Blurb
Summer Grussell’s brother vanished six months ago. When some others are sent to help the rogue pack, she goes, too, to look for him. Christopher Blake and Roland Ellis take one look at Summer and wonder if she’s the mate they’ve been looking and hoping for.
Chris, Roland, and six other men left their pack in Idaho after their Alpha refused to accept the Supreme Alpha’s ruling that ménages and interspecies marriages were permitted. They’ve moved to the Nevada desert and established a new community. Now all they need is to find a way to survive and then they can look for mates.
Alpha Wolfric is going to help them settle in the desert, and maybe, just maybe, Summer will be their woman. If she can forgive them for accidentally kidnapping Jaz. And if they can adjust to the heat. And then there’s the tiny problem of how to earn a living in the middle of nowhere.
STORY EXCERPT
“Sit down, Tony.”
“Don’t be such an idiot, Boyd. You’ll get arrested.”
Summer flicked her gaze up into the rearview mirror of the school bus in time to see two boys with their naked asses pressed to the windows as a Jeep passed them on the track. A lot of screaming was coming from the very back of the bus, where a fight seemed to have broken out.
So many kids were out of their seats and moving around now the bus was rocking, and Summer eased off the accelerator, reached for her microphone and ordered, “Everyone sit down please.”
No one paid her any attention. In fact, the shouting and screaming got louder. She slowed the big bus even farther and spoke again. “People, get back in your seats right now, thank you.”
No response.
Summer Grussell loved machinery, cars, trucks, anything with wheels. Even as a child she’d been more interested in playing with her older brother Kevin’s Tonka trucks than with her own Barbie dolls. So when he’d said he was visiting a friend for a few weeks she’d been happy to take over his job driving the school bus.
That had been six months ago and he still hadn’t returned, and right now she was no longer prepared to put up with the job. The kids had always been loud, unruly, and disrespectful, but this she was not prepared to tolerate. Even if it got her terminated.
She stopped the bus in the middle of the track and turned the engine, and therefore the air-conditioning, off. Then she stood up and starting taking pictures on her cell phone. The first ones she took were images of the naked rear ends of the two older teenage boys who seemed to consider mooning any passing traffic, or the other kids on the bus, funny.
She sent the pictures to her own e-mail account immediately, in case one of the kids took the cell phone from her, and snapped several pictures of a group of middle school children standing in the center of the bus, pushing and shoving each other. The rules were that all children must remain seated until the bus stopped. Technically it had just stopped, but no one seemed to have noticed that yet.
She sent those pictures to her e-mail as well. Finally she snapped a few general crowd shots in case the faces of the misbehaving ones weren’t clear. It’d be obvious who they were by process of elimination.
She’d scarcely e-mailed them to herself when a couple of older boys yelled out, “Why the fuck have you stopped?”
She hit record on her phone just in time to catch the swear word, and grinned, sitting back in her seat but not answering. She took the precaution of putting her cell phone down her bra, still leaving it recording. There’d be no more pictures of course, but at least there’d be sound if one of those teenagers hit her, and anyone who took it from her would be up on charges of harassment.
“Hey, bitch, driver, I’m talking to you. Why aren’t you driving the damn bus?”
Summer continued to wait, hoping her cell phone caught the noise gradually abating. Only when the bus was comparatively quiet did she speak again. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you care to be seated, and if those older gentlemen, put their pants back on, then the bus will continue to take you home.”
She watched in the rear view mirror. There was some soft snickering and giggling, and most of the fighting middle school students had returned to their seats, but a group of older boys had not. Right then the two ringleaders, turned around and mooned her.
Damn. I wish I’d gotten that on my phone.
Maybe some of the other students would have taken a picture.
The two boys swaggered up to the front of the bus. Fortunately they’d pulled their jeans up so she wasn’t forced to see their genitals.
One of them leaned right over into her personal space and said, “Who do you think you are, bitch? Drive the fucking bus.”
“Yeah,” added the other one helpfully.
“It will be my pleasure to drive the bus, once you’re all seated. Health and safety regulations require all students to be in their seats when the bus is moving.”
“I don’t want to sit down and you can’t make me.”
The boy clearly expected her to argue with him, but Summer looked through him, to the rest of the passengers. Some of the other boys were coming forward now. She was starting to feel a little nervous. They were only teenagers but there were half a dozen of them and they would be more than a match for a sole woman. Thank God her phone was taping this altercation.
“If you aren’t going to drive we’ll throw you off the bus and drive it ourselves,” said the boy.
“Yeah,” said his friend, who was definitely just a follower.
“Do you have a drivers’ license for buses?” she asked.
“He hasn’t even gotten his license to drive a car yet. Sit down and stop being a fucking retard, Boyd. It’s hot and I want the air conditioning back on and I want to go home.” The speaker was an older girl, and several other people echoed her comment. Two of the boys standing in the aisle disappeared back to their seats.
As if the girl had unleashed their voices, a chorus of other children called out, saying they were hot, too, and telling the boys to sit down and be quiet.
“I still say we throw the bitch off the bus and drive it ourselves,” argued Boyd.
“Yeah.”
Summer was beginning to think she might have to fight them off. She absolutely couldn’t let them attempt to drive the bus and risk the lives of thirty other children just to stroke their testosterone-fueled male egos. But fortunately the older girl who’d spoken first stood up in her seat holding her cell phone in the air.
“I’ve pressed 9-1-1. On the count of three I’m pressing call. One… two—”
Everyone in the aisle raced for their seats except Boyd and his echo. But the follower did show a modicum of sense. He tapped Boyd’s arm and said, “Um. Boyd?”
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Buy link: http://www.bookstrand.com/rogue-seduction
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