Capturing the Alpha (Shifters of Nunavut Book 1) (20 page)

Zane felt her mouth leave him, and when he opened his eyes, she was gaping up at him.

“That’s the hottest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

He laughed in spite of himself. Pulling her hand from him, he leaned forward to carefully lay her back onto the ground. Too aroused to do anything but get inside of her, he unbuttoned her pants and then pulled them off in three quick jerks.

She giggled and kicked at his chest. “Put the pelt back on us before I freeze to death.”

Zane drew the pelt up over his back, and then all but collapsed on top of her.

“Sometimes I forget that you’re a human,” he said. “You smell so much like my pack, like me.”

He put his head to her neck, inhaling her scent. He ran his tongue over her skin, until he’d drawn a line between the twin puncture marks. His hands went to her hips, but as he prepared to position himself, a thought came to him.

“I want to do something different,” he said, pulling back so that he could see her face. “But I don’t want to hurt you.”

She wagged her bound arm. “Pain medicine. It’s why I’m so lacking in inhibitions.”

He smirked. “You’re always lacking in inhibitions.”

“Am not.”

He rubbed his chin. “I seem to remember you throwing yourself at me shortly after we met.”

“You gave me a look!”

He tilted his head. “What look?”

“The one you’re giving me right now.”

Zane could have kept bantering with her all night, but he knew that there would be time for that later. He pressed a kiss to her lips, and at the same time pulled her up into a sitting position. She eyed him curiously, but understanding, and then excitement flashed over her face as he turned her onto her knees. He got behind her, one hand bracing himself and the other over her stomach to keep her steady.

He listened for any sound of discomfort from her as he rocked his hips to position himself at her entrance. She was so wet that he had no trouble finding his way, and his eyes rolled back in his head as he came in contact with her liquid heat.

“Is this how shifters mate?”

Zane knew that she didn’t mean mate in the literal sense, but the word still tugged at his wolf. Whenever he thought of the time when Ginnifer would become fertile, he always envisioned claiming her in this position, like a true wolf would. He bent to rub his nose against his mark, his body quivering as he plunged inside of her.

The sensation of going from cold air to being fully encased within her warm body was without parallel. He let out a long groan and held himself still for a moment, savoring the feel of her. From behind, he was able to get a deeper fit than before, and he could feel the head of his cock pushed snug against the back of her tight channel. It felt so natural, more right than anything he’d ever experienced, and he pulled all the way out, thrusting inside again in hopes of reclaiming that quintessential experience.

The second time was not like the first, and where there had been a sense a fulfillment, there was now the need for more. Pent-up lust had him thrusting a third time, and a forth time, and then he stopped counting and allowed himself to become immersed in the archaic rhythm.

Zane could already hear the cadence of her breathing changing as his teeth found and hooked onto his mark. He heard her whimper. Fear, he thought, but his wolf urged him to sink his fangs into her to get a better grip for mating. As much as he tried to fight the instinct, the friction from his thrusting shook them both, and he felt the skin give way beneath the sharp points. She moaned his name, and exhilaration had him thrusting faster.

She liked it
.

It was the last coherent thought he had, before the world around him began to dim. His senses sharpened on a few details.

The pressure building inside of him with each thrust.

Her fingers digging into the hard earth.

The resonating cry of her climax.

Her inner walls tightening around him.

The taste of her blood in his mouth.

Zane’s muscles grew rigid as hot seed surged. With his final, hard thrust, he took his release, satisfaction coursing through him as he filled her. His body becoming lax, he rolled to the side, bringing her down with him. He kept her close, his tongue licking up the blood from her neck as pleasure continued to ripple over him.

He expected her to complain about the bite, but instead she tucked his pelt around her, murmuring something about being freezing.

“I will warm you again,” he said, giving her neck another lick. “In a few moments.”

She turned her head to regard him with a smile. “I’m not sure my arm can manage another go.”

“Is it hurting?”

She nodded, and he saw her smile strain. “Maybe Indigo is right and I will need surgery.” She paused, and then reluctantly added, “I suppose you’re right, too. It would be crazy of me to go back to Siluit right away. And going to Florida would be a good idea. My mom’s birthday is in June and I’ll never hear the end of it if I miss it two years in a row. Why are you looking at me like that?”

It was only then that Zane realized he was glaring. He made his expression neutral and then laid back on his arm, eyes toward the night sky.

“Tell me about where you come from,” he said. “About your life.”

Tell me why it is better than the life I could give you
.

“I have an apartment in the Design District. It only has one bedroom, but a really spacious living room that doubles as my office. I have a dog, a husky named Noona, but she usually lives with my sister. Astrid is always complaining about watching her, but whenever I’m in town she always finds excuses to keep Noona for an extra day or two.

“I usually wake up around seven, that way I can beat the morning rush. Every morning I take a shower, and the get dressed. I check my emails on my phone while I’m walking Noona, unless my mom calls and keeps me on the phone the whole time, which is almost every day. Then I go to the garage to pick up my car, it’s a Lexus convertible that I paid way too much for, and I always think about that when I see it, but by the time Noona and I are cruising down I-95 South with the top down and the breeze blowing through our hair, I don’t even care anymore.

“My favorite place to eat breakfast is a hole-in-the-wall café in Little Havana. This is going to sound a little weird, but there’s a homeless man named Eddie who hangs around outside and I give him a few dollars to watch Noona while I listen to street music, drink my café con leche, and eat a salad—which I know also sounds weird, I mean, who eats salad for breakfast? But the salads at this place shouldn’t even be called salad. It’s basically a pile of shredded chicken, beans, corn, and cheese on top of a leaf of lettuce and it is
to die for
.”

Zane had only a vague idea of what a salad was, and even vaguer ideas of what most of the other things were, but nonetheless a new picture of Ginnifer began to form in his mind, and he felt increasingly unsettled as she continued speaking.

“Despite what you might think, independent filmmaking does not pay my bills. I’ve made some money off of it, but I’ve also had to invest a lot. To pay my bills and further my goal of retiring filthy rich by the time I’m forty, I do freelance cinematography on the side. That basically means that people pay me to be a camera wizard. I actually make a lot more money at it than Boaz, which is unfortunate because he’s way better than me, in my opinion.

“My freelance work takes me all over the place. I’ve been to forty countries in the past three years—and that’s counting Europe as one country, because you can spit across three countries there. The only continent I haven’t been to is Antarctica, but I was thinking that maybe I could go there next. I’d rather film the people there than the animals. I think anyone willing to live on one of those bases must be a pretty interesting person.”

Ginnifer grew quiet, and for a moment Zane only heard their breathing and the sound of the wind rustling pine needles. When he turned to look at her, she was staring at him, her expression inscrutable.

She asked, “What are you thinking?”

He couldn’t possibly distill the thoughts that were whipping through his mind, and even if he could, he wasn’t sure he would share them.

Lips slanting, he said, “Only that I’ve been staring down and driving away other males since I’ve met you, and now I realize that it was never them that I was competing with. It was the whole world.”

The plastic chair strained under Zane’s weight as he thumbed through the same magazine for the second time that month. The last time he’d been in the clinic, he’d been waiting for Enzo and news of Marl, and his eyes had glided over the pages without reading the words or seeing the images. This time, certain things seemed to jump out at him—a salad recipe, an article about backpacking across Europe, and a Lexus advertisement to name a few.

He closed the magazine and set it aside, glancing at the salmon-colored door for the hundredth time. The analog clock that hung by the television had made over two revolutions since Ginnifer had been brought back to see the doctor. The metal door had cut her off from his hearing and scent completely, and he wasn’t sure if he was more aggravated with her for not coming out to update him or his wolf, who couldn’t seem to settle the fuck down and was urging him to kick down the door.

His need to be close to her was more compelling than usual today, and he knew it was because she would be leaving soon—something he still had no idea how he was going to deal with. It frustrated him that he had gone through his entire life without knowing she existed, and after a few weeks together, he could not remember an existence without her.

“The doctor should be wrapping up with your girlfriend soon,” the young receptionist said from her seat behind the desk.

Zane wanted to ask her how the hell she knew that, considering he’d only seen her leave the desk to go to her truck, where she’d applied a thick coat of red lipstick and a nauseating amount of perfume.

“She is your girlfriend, right?”

She leaned forward when she spoke to him, and he was certain that there had been fewer buttons undone when he’d arrived that afternoon. He saw that she had large breasts and her skin was a few shades darker than Zane’s. Darker skin had always held a certain appeal to Zane, as it looked healthier than a pale complexion. If not for the manufactured scent of her perfume clogging his nose, he might have found her attractive. At the moment, she was an annoyance.

He gave a vague response, and then reached for the magazine again. Before it was back in his lap, the door slowly opened, and Ginnifer came out, her back to him as she spoke to someone behind her.

“Okay, I’ll wait for your call, then,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

Zane was at her side the moment she turned around, and he saw that she had a new binding on her arm, one of soft cotton with a hard exterior made from a material he recognized but couldn’t place a name to.

He put a hand on her uninjured arm, guiding her towards the door. “What did the doctor say?”

She gave his arm a light pat. “Hang on, let me put my coat on.”

The puffy coat fit poorly over her arm, and he wished she could wear the looser clothes of leather and fur that were stuffed away in her bag. Once she was bundled up, she gave a quick wave at the receptionist, and then allowed Zane to guide her from the clinic.

As soon as they were outside, she shivered. “Ugh, I already forgot how cold it is here. Anyway, Genie says—”

“Who’s Genie?” he asked.

“The doctor. Well, I think she’s technically an LPN, or whatever it’s called up here, but she’s the only person in the town with medical experience. In a way, the towns here sort of remind me of the pack. The populations are so low that everyone knows one another and those with specialties have a monopoly on—”

“Ginnifer, your arm.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, right! It was a clean break after all. Genie says that the swelling and inflammation are totally normal, but it makes sense that Indigo was worried. Did you know that shifters are able to heal from a broken bone in less than a week? It actually leads to problems sometimes, because if the bones aren’t set within a few hours, it can lead to permanent disfigurement.”

“How did you find that out?”

“Genie was the one who got all of Marl’s prescriptions filled for her. In exchange, Marl would tell her about shifters—nothing that would endanger the pack, just medical-related things. She says that even though Marl’s gone, she’d be glad to cut Indigo the same deal.”

If Zane had his way, Indigo would never leave the island again, much less travel to a town, but he nodded as though he would give the matter some consideration.

“I used the phone to give Jack a call. He’s going to have a room ready at the bed and breakfast. There aren’t any serviceable roads out of town, so we’ll have to wait there until the plane comes. Genie thinks she can have one here by tomorrow evening.”

“And you’re leaving then?”

She smiles weakly. “That’s the plan, isn’t it?”

He gave a diffident shrug. “How long until you come back?”

“I can have the cast off in about six weeks, and then it’ll be another month or two before my arm is back at full strength. I can come back sooner though. I was thinking maybe the week after my mom’s birthday.”

It felt as though his wolf was trying to dig a hole out through his chest. The effort to restrain himself did not carry to his tongue.

“And what then?”

She wet her lips. “I’m not sure. I guess it depends on my work schedule. I can stay at least a couple weeks. And if the documentary gains notoriety—which I don’t see why it won’t—I probably won’t have to worry about money for a while. I could stay here for a month or two at a time.”

Zane felt his nails digging into the flesh of his palm, but he schooled his expression to impassivity.

“You should come back when you’re ready to stay.”

She blinked in surprise, and when she spoke, there was no anger in her voice, only hurt. “What if I’m never ready? Is that it then, is it all or nothing? I have to give up everything that makes me who I am, my family, my home, my career… We’ve only known each other for a few weeks, less time than I knew Aaron before he proposed, and look how that went. I can’t rush into another relationship, especially one that requires so much sacrifice. Why can’t you just give me a little more time?”

A small part of him recognized that she was being completely reasonable. If he were human, it would have been an easy compromise for him to make. But Zane was a wolf, an alpha, and she was the female he’d marked as his mate. Even being separated by a fucking door drove him crazy, and she assumed he would let her leave him over and over, for weeks at a time. She thought he would be able to sleep each night, without being able to feel her warm skin against his, without knowing if she were safe, wondering if there was another male plotting to claim her as his own, a human male that she might see as a more sensible match for herself.

In the next moment, he almost told her to never come back. It would have been easier that way, knowing that he was the one who’d rejected her. If she left and never returned, it would not be because she didn’t want him.

But Zane could no more force the words up than he could bite off his own tongue. Instead, he leaned down to kiss her lips. They were salty from tears. He pulled back, taking a final look at her face, careful not to let his gaze stray to her neck. Then he turned to leave, ignoring his wolf’s howl of protest.