The Mate Challenge (BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance) (Sassy Mates Book 4) (6 page)

She knew that though. Her entire body was big all over. She didn’t mind. Fuck that. She’d learned to embrace it and loved her body. Still, it was awesome to hear Mason tell her how much he liked her body. How much he was turned on by her curves. It was like living her own porn movie. A hot man wanting to fuck her all the time and telling her how hot she was. It didn’t get better than that.

“Big is sexy,” he growled.

“I’m big all over,” she grinned.

“Everything about you is gorgeous. From your pretty tits down to your hot pussy.”

She bit her lip and pushed her ass out some more. He spread her cheeks open and fingered her hole. “I’ll get in here, but not now. Tonight I want to fuck your pussy and come hard in you.”

He pushed his cock into her from behind, holding her by the hips as he drove forward. She gasped, unable to do more than close her eyes and moan. He propelled back and immediately plunged even deeper into her.

“Fuck!” He growled.

Emma clawed at the metal under her hands. She had nothing to hold on to, but was lucky he had a tight grip on her hips as he drove forward repeatedly.

“More,” she demanded breathlessly. “Keep going.”

Mason twined his hand into her hair and tugged, pulling her head back to make her meet his gaze.

“You’re mine, Emma.”

She mewled. Her body burned with how hot she was inside. He released her hip and slammed a hand on her cheek.

Slap

The stinging caught her by surprise. He’d hit her harder than before. Another plunge and he continued fucking her mercilessly from behind.

“Oh, God!” She screeched as her body tightened.

Another stinging tap on her cheek and she groaned.

Slap

“Your pussy squeezes my dick when I slap your ass. It feels fucking amazing.” He snarled. “Let’s get you over the edge, baby. I love feeling the gush of wetness from your pussy when I go so deep inside you. It feels like I’m in heaven and then you come.”

She leaned most of her body on the car, hoping she didn’t slide down the side. “Mason, I...I’m so close.”

“Let’s finish it.” He whispered from behind, scraping his canines over her shoulder. Not enough to break skin, just enough to drive her crazy. He drove faster. Harder. Rougher. “Take my cock. Fuck, your pussy’s rippling around my dick.”

Emma gasped. Her body froze and a sudden unraveling assaulted her. Waves of pleasure stroked through her body, liquefying her bones and muscles. She tried to catch her breath as he continued to fuck her with more speed. He yanked on her hair as his thrusts slowed down and his body tensed behind her.

“I fucking love how you suck my dick with your wet pussy.” He growled and then howled. “So wet. So hot,” he choked. “Want my cum deep inside you. My mate.”

Emma lay sprawled over the trunk of the car, hoping he’d help her into the car because her legs stopped functioning a while back. Mason pulled out of her and lifted her into his arms to put her in the passenger seat. She yanked the blanket she carried in the backseat and covered herself with it.

“Let’s go home,” he said, slipping into the driver’s side. He glanced at her with a serious gaze. “Don’t think that I’ve forgotten what we discussed.”

“Mason...” Geez he was going to talk about that now?

“Your life is important, Emma. There’s not buts here.”

She licked her dry lips and sighed. “Fine. Can we go home? I need a nap.”

“We’ll get you a bath and bed.” He said, starting the car.

“Can I get another spanking?” She grinned.

He laughed, pulled onto the same dirt road they’d been on before. “You enjoyed it too much. You’re not supposed to.”

She cleared her throat. “Okay. Next time I’ll try to remember not to enjoy it so much.”

He glanced at her from the driver’s side with a grin that made her girl bits sigh. “You’ll always enjoy it. Your pleasure is my ultimate goal in everything.”

“I can live with that.”

Aria glanced at the group assembled in her study. She’d called on her advisors to find out if anyone knew what was going on at Embraced. If a human girl was taken or worse, used as a blood slave, she needed to know.

“I won’t tolerate lies,” she said with steel in her voice.

She paced the large study, her red heels clicking on the marble floor. The mansion had been in her family for generations. As the daughter of a blood born and a blood born herself, she led her clan with strict rules.

“Aria, maybe you’re going a bit overboard,” her secretary said softly. Chantal didn’t normally argue with Aria’s commands, so this was new.

Aria swirled to face the other woman. Chantal didn’t cower like most would. She knew Aria didn’t want to hurt them. There was a first time for everything.

“I don’t think that human’s disappearing and being linked to Embraced is going overboard,” she snapped. “This is how wars begin. Rumors.”

“Mistress, if I may,” Claude, her cousin tried to intervene, “I understand where you are coming from, but we’ve stayed out of the shifter war.”

True. But she had a feeling something was going on that she didn’t know about. That child had to be linked to either the southern clan or her own. If someone was using human blood slaves, her clan could be at war themselves soon. Not only with the shifters, but with the humans as well.

“Humans do not go into Embraced,” she restated, marching to the large window by her desk where the moon shone through brightly. At least she still had that, the brightness of the moon. She’d stopped walking in the daylight just a few short years back, but she still missed the sun.

“I have not heard of any reports of a human going into Embraced,” Anton, her oldest advisor said. Anton had been with the clan since her great grandparents’ time. He’d been the one to tell her parents’ of her grandparents’ death. Older than most of the others, he didn’t turn until he was almost sixty, almost four hundred years back. But he wasn’t a blood born like Aria, so he wasn’t as strong.

Aria, whose family blood line directly connected her back to Miralla Abarca passed their power and strength to each blood born. Though he was older than Aria, he had a tendency of treating her as if she were still a little girl learning how to lead. “You shouldn’t worry over humans, Aria. That’s what we are here for. To take care of those matters.”

Aria stopped herself from the instant urge to turn and lift Anton by the throat. She counted to ten and back. Lately, she felt as though everyone thought she was nothing more than a child. She glanced back at the group with pursed lips. “I will not ignore what is under our noses, Anton.”

“Yes, child—”

“Don’t—,” she gritted her teeth, “call me child again.” Her Spanish accent came through more pronounced when she was angry. At that moment, she was livid. “Matters of the clan are my responsibility. It is not your job to decide what I should or should not worry about.”

Anton lowered his head in acknowledgement. “I understand.”

Aria gave a sharp nod. “I want to know if there have been humans at Embraced.”

“Aria, that goes against the rules. Who would be stupid enough to allow a human in there?” Chantal exclaimed, she stared at her folded hands on her lap. Chantal had been assigned to Aria since her birth. Though Chantal was at least one hundred years older than Aria, she treated her like a sister. As an only child, Aria had appreciated having someone who she could be close to, but that didn’t mean she would allow Chantal or anyone else to undermine her authority.

Before she got a chance to reply to Chantal’s words, Claude cleared his throat. “Perhaps we don’t know enough.”

Anton turned his head to glare at Claude. “Foolish boy, of course we know. I know. No one is allowing humans in the club. They know the rules.”

Aria glanced back out her window. The hairs on her arms raised and for a second she swore someone out there was watching her. Impossible. Everyone was gone for the night and the only people in the mansion were there with her. The guards were out front, so the idea was ludicrous. Still, a sliver of discomfort kept her staring into the woods.

“Do you have anything in mind about this human problem?” Anton asked. His tone was high with a sort of whininess she hated. He only used it when he thought she was being stupid or dramatic.

“Yeah,” she snapped. “Try finding out if anyone knows where the human girl is!”

Chantal rolled her eyes. “How did you even find out about the kid? If we didn’t know, how do you?”

Aria moved fast, picking Chantal up by the throat and shoving her up a wall filled with books. A collection of priceless first volumes fell to the ground as Chantal’s back slammed on the row of books.

“I don’t need to explain myself to you,” Aria muttered, her fangs descending. Unlike most humans believed, fangs didn’t just peek when a vampire was going to bite. They descended whenever a spike in emotions happened. Whether thirst, anger, or even sexual excitement.

“I’m sorry,” Chantal squeaked through the vice of Aria’s hand on her throat.

She let Chantal fall to the floor with a thump and turned to the others in the group. “I want information on the girl. Who took her and why. I don’t want our clan pulled into a shifter war. If they want to kill themselves, I’m fine with that. The minute it is said vampires are responsible for any human deaths, we’ll have our own war on our hands.”

The two men nodded quietly. She didn’t miss the flash of anger in Anton’s gaze, nor the frown on Claude’s. Good. Maybe now they’d start to realize she wasn’t a child any longer. She was their leader and if they wanted to stay in her family, they’d need to start paying attention to her orders.

A shifter war was fine with her. Her clan getting pulled into it? That was the last thing they needed. She’d find that child. Even if she had to do it on her own.

* * *

Emma sipped on her coffee while staring off into space. She needed to do something. Maria’s mother had called her again, desperate to know if Emma had discovered anything about her daughter’s whereabouts. It had sickened her to hear the poor woman crying over her missing child. Emma didn’t have the heart to tell her that her daughter might be dead due to vampires.

“That bad, huh?” Ellie’s voice asked from the entrance to her room.

She hadn’t even heard Ellie enter her classroom. Glancing around the empty room, she focused her gaze on her friend. Ellie’s hair was already growing from the short spiky cut she’d recently gotten. If only Emma’s hair grew that quickly. She worried over cutting her long locks because it took forever for it to grow. The memory of her mother filled her brain. She used to tell her ‘you get what you get and you don’t get upset.’ That was her answer to all of Emma and her brother’s complaints when they’d been kids.

The sound of the chair scraping close to her desk pulled her out of her memories. She watched Ellie sit with a deep frown. “Come on, Em, tell me what’s wrong?”

Ellie leaned forward, staring deep into Emma’s eyes.

“Nothing.”

“Emma...”

Damn. That’s right. Ellie could tell when she was lying. “Fine. Sorry. I’m still trying to figure out how to find out if Maria got into Embraced.”

Ellie placed a warm hand over Emma’s fisted one on the table and patted her softly. “The best thing to do is let Mason find out what he can for you.”

She shook her head. “I can’t just sit here doing nothing. It’s going to drive me insane. Not to mention I keep hearing poor Maria’s mother’s voice in my head asking me to help her find her daughter.”

“Geez!” Ellie leaned back and brushed a blonde lock of hair behind her ear. “Well what do you have in mind?”

She needed to get into Embraced. But how? “Well...”

“Oh, no. I know that look,” Ellie exclaimed, rubbing a hand on her temple. “You’re going to get us arrested again.”

“Why are we getting arrested?” Nicole asked, joining them with a box labeled from their favorite pastry shop.

“What’s that?” Ellie asked, reaching out for the box.

“Cream puffs, mini éclairs, short breads, cookies, cannoli, etc. I had a hard time picking just one.”

“They all sound so good,” Ellie groaned. She tore at the tape holding the lid on the box closed. “But why are we indulging in this awesomeness?”

Nic grinned. “It’s Thursday. We grade papers and eat pastry on Thursdays.”

Emma laughed at Ellie’s dumbfounded expression. “Ellie, you forgot it’s Thursday?”

Ellie sighed, the previous lighthearted mood slipped from her features to show lines of concern. “I’ll be honest. I have a hard time keeping anything straight other than what is going on with our pack.”

“Is something new going on?” Emma asked, instantly interested.

Ellie shrugged. “I think so, but I’m not sure. It’s getting close to fall and kids tend to run wild, going off to parties and spending time away from their families. Some of them forget to tell their parents they’re doing stuff with their friends.”

An internal alarm went off inside Emma. She’d been aware that shifter teens, much like their human counterparts, loved to socialize and spend time outdoors.

“What does that have to do with the problems with Rahound?”

Ellie winced. “With the number of rogues in the area, a lot of parents are worried over their daughters out there, so we put out more enforcers to watch things. But we’re still getting the random missing person report.”

Emma had known that the shifters kept a close eye on their offspring. Wolf mothers were extremely overprotective and would kill anyone who dared harm one of their cubs.

“Are any of them official or is this just some parent that freaked because their kid didn’t get home by curfew?” Nicole asked, diving into the box and pulling out a cream puff.

“So far, nothing really worrisome.”

Emma eyed her friend carefully. Ellie didn’t mention anything unless something else brought it on. “But?”

Ellie grinned and picked up an éclair. “But I am worried that if one of our girls disappears, things will take a turn for the worse.”

“Has anyone bothered to try and speak to the rogues or whoever their leader is?” Nic asked.

“That’s an idea,” Emma agreed. “We have no idea if they would be forthcoming with information or possibly say something that could tip us off on what they have planned.”

Ellie licked some of the cream from her fingers, picked up a napkin and dabbed her lips. “That’s not usually how it works with rogues. Most of the time there is no single leader, but if there happens to be one, then he isn’t usually interested in pack politics.”

“Can the rogue leader be female?” Emma asked, curiosity piqued.

“I guess. I don’t see why not. We don’t really hear of a rogue leader, period. Most of the time they’re a bunch of criminal shifters that don’t want to follow pack laws or human laws. They defy everything and refuse to listen to anyone but themselves,” Ellie’s lips tipped downward.

Someone should try to speak to the rogues. Or at least listen to what the heck they were up to. They had to be going somewhere that the Wolfes weren’t owners of. Shifters liked to go into bars and hook up with others of their kind. They were sexual creatures. If a bunch of male rogues were in the area, they had to be looking for females somewhere. But where?