.” Martine sat on the chair opposite Emerson and grinned at Quinn. Tucking her long, graceful legs under her, she folded her hands and placed them on the wooden table. “And even if his eating habits were from me, it’s very obvious, wolf man, his looks are too.”

  Derrick put an arm around his wife’s shoulder and kissed the top of her sleek black head. “Yeah, I guess I have to credit you with those.”

  They made a great couple, Derrick and Martine, Emerson mused. They were another example of how accepting the Adams pack could be. Quinn was proof that the Adamses were good people. He was, after all, half domestic cat and half werewolf.

  Cat-dog, as Martine had explained with a laugh. Little Quinn was the apple of everyone’s eye and certainly would grow up with a healthy attitude toward diversity.

  “You’re good at this, Emerson. You really ought to have one of your own,” Martine said, taking Quinn from his high chair and bringing him to the sink for a cleaning.

  Well, at this stage in the game, Immaculate Conception was her only alternative. Unless BOB could father children, Emerson was shit out of luck. A twinge of motherly dreams gone astray hit Emerson, but she shrugged it off in favor of being a pseudo aunt and caretaker of stray animals.

  “Emerson? How did the rumble for wee animals in the jungle slash potential pay per view special go with you and Lassiter today?” JC asked, stirring something that smelled delicious on the stove.

  Emerson’s snort was derisive. “It went like it always does. He digs. I hurl epithets at him for being an animal killer while he does it. He doesn’t budge, he doesn’t flinch, he just keeps on going. Nothing ruffles that man —”

  “And it’s starting to piss you off, eh?” Max interrupted, kissing JC’s cheek and cupping her burgeoning belly. “How’s Max junior in there today?”

  JC smiled warmly, but said, “We don’t know if it’s a junior or a juniorette, farm boy, and the baby is just fine.”

  Though it looked as if JC were due at any moment, her pregnancy wasn’t quite what the alpha Adams, Max, had expected. In a human pregnancy, JC was but three months along. However, seeing as the sire of this particular offspring was a werewolf and the mother a human, no one knew what to expect. Apparently, each half human, half werewolf pregnancy was different.

  “I can tell you this, snookums. It might be a while before I let ya knock me up again. I have human friends who were pregnant and they don’t look like this —” she pointed to her belly and snorted, “— when they’re only three months along. What I don’t get is how I feel like I’ve been pregnant forever. It’s the damned pregnancy of the millennium, for crap’s sake,” she complained.

  “It’s sturdy seed I planted, eh, wench?” Max nudged Derrick and snickered. Turning, both hands on her wide hips, JC narrowed her eyes and pointed the spoon she had in her hands at them. “Sturdy my eye, Don Juan. It’s demon seed, buddy, and don’t you forget it! It keeps me up at night. It makes me puke all day long and worse still, it’s given me split ends!” JC stomped off to the freezer, waddling as she went.

  “So, Emerson? Make any headway with Lassiter today? Or are we still where we were three months ago?” Max asked again.

  Sadly, Max’s defeated look made Emerson’s daily report even bleaker. “Well, I did call him some new names today, if that makes you feel any better.”

  “Look, Emerson. You’re not getting anywhere here. I feel like we’re just wasting your time, not to mention the time of your organization. I don’t want to give up but Lassiter is sh
redding our land acre by acre, and neither you nor I seem to be deterring him.”

  Emerson looked up into the handsome, rugged face of Max Adams and, for the first time since she’d begun this project to save his land, she felt all hope slipping away. “I can’t give up, Max. I feel like it today, but I can’t and neither can you. Don’t you want your baby to someday be able to run under the moonlight on Adams land? Don’t you want that too?” she asked Derrick pleadingly, turning to face him and Martine.

  “Yes, Emerson,” Max assured her. “It’s what we all want, but we’ve used up a lot of your valuable time. There’s no talking to the man, no reasoning with him. He bought our land right out from under us and with no explanation. It doesn’t matter if he’s an Adams, according to the town. They just like the fat account they have now because of him. So what else is there? You can’t go on day after day calling him names and throwing foliage at him. You had a life before our cause and you should be able to go back to it.”

  If only the life part of that impassioned speech were true. Emerson’s life was the animal rights organization she worked for. Save the Tails was all she had and, truth be told, she’d be really sad to leave the Adams, even if they did find a way to stop Lassiter. “So are ya kicking me out?” she half-joked, half-wondered out loud.

  “Are you kidding? Who would teach us new and inventive ways to say shit stain, if not for you?” Martine asked. Her smile was sympathetic and so genuine it made Emerson’s teeth hurt. “We just feel guilty, Emerson. We know the money for this cause you’ve taken on is long gone by now. Your paycheck stopped coming three weeks ago.”

  Foiled again. Indeed, her paycheck had stopped coming because Save the Tails couldn’t justify the kind of money needed to stop a company as large as Lassiter Adams’. It was a non-profit organization. Their salaries came from donations. The pay was little, but the work was rewarding for Emerson.

  It didn’t matter that her pay was inconsequential. It was never very big to begin with. Emerson just got by on her salary as it was. She couldn’t afford to live without it permanently. She’d be high and dry if not for her trust fund.