West Kiera - Convincing Ethan [Great Wolves of Passion Alaska 3] (Siren Publishing LoveXtreme Forever) Read online

  Great Wolves of Passion, Alaska 3

  Convincing Ethan

  Ethan has been in love with Eve since he met her. He knows that she is their mate. Still, he feels drawn to her mind as much as her sexy, curvy body. Since she is the one who nursed him back to health after his attack, he thinks that her feelings spring from saving his life. But, for him, that is enough.

  As Eve works side by side with Ethan, she finds a kindred spirit. He respects her mind and understands the way she thinks. It doesn’t hurt that he seems to know what she needs even before she does. She knows he thinks she doesn’t love him, and Eve decides to pull out all the stops to prove to the stubborn wolf she truly loves him.

  But, someone is still bent on attacking the pack, and as the violence escalates, Eve and the Dillons find they have no one to trust but each other.

  NOTE! You are purchasing Siren's newest serialized imprint, the LoveXtreme Forever Series. This is the third book in the Great Wolves of Passion, Alaska collection. These books are not stand alone and must be read in the numbered order. Each book may end on a cliffhanger but usually with a happy-for-now for the heroine and one or more men. The final book contains a happily forever after for the heroine and all her men.

  Genre: Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Paranormal, Vampires/Werewolves

  Length: 21,279 words

  CONVINCING ETHAN

  Great Wolves of Passion, Alaska 3

  Kiera West

  LOVEXTREME FOREVER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: LoveXtreme Forever

  CONVINCING ETHAN

  Copyright © 2011 by Kiera West

  E-book ISBN: 1-61034-655-6

  First E-book Publication: June 2011

  Cover design by Les Byerley

  All art and logo copyright © 2011 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of Convincing Ethan by Kiera West from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is Kiera West’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. West’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  www.BookStrand.com

  DEDICATION

  To my husband and girls. Thank you so much for the support.

  CONVINCING ETHAN

  Great Wolves of Passion, Alaska 3

  KIERA WEST

  Copyright © 2011

  Chapter One

  “I have never said this, but there is a good chance I might murder our mother,” Ethan said, unable to contain his irritation anymore. It had been over a two weeks since the attack, and his mother wouldn’t let him do a damned thing. His skin was starting to crawl from the inactivity. He needed to run and to run for a whole night. He hadn’t truly gone to wolf since before that night.

  Noah looked up over his laptop screen as Ethan paced the kitchen. The smile his brother shot in his direction said it all. There would be no help from Noah. Nobody wanted to even try to tell their mother no. Including their father, the former Alpha of the pack.

  “Coward,” Ethan sneered.

  “When it comes to Mother, completely,” Noah said, nodding.

  “Can’t you tell her to stop checking on me? Hell, Eve can do just fine taking care of me.”

  Noah snorted. “Mother knows better. With Eve being our mate, she knows you’ll strain yourself.”

  He said it with a perfectly straight face. Ethan stopped and stared at him. “I was wrong. I’ll just kill you. Then I’ll be Alpha and boss Mother around.”

  Noah snorted. “Yeah, good luck with that. First, no Alpha has been able to boss around the Alpha female. Won’t happen. Second, if you kill me, you’ll be stuck with the shit I have to put up with.” He glanced at the clock and sighed. “Like the meeting I have to go to right now. I hate meeting with the other Totem leaders.”

  Ethan thought of the endless politics, especially now after the attacks had gotten worse. Just dealing with the pack was bad enough. Tensions were high, and there was a growing unrest within the Passion Alaskan Preserve.

  “You’re right. Meetings are a good form of punishment for you.”

  Noah rose from his seat and grabbed the keys to his SUV. Another sign that things weren’t like they used to be. Noah wouldn’t have thought twice about going to wolf and letting off some steam with a run before a gathering. But with the problems they had been having, they only ran in packs for defense. One of the many orders that Noah had instituted since the fire. “Everyone else is out on patrol.”

  “Eve?” Ethan asked.

  Noah’s smile kicked up a notch. “She’s in the lab.”

  After Noah left, Ethan headed in the direction of his lab. It was funny how so much had changed in the last two weeks. Some good, some bad. Just a week before he would have sworn he would let no one in his lab. But when a wolf had been attacked, he and Eve had worked together to save the wolf. Now she came and went when she wanted. And he was loathe to complain. She had saved his life, and well, it just seemed right. He liked being in there with her, working side by side. There was something peaceful about having her by his side.

  He reached the door and watched her through the glass. When Noah had said he’d found their mate, Ethan hadn’t believed him. It was too early in their lives, since they lived
an average of one hundred fifty years. Most mates weren’t found until later in life, after they had a chance to sow their seed, so to speak.

  Until he met her. He had always had no problem controlling himself around women, but the moment he met Eve he had wanted to tear off her clothes and mount her. In the last week and half, he and Eve had shared pleasures, but not to the depth she and Ethan had. He knew the night they had declared their love for each other. It had been easy to see in the way they looked at each other.

  Love. It was an easy word to throw around. He had been in love with her since he met her. No. Wrong. He had been in lust. The moment he had caught her unique scent, he had thought of nothing more than sliding into her hot, tight passage and losing himself. Worse, once he had, as it was for his brother and cousins, he couldn’t even fantasize. Being near her had made it impossible. But once she’d been settled, he started reading up on her and doing a little research into her work. Through that and her kind, generous nature, he had fallen in love with her. It didn’t hurt that she was beautiful.

  Long red hair cascaded over her shoulders. She was wearing one of their shirts, his, he thought. It was entirely too big for her and a bit on the manly side, since it was a tailored white shirt. It fell to just above her knees, almost dwarfing her. He couldn’t stop the heat that flared at that thought. She was their mate, and he had no problem sharing her with his brother and his cousins. But there was something about seeing her in his clothes that brought out a primitive yearning he didn’t know he had before he met Eve. It had been growing each day he was in her presence. It was one of the reasons Ethan had avoided her until Noah had decided it was time to approach her. He hadn’t been too sure he could keep his hands off her.

  He cocked his head and studied her. She was reading a printout, probably something to do with her research. The shirt should have made her look masculine, but it didn’t. Instead, the way it enveloped her, along with the snug tank top and body-hugging yoga pants, provided plenty to prove she was a woman.

  As if she sensed him, she turned her head in the direction of the door. In the next instant, she smiled. The amazing wattage of that smile always shot straight to his heart.

  He opened the door and stepped inside. The moment he did, the scent of her smacked him hard. He drew in a deep breath, trying to calm his pounding heart. It was musky, female, and utterly Eve.

  “Hey, Ethan. I hope you don’t mind I was using your laptop to input my data. Noah is still being a bear about me going back to the cabin.”

  He chuckled. “Don’t let him know you called him a bear.”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh, I hadn’t thought about that. I guess he would see it as some kind of put-down.”

  “Yeah. Especially Noah.”

  “Hmm, why would that be? I thought Vic was perfectly nice.”

  The idea that she had met Vic was bad enough. The leader of the polar bears wasn’t exactly an enemy, but they all saw him a rival. The bears always took just one mate. Vic and his brothers hadn’t found their mate yet, and he knew that since the bear had met Eve, he’d been intrigued. Enough that Noah had the meeting outside of the house. Ethan knew it was a pain in the ass, but Noah did it to keep all of the other totem leaders away from Eve until they claimed her.

  “Sure he is. Bears who weigh several tons are always soft and cuddly.”

  “I guess they aren’t exactly teddy bears.”

  He laughed. “No, but I would love to see Redfoot’s reaction if you called him a teddy bear.”

  “You sound good,” she said.

  Her soft voice left him wanting more. He would always want more with her. He knew that. When he met her four months ago, he had realized just how much he needed her. He could handle that. What he didn’t like that she looked at him as if he were an invalid.

  “Yeah, well, everyone is out on patrol. I thought you might want to talk about things.”

  She crossed her arms and turned on her stool to face him. “Things?”

  “I know what you’re thinking. The idea of what we are is a little out there for you.”

  “Noah was going to explain, and I thought being the Alpha. He did say to ask you, but since the fire at Margie’s, I hadn’t wanted to bother anyone.”

  He frowned as he walked down the aisle. “Didn’t want to be a bother? I don’t buy that.”

  She shrugged and looked back at the laptop. “I just…” She sighed.

  “You don’t have to be afraid.”

  “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  She drew in a deep breath and looked at him as he sat down on the stool next to hers.

  “Are you, well…you’re mostly human right?”

  He smiled gently. He didn’t want her to think he was laughing at her. “Legitimate question. Yes, mostly. And for the first thirteen or so years, we are all human. We don’t change much until we hit puberty.”

  “Are just the men wolves?”

  He shook his head. “Females are born. But in this generation of our pack, only males were born.” And he wasn’t ready to explain that yet. She would probably freak if she knew she had been mentioned as part of a prophecy.

  “Your mother?”

  “She is now.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Now? You mean, you can turn people.”

  “Only our true mates can be changed. The human has to accept that once they are changed, they are mated to their mate or mates for life.”

  She nodded. “The people in town know.”

  “Yes. Most of them could care less, although not sure how that’s going to work now. With one of our own getting attacked, then Margie’s burning down, they might have second thoughts.”

  “None of them want you gone. They have nothing but good things to say about the family.”

  Ethan wasn’t sure just how long that would last. They owned the land, so it was no real problem. But Ethan didn’t want to lose their small group of residents. Many of them had been there for years and had become like an extended family. Just thinking about some of them moving away added a little stab to his heart. It would be like losing a relative.

  He pushed that thought away and moved on to the subject at hand. “Is there anything else you want to talk about?”

  She shook her head. “Truth was, I just finished up and I thought I would take a nap.”

  “That is an excellent idea.”

  She smiled at him. “I really need sleep.”

  He held his hands up in mock protest. “Did I say we wouldn’t?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I can’t be in a bedroom or near a piece of furniture without one of you jumping me.”

  “Are you complaining?”

  She laughed. “Not by a long shot.”

  He offered her hand, and she took it easily. She was small, and his hand dwarfed hers, but she seemed to fit just right. She had since she’d arrived.

  “Did you find anything new out?”

  “Hmm?” She looked at him, and her dreamy expression changed. “What? Oh, I was just going over some data, recording it. All the wolves I’m following are accounted for.”

  The scent of her surrounded him, enticed him. “How many did you tag?”

  “One hundred. I wanted to do more, but since this was a one-woman job, I wasn’t able to get to more.”

  “You could have asked me. I would’ve helped.”

  She said nothing as he let her step over the threshold in front of him into his room. “Eve?”

  She smiled back over her shoulder, but she looked uncomfortable.

  “Is there something wrong?”

  She turned to face him. “Nothing. I just thought you didn’t like me when we met, so I avoided asking you for help. I wanted to, badly.”

  She sighed again, the sound of it reaching out to him.

  “But, what?”

  “For one reason, it wasn’t the way I was raised.”

  “Raised? Your parents didn’t believe in getting help?”

&nbs
p; “Not when it came to research.”

  Not for the first time, he wanted to have a long talk with her folks. He had only gathered bits and pieces of her background from Eve herself. The rest he had researched online. It seemed that her parents had raised her to be some kind of prodigy, which was fine if a person had a mind like Eve’s. But it didn’t mean you ignored the person. In the whole four months she had been there, he didn’t know if her parents had called once. If they had, it wasn’t more than once or twice.

  He wanted to push her to answer more. There were clouds in her green eyes that he wanted to chase away. Something told him she wasn’t ready for that.

  “That’s not the only reason.”

  She nodded. “You were kind of distant when I first got here.”

  He knew he had seemed that way, but it had been important. Otherwise, he wasn’t sure if he could keep himself from touching her. He couldn’t tell her that much. He couldn’t reveal the depth of his feelings for her or he might scare her away. She might have accepted them, and he knew that there had been a bond formed between her and Noah, but she had not been claimed yet. Any mistake could have her running for the hills.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so accustomed to being by myself with science that I really don’t know how to share.”

  Her lips curved into a small smile. “I like it. I like working with you. I was hoping we could do it some more.”

  And just like that, Ethan’s body heated. He was always half aroused around her. It was the nature of the beast, truthfully. It was hard not to be. But that smile, along with the way her voice deepened, had his hormones humming.