Page 74 of Rugged

Neither of them let go. They stared, moved closer. Breathed me in.

“Lyssa!” Another guy–this one clothed–shot through the hole in the glass at the front door, his eyes wild.

“Yes?”

He took in the dead wolf on the floor and the two men still holding my hands and rushed over. “Thank fate you’re okay.” To the other men, he said, “You were supposed to wait until I arrived.”

“He was choking your mate,” one of my nakedrescuers said, but his brows went down on the wordmate, like he found it distasteful.

“Your what? Mate?” I asked as the new guy rushed over.

Oh. This must be Johnny. Of course, he thought I was Emma. She had given him my name.

“Hold up, Cowboy,” I said, when he tried to get close. I put my hand on his chest to keep him from scooping me up. “Wrong twin. You’re looking for Emma.”

He drew back, nostrils flaring. His gaze went to my neck and brows dipped even lower. “Twin?”

“Ah. That explains things,” one of the naked gods beside me said. His hand began to stroke my bare arm. Gently, but it sent shivers up my spine.

“What does that explain?” Johnny demanded, looking between them. He still didn’t understand that I wasn’t the woman he was obviously in love with. That I wasn’t Emma. I might look like her, but that was it.

“It explains why this one smells likeourmate,” one of the two men/wolves said.

The other one growled.

Oh my.

35

EMMA

“Johnny!”

I’d only been apart from this man for hours, but I viscerally felt the sense of relief at being near him again. As if my body was celebrating his very presence.

Johnny whirled to take me in. “Lyssa!” He rushed toward me by the laundry room. I’d come out of Lyssa’s bedroom when I heard glass breaking. Watched as two wolves had fought with a gray one, and then killed it. How the wolves had turned into me who’d only had eyes for Lyssa.

“It’s Emma, actually,” I finally admitted.

His steps faltered for a moment, then he came even faster. “Okay. Emma. I don’t care what your name is, orwho you work for, baby. Or why there’s a woman who looks exactly like you in the kitchen. I love you. You’re my one and only. My mate.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck and let him pick me up with my legs straddling his waist. I held him tightly, not wanting to ever let him go.

He carried me into the bedroom, away from the dead wolf in the living room. And the two naked men I saw holding my sister’s hands.

Figured.

She was always a party waiting to happen. Two wolves broke through glass windows and killed another one, and now she had snared them.

He sat on the bed, with me straddling his lap.

“I’m sorry,” I told Johnny. “I overreacted. I felt used.”

His nose ran up along my neck, breathing me in. “Fuck, I shouldn’t have used you. Or let you feel like that. I’m so sorry.”

I shook my head, swallowing hard. “I… may have made things worse for you with Mitch.”

He frowned. “How so?”

---