Free The Alpha's Mate by Eve Adrian

The Alpha's Mate
    Kelly Shaw should have spent more time researching the bar and less time making sure her notes were perfectly assembled for ease of readability. The exterior of Cafe Merge did little to suggest the loud interior that didn't look like any cafe that Kelly had ever seen. The room felt clustered and loud. Dark red curtains hung from the walls, interspersed only by metal light fixtures which barely cast illumination worthy of the room. A few tables dotted the corners of the room, but a massive bar overtook one of the walls and the mainstay of the room was the dance floor full of writhing bodies of men and women. None of the brochures had made Boise seem like a place with much nightlife, especially of the hedonistic variety, so surely this must have been one of the few bars of it's kind in the city. How on Earth had Kelly managed to choose this one?
    The outside was perfectly unassuming. Nestled in an old brick building, Cafe Merge looked like any other restaurant. No bouncer stood outside the door, no line waited to enter. Of course, seven o'clock at night was probably a little early for the main crowd, but no one had even tried to make it seem like the cafe was anything other than a restaurant. Kelly had ordered her dinner from the limited menu, already noting the club-like atmosphere, but it wasn't until the bass started thumping and the lights dimmed to barely perceivable levels that she understood she was not where she wanted to be.
    But the food was okay, so she stayed long enough to eat, besides, being the new girl in town, she couldn't afford to pay for two meals in a single night. Kelly didn't plan to end up in Boise, Idaho, but she had always knows she would live out west. It was not only the call of the beautiful mountains and lakes, the wilderness that spread on for days and days until civilization was just the faintest of memories. The west was on of the few places left with wild wolves. Their reintroduction over the past several years had spurred on her hope of being able to study them in the field, and already her dreams were coming true.
    At twenty-nine she had just finished her PhD at the University of Oregon and had been selected to do post-doctoral work with an animal research project right out of Boise. They studied migration patterns and were performing studies to ascertain whether projects to expand the reintroduction of the wolf into the wild would be beneficial to modern life. And she would start tomorrow at Silver Sky Research.
    As she prepared to leave, something gave her pause. Kelly looked around, trying to identify the sight, or the sound, or the smell that froze her in place. Her eyes had long since adjusted to the dim and she could make out several people around the room. For a moment she paused at the site of an attractive, tanned man with dark hair, but dragged her gaze away after a moment. It wasn't him. Though she could not for the life of her say what it was.
    And there he was.
    He was everything.
    The thoughts crashed into her at the same time and Kelly rocked in her seat from the shock of the contact. Attraction, heat, lust, the urge to rut and rut until there was nothing left but the two of them flooded through her and she felt her nipples harden under the practical fabric of her beige bra.
    Who was he?
    The man held court beside the bar, perched atop a stool. Each of the men and women around him kept anyone else a safe distance away. From this distance Kelly couldn't make out everything about him, but she stalked across the floor, closer and closer, before she could even contemplate her actions. The man wore a black leather jacket left open over a gray top and tight, oh so tight, jeans which trailed down to serviceable shoes. His brown hair hung around his shoulders and his brown eyes tilted up. He exuded the tightly coiled power of a born leader.
    Boldness flowed through her as she surged forward through the throng, not edging along the dance floor, but cutting directly