Unexpectedly Mated

For crying out loud! Nicole Acosta tugged the earpiece out and glared at it. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Emma, heck, most of the time she pretty much ignored her friend. Emma was just…bossy. Yeah, bossy. But tonight, that wasn’t the problem. She glared into the darkness. There better not be any mosquitoes or she’d go ballistic. Already her skin crawled with the thought of what could be in the area. She shoved the ear piece back in. “It’s only for a little while,” Jordan said. “We’ll be out of here in no time, Nic.” Right. Not frickin’ likely. She bit her lip to swallow the yell she wanted to throw at her friends. There were bugs all over the place and she and bugs did not mix. She’d have to buy new trainers after this. There was no way in hell she’d wear those mud-covered ones again. “It’s not the end of the world,” Emma whispered. “We all agreed to come and do this for Ellie. Just suck it up.” Suck it up? Easy for her to say. Emma loved the outdoors and all that stuff. Outdoors to Nic meant the park. Or the pool. Now here she was, like a deranged teenager, spying on a scent ritual that was sacred to Ellie’s people. All for what? To catch a glimpse of Jake Wolfe. That philandering mutt. She couldn’t help herself, she peeked over the ceremony site where Mrs. Wolfe or as she preferred to be called, Barbara, motioned the guys into the woods. Ellie said they’d be on watch. Something moved on Nic’s leg. Oh God. Was it a snake? She peered into the darkness and swatted away whatever crawled on her. The things she did for her insatiable crush on Jake. It’d been that way from the first time she’d met him. And what a way to meet a man that had been. If first impressions were everything, Nic got the best first impression of Jake ever. She’d visited Ellie’s house for a weekend sleepover when they’d been in college. Their gazes met and she swore she’d been electrocuted. She’d been rooted to the spot like an i***t, staring at his hunkiness in all his wet and naked glory with stars in her eyes. Well, that’s what he loved to tell her. From that moment on, Nic knew she couldn’t let Jake get to her. He was the world’s biggest flirt, used to women falling to his feet. And while she wasn’t familiar with the whole love thing, she knew all about lust. He’d smiled one time. That’s all it took. For him to show her that dimple she adored and her girly bits had readied for surrender. Not to mention her brain cells had gone AWOL. It was pathetic. It was also the reason why she’d let herself get talked into sitting on a picnic blanket, with her knees to her chest. She still couldn’t figure out what made the noise in the grass. Maybe Ellie was wrong. What if there were snakes there? A firefly zoomed around her. She watched the tiny bug light up the dark with its yellow glow, zipping and buzzing back and forth in front of her. Some bugs weren’t so scary. From far away. Her attention shot down to the blanket in the darkness. She’d swear it moved again. Her mind ran on overdrive and she knew the likelihood of her seeing s**t that wasn’t even there was big. She took a deep breath and sighed. Her muscles ached from how tense she held herself. The night’s coolness did nothing to stop the heat from the earlier part of the day. Her tank top stuck to her back. She yanked on the front part and blew on her boobs. Thank goodness she was alone or she’d look so stupid doing that. The others had gone silent. She wondered what they were up to. Where they as freaked out as her? Probably not. She’d bet Emma would live in the damn forest if she got a chance. Leaves crunched from a nearby bush. With an agility she knew she didn’t possess, she got on her knees on the blanket. The noise in the trees increased. Fear froze the blood in her veins. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears along with the sound of the harsh breaths that struggled in and out of her lungs. There was a wild animal near her. Holy. s**t. “Oh, hell no!” There was no way she would sit around to find out what the heck was in the bush. She struggled to her feet. Her leg had gone numb so she had to put her weight, which was not just a couple of pounds, on her other leg. Screw the video, she’d return in the morning and remove the camera. She bent and yanked her bag from the blanket. Something poked at her ass. She turned on her heel to run. Her knees hit a big lump of...fur? Her body did a full flip over the big furry body and she landed on her back with a thud, half on and half off the blanket. “Ouch!” Within seconds, a furry face she knew all too well came into view. “Jake?” The big wolf lowered his head down to her face and licked her cheek. Figured. He was such a horndog. Even in his animal shape, he was still a flirt. “Jake, I’m sure you have better things to do than scare me half to death.” Then, when she remembered where she lay, she scooted up to sit on the blanket. “I need to get out of here before something else crawls on my leg.” Jake growled. She widened her eyes in disbelief. “Did you just growl at me you big mutt?” The wolf prowled around her in a full circle. She couldn’t figure out what the hell Jake thought he was doing, but she had to get off that grass. There was s**t in it and she couldn’t see it for the life of her. She lifted a hand to her ear. The others were much too quiet. Her hand touched a small diamond stud. She’d lost the ear piece. “f**k!”