Susie stirred her cocktail again – a Screaming Orgasm. She’d already told everyone she’d never had a Screaming Orgasm before and there was a lot of laughter and jibes about how she was well rid of her ex-boyfriend. Now, she was just left with an over-sweet drink and a desire to go back to her room, don her pajamas and watch Mike and Molly reruns until she could go home.
But, she couldn’t. She was in Vegas for a bachelorette weekend, and she had to pretend like she was having fun. It wasn’t that hard to fake it – she had plenty of experience. She really never had a screaming orgasm before, but her ex still thought he’d given her hundreds.
Her best friend, Jules was getting married, and Susie was maid of honor. Susie wished she could be selfish and say she wasn’t going to the wedding, but she wouldn’t be so mean to Jules.
“We miss you, we barely see you,” said Jules, giving Susie a pout.
The other ladies chorused in with agreements.
Susie shrugged. “I’m only an hour away.”
She had moved away from the pack town she grew up in after she discovered her boyfriend was cheating on her. Like Jules and the other ladies surrounding her, he was a member of the pack. Susie was human but had grown up around all the wolves as an honorary member of the pack because of her close relationship with Jules.
Since she was a teenager, she always thought she would eventually mate with her – now ex-boyfriend, Allen, and would officially become a member of the pack. But that was a dead dream.
They grew up together, went to college together – they had a whole life plan of when they were getting mated, when they were going to have kids - it was all mapped out! Allen was the nephew of the alpha – a male many female wolves wanted. Susie thought she was lucky to be with him.
Then one day a waitress from the town diner called Helen – a young member of the pack - showed up to say she had slept with him and was pregnant. That kind of put a damper on his relationship with Susie.
Allen had easily admitted that he slept with Helen – he wasn’t even remorseful about it. He said he was a wolf who had wolf-like urges. He needed to slate his need every full moon and Helen had been available. Yeah, Susie bet she made herself available - the scheming, little hussy.
He didn’t see that he and Susie had to break up. But his pack had other ideas – his alpha insisted he mate with Helen. Given that the pup could have potential alpha genes, they didn’t want Helen running off to another pack with the pup. Which she had been threatening to do if Allen did not mate with her.
So, Susie was duly dumped, and Allen agreed to mate Helen. He had a choice – he could have left the pack if he insisted on being with Susie, but Allen wasn’t about to give up his high-ranking position. All the alpha’s family members had high positions in the pack. If Allen left, he would have to find a new pack and fight his way to a new position. He wouldn’t want to do that.
So, Susie duly left him and his skank to their mating and moved away, though not too far. She still had aging relatives to worry about, but she was damned if she was going to hang around and watch him raise his child with someone else. She just moved to the next town of Rose – another pack town, but at least the alpha didn’t have a nephew to cause Susie any grief. She managed to continue in her job as a sheriff’s deputy, so the move was pretty darn easy.
But, though she didn’t have to see Allen and Skankarella and their new cub every day, she still had friends like Jules that she didn’t want to lose. Which was why she had been dragged to the Vegas bachelorette party.
The bachelor party was also happening in Vegas. There had been an awkward moment when she ran into Allen in their hotel lobby. He gave her his smug, wolfy grin and asked her how she was. She said fine and then pretended he didn’t exist – like it wasn’t breaking her heart. Allen sure hadn’t been perfect, but she had loved him, and she had thought they would be happy together.
Susie rammed her stirrer into her cocktail, destroying a cherry. Well, she darn well wasn’t going to make that mistake again. She would never, ever give her heart away to a blasted wolf shifter again!
Jules patted her hand. “I didn’t realize he’d be here.”
She meant Allen – of course, she did. It was pretty much all they ever talked about anymore. Whenever Jules called, all she would talk about was what Helen had been doing, how she had been bossing other members of the pack around, how she had been wearing skanky outfits, and how much everyone hated her. They really needed a new topic of conversation.
“It’s fine,” Susie muttered.
Jules’ mate to be, Gregg, wasn’t particularly friendly with Allen – Allen considered him to be too low down in pack rankings for his attention – but pack was pack.
“I tried to ask Gregg not to invite him…”
Yeah, he’s the alpha’s nephew. The pack was all one big family group, apart from Susie who was now on the outside.
“At least you didn’t invite that bitch, Helen,” put in Candace. A she-wolf who was definitely not ‘Team Helen.’
After the truth came out, many females leaped forward to Susie’s defense. But a few others, Helen’s friends, and perhaps the smarter she-wolves, stuck by Helen. They said Susie wasn’t pack, and that Allen should be loyal to pack.
Jules let out a delicate snort. “Yeah, Gregg wanted me to because Allen asked him to, but I put my foot down at that.”
“Besides,” added Lila, “she’s got a new cub, it’s not like – ow!”
Candace just trod on her foot to shut her up. Lila threw her a furious look, but Candace was remorseless. She needn’t have bothered – mentioning it wouldn’t make it any more hurtful to Susie.
Susie had another sip of her cocktail and licked her lips – it wasn’t bad. Ha, she could get used to having screaming orgasms – they were unlike anything she’d ever had before. Boy, she wished she could say that to Allen. It was her second drink that evening. Her third would be the last. She knew what it took to get drunk, and she had a plan about avoiding that. The last thing she wanted was to be so wasted she made her way over to Allen’s room in the night and screamed through the door about how much she hated him.
“You need to get over him,” declared Jules.
“No, she needs to get under another male,” giggled Lila.
“I haven’t met anyone I want to date,” said Susie. Yes, there were plenty of nice males in the Rose wolf pack, but she wasn’t about to get entangled with another wolf.
Candace snorted. “Who said anything about dating? We’re in Vegas, go grab someone for a one nighter.”
“I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I…”
It wasn’t something she did. No, she’d spent her whole life with one guy and had always been with him, and that blew up in her face. They had known each other for years before they had sex. She wasn’t sure she had the nerve to have sex with someone she’d only known for minutes.
“What about that guy at the bar?” whispered Lila, pointing.
“Where?”
Susie looked up and down seeing a handful of men in expensive suits with slicked-back hair and just plain slick smiles. The only other male had his back to them, and frankly, given the way his muscles and tattoos bulged, he looked like the Hulk’s larger, scarier brother. Susie was strangely aware of that guy the moment he walked in. He came in with another hulking male, but the other male was soon snapped up by a female. Her guy, though, while females approached him, resolutely seemed to prefer to drink alone. Not that she had been tracking his movements… he’d been to the bathroom once and was in there for two minutes. It wasn’t her fault - he just kind of drew the eye.
“The only one alone,” hissed Candace.
Yep, they were talking about the giant guy.
Instinctively, Susie blushed as her eyes wandered over all those muscles. “You’re kidding, he’s… not my type.”
“He’s sexy,” purred Lila.
“Sure in a ‘stay away from me’ kind of way,” admitted Susie.
The guy was huge – at least six and a half feet tall. He was hunched over, moodily staring at his beer. From their safe distance, Susie had noticed him – it was hard not to. Muscles and tattoos swelled out from under the short sleeves of his t-shirt, coupled with the buzzcut and worn jeans, he easily stood out amongst the suits and primped men in there. She was amazed they let him into the club, but then, who would be dumb enough to try and stop him?
A couple of women, all tall, leggy and wearing scraps of material as dresses, approached him. Susie and all her she-wolf friends watched with interest as he sent them on their way. Why on earth would he welcome Susie’s attention?
“Just go for it,” insisted Jules. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
Well, she could walk over there, slip on an olive that had fallen on the floor, and then impale her eye on a drinking straw. That was just one scenario that sprang to mind.
“He looks like he wants to be left alone.”
“Well, just try and join him,” encouraged Candace, “if he says no, he says no – it’s not the end of the world.”
“There are worse things than some barfly not wanting to get a drink with you,” added Lila.
She knew that - she had lived through one of them quite recently.
“If he does want a drink, then charm him.”
Jules winked at her. Yeah, it was that easy. They forgot that the last time she had to charm a male she was only eight – she didn’t think that pushing muscles into the dirt and running away was an option now.
“I’m not sure I know how to flirt,” she admitted.
It had been so easy with Allen – after she made him eat dirt, she thought they were set for life.
Candace sniffed. “If I’m not mistaken, he’s a wolf shifter. I bet he’s great in bed.”
Big for a wolf thought Susie, idly wondering if she would feel suffocated under all that bulk. Generally, wolf shifters topped six-foot-one or two.
“Just the thing to forget the idiot ex,” sang Lila.
“I don’t know.”
She did not want to get involved with a wolf shifter again. But they weren’t talking about a long-term commitment…
“Well, maybe I should go over there then…” Lila started licking her lips.
Susie scowled, not liking the sound of that at all.
Jules nudged Susie’s elbow. “C’mon, one night with the wolf – what could it hurt?”