Excerpt of Love Binds by Cynthia St. Aubin

“Listen here, you.” Allan dumped ice from the brushed metal bucket into a cut crystal glass, glancing at my discarded sweat pads with a mix of irritation and exasperation. “There ain’t no one ‘ere that’s got a more legitimate claim to rule as you. And if they tell you any different, they can bloody well wank a walrus.”

“Wow,” I said, always amused by his posh-cockney accent. “That’s an oddly specific image.”

Lifting a pristine-looking gin and tonic to his lips, Allan took a healthy slug. “Oh gawd, did I need that.” He exhaled, his shoulders lowering from his earlobes. “Strikes me that the real problem ain’t that the other shifters don’t believe that you’re the true alpha.”

“Then what is?” I asked.

“That you don’t,” Allan said. He really did have the most annoying habit of staring directly into my psyche.

“I feel attacked.” I sank onto the chaise longue, the corset keeping my back brutally straight in a way that was both restrictive and comforting. As if my inability to breathe was the fault of the dress instead of a generalized anxiety disorder.

Allan plopped down next to me, sending up a waft of crisp, expensive cologne, soap, and gin. “I know this is all disgustingly overwhelmin’, but here’s the thing. Werewolves are pack animals, love. As long as you can win over their alphas, everyone else’ll ‘ave no choice but to accept you.”

“And how exactly am I supposed to win them over when I can’t even shift? Isn’t that like the most basic requirement?”

“Not necessarily.” Allan raised one dark, expertly-manscaped eyebrow in a sly expression.

“Well?” I prompted, hoping for some kind of magic bullet.

“Alpha energy.” Allan sipped at his drink, the ice clinking in his glass. “Part of being an alpha is knowin’ that you’ve got bollocks the size of grapefruits knockin’ about between your legs.”

“Um, I literally do not have that,” I reminded him.

“Right,” he said. “You just need to make ‘em think that you think you do.”

A fresh film of sweat bloomed beneath my arms. “Basically the best advice that a millennia-old werewolf can offer is fake it till you make it?” 

“Basically yes.” Allan took another sip of his drink. “Take Henry Cavil, for instance.”

“He’s okay, I guess,” I said, flicking a careful look at Abernathy. “If you like the sweary and stabby type.”

“Now, if he can go from a rosy-cheeked lad to sword-wielding sociopath monster slayer with just the addition of a white wig and a bit of gruntin’, surely you can do the same.”

“You want me to wear a wig?” I asked, not entirely certain where he was going with this, but grateful for the mental imagery all the same.

“What I mean,” he said, resting a hand on my knee through the lush tartan, “and don’t take this the wrong way, love, but perhaps talkin’ less and practicin’ your resting bitch face might be in your best interest?”

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You want me to win over the alphas by not talking to them?”

Abernathy cleared his throat, walking to the drink cabinet to set his glass aside. “It’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”

Were my ribs not being slowly crushed into my lungs, I might have snatched the lace-up Mary Jane from my foot and lobbed it at him. I settled for a someone is totally not getting laid until my willpower breaks in a couple hours look.

“There!” Allan said excitedly. “That’s perfect!”

“Well, I’ll do my best to keep exactly one expression on my face all evening and prevent words from coming out of it at all costs.”

“Speakin’ of,” Allan cut in, casting a pointed glance at Abernathy. “Were you planning on getting’ dressed Mr. Insist that Everyone Wear a Kilt?”

Abernathy stalked to the wardrobe and lifted the hangers bearing his clothes. “Five minutes,” he said, closing the bathroom door behind him.

“Five minutes,” Allan mocked, reaching down to smooth a hand over his kilt. “I can’t believe he talked me into this. The eel and two pearls, hanging out there for the world to see. A breeze blowing round the ol’ rope.”

“You could wear skivvies,” I said.

Swirling his drink, Allan drained the few remaining sips before setting it on the round wooden table next to the chaise. “That’s what’s a matter with you pups today. No respect for tradition.”

“Ready?”

I turned, and promptly had to peel my jaw off the Persian rug.

Seeing Abernathy’s outfit on the hanger did exactly nothing to prepare me for the sight of them on the man himself.

He stood in the doorway to the bathroom. Crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the crooks of his elbows, a vest black as night, a kilt of the Abernathy tartan with the barest hint of his powerful thigh muscles below the hemline, his painfully perfect, muscular calves bulging beneath the cream-colored knit fabric of the kilt hose.

 I had seen him in a traditional Scottish garb once before, for Steve and Shayla’s wedding, but something about that outfit in the current context had me spinning into vivid fantasies of boning on horseback as we tore across the emerald carpet of the surrounding moors.