Wendy's Wild Wolves [Shy River Pack 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Read Online Free

she said to the wolf. “Beautiful morning, isn’t it?”
    The wolf took that as an invitation to climb onto the veranda and flop down at her feet with an annoyed-sounding huff. She’d been up late last night writing the end to her newest story, so her morning coffee was a lot later than her usual crack-of-dawn routine. The later timing of her morning ritual seemed to have annoyed the wolf. Apparently sleeping in was not a way to make her wolves happy.
    “Sorry,” she said reaching down to rub the fur behind the wolf’s ear. “I finally managed to get that story ending right last night, but it took a lot longer than I’d been planning.”
    The wolf pricked its ears her way, gave her what she assumed was the wolfy equivalent of a happy smile, and then settled at her feet once more.
    “I hope my readers will like this one,” she said as she absently petted the wolf’s furry belly with her bare foot. “It’s a little bit different to the others, but I needed the change.” The wolf made a moaning sound that seemed suspiciously like agreement. Thank heavens she’d never told anyone about her closest friends and their seemingly human-type reactions. She’d surely be locked in a rubber room if she claimed a smart-ass cockatoo and two wild wolves understood every word she said.
    No, that observation was best kept to herself.
     
    * * * *
     
    Donovan Taylor watched the surveillance footage and smiled at his lover getting a belly rub from a woman they’d both grown to like. They’d been on this assignment for forty-four years now, but it was only in the past year that things had at least become more interesting. Wendy Roberts was a beautiful soul—creative, caring, friendly—and made the monotony of protecting an ungrateful charge more interesting.
    Even without audio feed Donovan could hear that rotten feather-covered fraud teasing Sogarn. More than once Donovan had considered going with his wolfy instincts and eating the noisemaker, but that would end their assignment and in all likelihood put them back in the middle of pack life.
    Of course, eating the being they’d been assigned to protect wouldn’t go down well with their alpha and might even be the excuse he used to finally banish them from the pack. Considering the alpha’s attitude toward them, Donovan could quite happily live without the wolf’s bigotry, but the pack was important to Sogarn, so Donovan controlled his instincts and stayed close to his packmate. At least with this assignment they were alone together and not under the constant scrutiny of every busybody wolf trying to ingratiate themselves with the alpha.
    But there were times when the punishment almost seemed worth the satisfaction of using the bird as a chew toy. Polly was an annoying pain in the ass who’d never known anything but a pampered life—even before he’d taken up residence as a spoiled family pet. From Donovan’s perspective, the only downside to eating the bird was that they would no longer have an excuse to be close to Wendy.
    And staying close to Wendy seemed like such a good idea. The asshole who’d attacked her three months ago hadn’t come back, but Donovan knew both he and Sogarn would be there if he ever did. Their only regret was that the violent monster had managed to make it into the house in the first place.
    A tiny warning siren started to bleep, so Donovan leaned over the console and brought up the road map for the area. They’d managed to extend their surveillance perimeter all the way to the edge of the highway, so it wasn’t uncommon for cars to wander into the zone. Fortunately, most seemed to be lost and quickly headed back the way they’d come. Wendy seemed less inclined to having visitors than her grandmother had been, so for the most part things were very quiet. From a security perspective it was perfect, but after forty-four years of the same assignment, it was getting harder and harder to stay focused.
    Truly the only excitement they’d had