Alpha's Captive 04 - Haven (3 page)

“By head
of the household, do they mean men?” Harper asked, wrinkling her nose.

Levi chuckled.
“Come on, Harper. We’re xenophobic bigots, not sexist bigots. They mean werewolf shifters. If both partners are werewolves, then they each get half a vote. But if they’re another kind of shifter or a human, they’re not allowed on the council.”

“
So why aren’t you on it now, Mr. Werewolf Shifter?”

“Family household,” he
clarified. “No family, no household, at least as far as they’re concerned. Got to have kids and your own house on a hunk of land to get a vote.”

She
raised her eyebrows at the idea—and at the hint of outrage in Levi’s voice. “No wonder you have so many cousins. No one listens to you until you do.”

Levi
lifted one shoulder. “Not even a little bit.”

“And they
get to make the rules.”

It was bad enough when her family all got together.
Sure, they loved each other, but there was plenty of infighting between relatives. There were a couple of aunts who hadn’t talked in decades, and Harper wasn’t sure if anyone except for them remembered why anymore. She would rather not imagine what it would be like if they could make decisions for everybody else.

He ran a hand through his tousled hair.
“The big rules, yeah. And if you don’t follow along, you get kicked out. Declared an outlaw.”

“
So are you…?”

He barked a laugh.
“Not yet. See, my approach was to fly under everybody’s radar—the clan’s, the bloodsuckers’, everybody. Worked until now. In another week? If this SD card doesn’t pan out, yeah, I’ll be an outlaw for sure, but it won’t much matter because I’ll also be dead.”

“That’s a healthy way of looking at it.”

“A regular Pollyanna, I am,” he said.

Harper blinked at him.
“Who?”

“Never mind.”

“Anyway, that sounds really harsh,” she said, redirecting the conversation. “I mean, families are supposed to help each other.”

He nodded at her phone, which dangled from the charger.
“So why aren’t you calling anyone up for help? Aside from the whole tracking thing.”

Harper
shook her head. “I’m not dragging my family into this. Even my country cousins don’t have the firepower to face down these guys, and they don’t deserve the trouble it’d bring.”

“Exactly,”
he said. “I can’t blame the clan for shooting my idea down. I’m not happy with it, and I’m going to prove them wrong, but I can’t blame them. They have a lot of people to take care of, and they don’t like risk.”

“Well, that’s big of you.”

He flashed a toothy smile. “Not really. When this works, I’m going to rub it in their furry faces.”

Harper snorted a laugh.
“Now, that’s the Levi I know.”

“If we’re going to make it, though, we need to
find a place to hole up while Mortensen is busy chasing down the semi and the police are looking for a Mini Cooper,” he said. “We’re pretty conspicuous in this car.”

“Just say the word,” she said.
“But no more barns, okay? I’m kind of over places with only one entrance.”

“All it takes is one little grenade, and you’re all jumpy.”
He shook his head in mock disgust. “Picky, picky.”

Harper slid her eyes over to him.
He somehow managed to sprawl even in the small passenger seat, all casual loose-limbed indolence, with his rough-hewn features and the contours of his chest standing out under his gray tee.

“Yeah,” she said.
“Picky. That’s me.”

T
hey ended up parked in a field behind a tumble-down house. The trees and shrubs that had been planted around it a century ago formed a thick wood that reached the shoulder of the back road Levi had directed Harper down. Even Levi couldn’t make out the county road through the tangle, and although it was only midafternoon, the trees were tall enough to cast their shade across the small car where it rested in the high grass. The quiet buzz of grasshoppers was cut through by birdsong and the sound of the occasional car flying past on the unseen road.

“I always wonder who used to live in
places like this,” Harper said, nodding toward the bulk of the house as she folded the sunglasses and set them on the dash.

Levi surveyed it.
The windows were broken out, the roof sagging dramatically, the blistered paint worn away from the weather-silvered siding. Small trees grew up through the boards of the porch that was slowly pulling away from the house.

Harper
inspected the remains of her sub. “There were a few houses like that near my Nana’s place. We used to sneak inside even though we weren’t supposed to. One of them still had all its furniture. The old Boyd place, it was called, but nobody remembers who the Boyds were.”

“Huh,” Levi said, pushing the passenger seat all the way back and reclining it slightly
to stretch his legs out. “I can’t say that I’ve ever thought much about it.” He took another bite of his sandwich.

“That seems like a terrible way to go, you know?
You move away or die, and there’s not even anyone who cares enough to claim the quilt your mother made,” she continued.

Harper bent to dig
in her purse until she came up with two warm beers. She passed him one, pushing her hair back over her shoulder as she straightened.

H
e popped the tab. “Why’s it so terrible that nobody’s sad? If I die, I don’t want anyone crying for me or divvying up my stuff.”

Harper frowned deeply at that, her plump lips drawing into an irritated bow.
“The only reason your mother and brothers and sisters and anyone else who cared about you wouldn’t be crying is if you broke their hearts too many times first.” Her next bite of her sandwich looked savage.

Ouch.
That hit a little too close to home. He took a bite of his own sub to avoid coming up with a response.

They lapsed into silence until they’d finished their meal, splitting the third sandwich between them.
The air between them crackled with all the things that were left unsaid, but Levi didn’t know how to say them—or if he wanted to.

He
tried to come up with a list of reasons why he definitely wasn’t attracted to her: she was bossy; she was impulsive; she wasn’t like any of the other women he’d known. But all of those just made him like her more. Which did nothing for the state of his mind or, well, his dick.

The most primal parts of his brain were still sending him those same damned messages, even in human form, now.
It was bad, really bad. All werewolves surrendered to it eventually, the urge to settle, his brother Holt used to groan with mock-despair, looking at his wife with fond eyes.

All other werewolves, maybe.
Not Levi.

When they were finished
eating, Harper collected all the trash in the bottom of a plastic bag.

“Are you always so neat?” Levi asked
, finally breaking the silence with what he hoped would be tension-dissolving small talk.

“What?”
She blinked at him.

“You.
Are you always so neat?”

She looked down at the plastic bag in her hand, to which she’d added the empty beer can
that she had brought from the boat. “I guess so.”

“I
t’s cute,” his mouth said—and his brain immediately regretted it, because that was definitely not the sort of thing he should even be thinking right now.

She stiffened.
“You’re not allowed to have an opinion on the cuteness of anything I do. You gave up that privilege, if you ever had it.”

“Well, it is,” he said
, spreading his hands defensively.

She let out a huff of air, rolling her eyes, but she relaxed
slightly. “Well, if you think it’s so cute, I bet you’re a pig.”

Levi
shrugged, making a pretense at light humor. “Outdoors? I’m pristine. No littering, leave no trace, all that. Indoors? I guess it depends if someone’s coming over.”

Reluctant amusement
glinted in her eyes. “And do they?” She added quickly, “Not that it’s any of my business.”

“Well, aren’t you a nosey parker,” he said.
“Not like you mean, no. That ‘it’s me, not you’ speech? I really meant it.”

“Whatever,” she shrugged, her eyes sliding away.

Her bitterness stung him. It shouldn’t. He had no right to feel anything about it at all—in fact, he’d explicitly refused any right he might have pretended to.

But it seemed like the rest of him missed the memo.
And before he could stop himself, he said, “Look, if things were different, maybe—”

Harper’s head snapped around, her gray eyes blazing.
“No
maybe.
That’s what guys say when they don’t mean it. That’s what they say before the turn around and walk out and never come back, okay? So don’t you
maybe
me. If you meant anything at all, those maybes wouldn’t matter. No ifs, ands, or buts. You ever heard of that phrase? I know what you are, and I’ve said it’s fine, all right? Just don’t pretend you’re anything else.”

“No, it’s not
fine.” The words escaped him before he could stop himself, words he’d never meant to say. “I’ve hurt you, and I’m sorry, but I’ll just go on hurting you, and I don’t know how to stop because if I try, I’ll just end up hurting you worse—”

And then she kissed him.
The bag of trash crinkled between them, digging into his stomach, but her mouth on his was hot and desperate, as desperate as he felt. And he leaned back against the chair, pulling her on top of him with an arm around her waist until she straddled his legs with the bag trapped between them. Her free hand was on his face, on his cheek, her fingers sliding up into his hair. She tasted like cheap beer and Subway sandwiches and a hint of mint gum and like everything good he’d ever wanted in his life.

And when she pulled back, she said, “
I’m a big girl. I make my own decisions. Even the bad ones.”

“T
his can’t turn into anything,” he said, trying to clear his mind, trying to remember why.

“So you’ve said.
Repeatedly,” she said. “Were you lying to me?”

“What?”

“In the bathroom, back at the trailer. Were you lying to me?”

“I’ve never lied to you, Harper,” he said.

She gave a little sigh. “I was afraid of that,” she said, and she kissed him again.

He
plucked the bag of trash from her unresisting hand and dropped it into the back, then he pulled her body more snugly against his. He should most definitely tell her to stop, some virtuous corner of his mind said. She was falling for him, and all he was going to do was break her heart, and she didn’t deserve that.

Because his own heart was most definitely not on the line, he told himself.
Lone wolf for life. He had to be.

But her mouth tasted so incredibly good, and her body fit against his so perfectly, like it was made for him, and he couldn’t find the
resolve within himself to do anything but kiss her back—kiss her back because it was most certainly her kissing him, because he’d sworn that he wasn’t going to be kissing her anymore, at least not like this.

And then she made a tiny little sound into his mouth, and he forgot every pretense and every lie he’d ever told himself.

He shifted his mouth, moving down to her jaw, her neck, the curve of her breasts above the top of her collar. When he pulled away, her eyes were screwed closed, like she was afraid to look at him, even as her hands threaded through his hair. And that made his lungs squeeze as he kissed her again, her lips parting under his.

Nothing would come of this.
Nothing could. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

She was the one to break away.
And then she did open her eyes and she said, “Dammit, Levi, why the hell do I like you so much?”

All the cocky,
smartmouthed answers died half-formed. “We can stop. Any time you want. Just say when.”

“I tried that already,” she said.

“I know.”

“It didn’t work then.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Why not?
Why couldn’t you have left me the hell alone when I asked you to?”

Because I’m a damned wolf inside, when you dig deep enough, and wolves only want one thing, to hell with common sense or even self-preservation.

But what he said was, “I don’t know.”

“When I first saw you, do you know what I thought?” she said, running a finger along his
cheek.

He shook his head under her hand.

“I thought that your jaw was so hard that I could break my heart on it,” she said lightly. “I thought it was a bit of a joke then, you know. Like a little crush. That’s all. Because that’s all I ever feel.”

“Why is that?” he asked.

Her chuckle had a catch to it. “Because you shouldn’t risk anything that you can’t afford to lose.”

Those
words made something ache in his chest, an emptiness he tried to ignore. His own family lived in that dangerous place of things he cared too much about. Even the idea of forming bonds stronger than child-parent, brother-brother, made his body burn. It wouldn’t happen, because he wouldn’t let someone he loved be used like he’d been used—

He slammed a wall down on that memory.
He never went there, not even in his dreams anymore. He never came close.

“
Maybe we’re more alike than you think, Harper,” he said.

“I’m not going to sleep with you
again,” she said then, blinking down at him with those big gray eyes.

“Who said anything about sleeping?” he quipped, then immediately, at her expression, he said, “
Sorry. Bad joke. You’re right. You’re totally right that it’s a bad idea to get any more, uh, involved. And I agree, completely.” He was too close with her, too close to throwing ten years of caution to the wind.

“Right,” she said.

He wished they’d made that decision while she wasn’t straddling his lap, because it was very hard to inform his groin of the change in plans with her body pressed quite so warmly up against his. He decided that it’d be indelicate to draw attention to that fact, but it was making its opinion known quite clearly. So he was grateful when she scooted around the stick shift back onto her own seat.

“Good,” he said then.

“Good,” she echoed, staring straight out of the front window.

And it was good, so why did he feel like the biggest asshole in the world?