Better Mate Than Never (New Adult Werewolf Romance) by Adriana Hunter Read Free Book Online Page A

mounting. She was typing up some
legal forms for a client, and she had to go back and reword the legalese.
Mostly because of the man standing in the corner of the room, his eyes glued to
her every move, making it hard for her to focus.
    “Can’t you just
give me a bit of space?” she snapped, not for the first time as she swiveled
her chair around to face him. “I can’t focus when you’re staring at me like
that.”
    The
guard—his name was Matt, she remembered—shrugged. “Mr. Stone told
me that I wasn’t allowed to take my eyes off you. I work for him, therefore I
follow his orders, not yours.”
    “I’m pretty
certain that Mr. Stone doesn’t mean for you to disrupt my work while you’re
guarding me.”
    “I’m pretty
certain he doesn’t care what I have to do, as long as you’re safe.”
    Paige gave
him a baleful glare, but gave up when he simply stared at her impassively.
    “Fine. I’m
going to the bathroom. You can guard the door, but you are not coming in
with me.”
    For a split
second, she thought he might actually argue with her. Then he shrugged and
pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt. “Ryan, I’m accompanying her to the
lavatory. I need you to on the south wall.”
    Paige rolled
her eyes as she stalked out of her office and down the hall. Great. She was
going to have one of them outside the door, and the other outside the wall.
Privacy was obviously a thing of the past for her. With a sigh, she shut the
bathroom door behind her and locked it, then turned around.
    The wall
exploded inward, and she screamed, shielding her face from flying glass and
drywall. From between her fingers, she saw some kind of hulking monster
standing in the newly created doorway—a beast, wolf-like, but larger,
fiercer.
    “Paige!” She
heard the door being smashed in behind her, but she didn’t have time to look
around—the thing grabbed her, tucking her under its shoulder, and bounded
through the hole in the wall. Shots rang out, and she felt a searing pain along
the back of her right calf. Ryan jumped in front of them, his gun in hand, but
it was like jumping in front of a bull—the monster simply grabbed him by
the throat and tossed him aside. Paige winced at the sickening crunch.
    “Let me go!”
She pounded on the side of the monster, and looked back over her shoulder to
see Matt chasing them at a dead run. Then suddenly they were racing through the
streets, flying off into the darkness of the forest that lined the county.
    She watched
the blur of greens and grey’s as they raced by, staring hopelessly as she
struggled between panic and lack of oxygen to breathe. Then they were in an
even greener, lush wooded area—somewhere close to a river. Great. No
civilization in sight.
    They suddenly
stopped in a clearing, where she was dropped unceremoniously onto the ground.
The beast growled, his large, sharp fangs framed in a hideous grin, then instantly,
in a blur of a few seconds he morphed into a tall, thin man with fiery red hair.
He turned to grin at her, his decaying teeth blackening his face, and she
gasped at the sight of him—the left side of his body was covered with
some kind of red and black tribal tattoo that continued down his neck and
disappeared beneath the collar of his black t-shirt.
    “You’re a
pretty little thing,” he observed in a voice that was like rough velvet. His
eyes, a pale yellow, gleamed. “Too bad you’re a contract job, or I might have
kept you for myself.”
    “Who are you?”
Paige threw up her hands, already on her feet.
    The
man— or beast —shrugged. “Who I am doesn’t matter. All you
need to know is that I work for whoever is willing to pay my price and today,
that means delivering you to the highest bidder.”
    “Delivering
me to who?” she demanded.
    “You’ll find
out soon enough.” The creature looked over his shoulder. “Here’s our ride now.”
    A black
Escalade pulled into the clearing, and the man with the scar on his face got
out. His stony