Curves & Alphas: A Paranormal Box Set: (BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance) (8 page)

“I’d always felt safe with him nearby. I’d come to love and appreciate him is the best I can describe it, especially after I learned more, had words to make sense of it all.”

“I have to have you again,” he growled.

I started at the fierceness of the sound, but the power of his kisses, his now frantic touches, extinguished any fear that may have fluttered to the surface.  He wasn’t slow this time around. He rolled off of me for a few moments to put on another condom. Just the sight of his growing erection had me wet. The look of pure desire in his eyes had my stomach in a knot with my own desires.

He pounced back onto me, pinning me beneath him with my wrists in his tight grip above my head. His free hand went to check whether I was ready. He eased himself in with a hurry that excited me. I met him thrust for thrust, increasing the pace each time he did. The sounds rumbling deep in his chest sounded primal, and I relished being devoured. If he scared me at all, I found it a turn on.

In a savage manner, we built each other to a frenzied state of need, until my insides clenched just as my inner walls did around him. When I started to cry out, fearful I couldn’t take the amount of pleasure that flooded my body, he pushed in with a beat that put him over the edge. This time, though, a sound, more animal than man, erupted from him. The sound sent a chill that snaked down my spine. Déjà vu.

Instantly, I froze beneath him. The sound brought back the clearest memory I’d had of the event last week. The noise that seemed to still ring in my ears took me right back to that moment, to the sound of the animal who’d saved me, but had possibly taken another life.

“What is it,” he finally asked, a little pale himself, I thought.

Unless my vision was playing tricks on me, he looked afraid rather than concerned. His mouth fell open, then closed as he swallowed hard. His eyes widened, showed dilated pupils. The hair on the back of my neck bristled. Now, in this moment, I feared him. I couldn’t explain why.

“Please, Christina, tell me what’s wrong?” He demanded, not unleashing my wrists from his tight grasp.

“You’re hurting me,” I cried, making him relent.

He sat up fast and scooted away from me.

“Tell me why you reacted that way when I came?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered.

“You do,” he growled. “Tell me.”

“I can’t explain it, but something about the sound you made reminded me of something bad that happened to me last week. I’ve been a mess, sleep deprived all week. I’m just not thinking straight. I had this déjà vu moment, and it brought back the panic, the fear I experienced.”

“What happened to you?” He asked, his voice steady, hard, angry.

“I don’t know, honestly. What I think I saw and what is possible are two different things. Only now that I brought up my wolf guide, I’m suddenly wondering if it didn’t actually manifest. Only if it did, I’m not sure I can live with the meaning of that.”

“Just tell me what happened.”

“Well, I was stupid. I walked out of a club alone. Once outside, a man pushed me down. He started to take my keys, my only defense, and my purse. Only, just as he had these things, something came out of nowhere and pushed the guy off of me. This is where the story takes a turn. What my eyes saw was a fur-covered animal, literally ripping my attacker apart. I saw his golden eyes, though, glow. Now that I think of it, they were so similar to my wolf’s.

“I tried to look away from the blood, the gore of the situation. Instead, I raced to my car and home. I looked in the papers all week, but none mentioned a man mawled. I started to doubt myself. I figured I hallucinated. But, what if I didn’t? The sound you just made was kind of animal, and it took me back to that awful moment. Sorry. I said, I haven’t been sleeping thanks to nightmares, and my need to leave all the lights on in the apartment each night.

“Strange, now that I talk it out, this week would have been a time of need, and not once did I sense my wolf. I didn’t dream of him, either, but I did dream of the animal I thought I saw at the attack. It if was a wolf, it was the size of a man or even bigger. I just don’t know. Where are you going?” I asked as he jumped up from the bed.

I watched with my mouth open as he grabbed for his clothes.

“I’m sorry. I know my story makes me sound like an insane woman, but you asked. I don’t trust my brain in that situation. I have no idea what I really saw,” I rambled on, a high-pitched squeal to my tone.

As he fought with his jeans and struggled to get on his shoes, I just sat there, unable to think clearly through this sudden change of events.

“Say something,” I yelled, reaching for the blanket to cover myself as he put on his shirt.

I heard a hem tear, and cowered a bit beneath the blanket.

Without looking at me, he turned and strode to the door.

“No fucking way!” I screamed this time. The realization of having neighbors and thin walls had me shrinking into myself with guilt. “Do not walk out on me! I deserve to know why you’re leaving this way.”

He looked back at me, his eyes dark, his hands in fists, and the muscles in his neck tight. I thought I saw a vein pulsing at his hairline. He shook his head and ran from my room. I heard my front door slam before my body could even think to cry. In fact, I sat there silent, clutching my blanket to my chest for some time. My thoughts, the events of the night, they swirled through my head.

Oh my god, I let him spank me. I let myself like it, want more!

I felt the heat on my cheeks and my chest. Humiliation burned over my skin from my head to my feet. I swear, I went through the stages of grief. I knew them all too well, like an unwelcome friend. The disbelief left me immobile. I waited, listened for the door to open again. I wanted an apology and then an explanation. I even imagined us making love again. Damn, but I would call it that instead of just sex. I wouldn’t have a one night stand. Not with a guy like him. The anger emerged as the time ticked by. The clock proved with each passing moment how unlikely he was to come back now.

Red hot flames burned my stomach. I swallowed down the feel of acid, like heartburn, in my chest. I berated myself, and then I belittled him. Then I went back to hating myself for both. I didn’t deserve this. As the anger left me helpless and vulnerable, I moved on to bargaining. In an attempt to gain some semblance of control, I ticked off the events of the night, looking for anything that would have made him leave. I concentrated on the final minutes. I re-examined every word I had said when I told him about my attack.

I talked to anyone out there in my empty room who might have listened to me, begged them for a second chance. I wouldn’t overreact this time to a simple noise. I wouldn’t have to reveal my story, then.

“Someone tell me what it is about sharing that horrible moment in my life upset him enough to make him walk out on me,” I pleaded to no one.

No one answered, and so finally I crumbled. Face down in a ball on the bed, I let the tears come.  My soft cries soon turned to sobs, until I could barely catch my breath. When I’d cried myself dry, I laid there, a useless lump, my swollen face unmoving from the wet spot on the bed that I’d created. I fell fast asleep before I hit the final step of acceptance.

Chapter Five

Christina,

I shouldn’t have.

I’m sorry.

Forgive Me.

Lex

That was all the note said. The small sheet, a scrap torn off the back of an envelope, I’d found in the morning. It had been laid right by my door, a corner of it still held snug underneath.  Lex must’ve slid it under sometime during the night while I’d slept. Or, maybe he’d left it sometime this morning, for that matter. The clock on my coffee pot did claim the time to be a quarter past ten. Although it didn’t feel that late, I guessed I had to believe it.

Standing there and staring down at the piece of paper held tightly by my hand, I pondered the words. Whatever his vague phrases meant, a note versus a knock on the door meant he held fast to the fact he didn’t want to see me again. I hoped he’d change his mind and show up here sometime today. Maybe whatever guilt had possessed him to write the note would encourage him to come back. I’d thought last night could have been the beginning of the first real relationship of my life. Instead, it now looked to have all the potential of a one night stand.

I had to think positive, though. I had to believe that the magic we’d shared last night, the unbelievable connection of two strangers, would bring him back to me. Whatever had given him a sudden change of mind could pale in the daylight. He could think things through and knock on my door any minute. I’d go with that for now.

I’d slept like the dead, a sound, dreamless sleep. The first good night I’d had all week. I just didn’t appreciate the way I’d gotten it. Even after what must have been a good eight hours of rest, my body hung limp, unwilling to get up and go. My slumped shoulders ached. The pull of their position caused a stress up through my neck. The pang of soreness there sent vibrations to encourage the mild throb in my head to form a whopper of a headache.

In the small decorative mirror set I had on the far wall over my kitchen table, I caught my reflection. The mirrors had been something I’d taken from my dad’s, as they had been bought by my mom. And as with many tough moments in my life, I wished she were here now to comfort and to counsel me. A mother’s hug while embarking upon a good cry on her shoulder... well, I believed that could cure most ills. Maybe I just held that belief, though, because I’d only gotten to do that a few times in this life. Of course they had been over a torn stuffed dog and something mean a girl had said to me at school, but still, I remember the miraculous change that happened in me within her embrace.

Even a few feet away from the mirrors, my vacant reflection scared me. I didn’t even recognize myself. My full cheeks had been washed pale, though they looked splotchy. My big eyes shone, bloodshot and swollen with smudges of last night’s make-up around them, appearing like bruises. I looked like something out of a horror movie, a back to the dead thing, in the blurriness caused by distance, taking on a ghostly visage. My hair after our romp in bed had taken on a zombie-like hairstyle going beyond mere bedhead.

Trying to run my fingers through the thick tangle proved brutal, so I gave up quickly. These knots needed to be conditioned out if I had a hope of keeping most of my hair. Although I hadn’t had much to drink last night, my mouth felt pasty, and I didn’t recall what I’d eaten that had given me such a bitter taste in my mouth. Turning to the coffee pot as if it were my only friend, my only hope at surviving this day, I dumped yesterday’s grinds and started over. Once I popped open the lid of the coffee, the rich smell of the grounds only added to the comfort of the routine. I knew from endless experience that, for days like this, a focus on the little things would be my only salvation.

That is, save Lex returning to my door sometime to apologize, to explain away his unexplainable behavior. His image, all muscled man, standing there last night minutes before he’d left, hunched shoulders much like mine now, became a vivid picture in my head. His cock hadn’t even been soft again before he’d taken off. The only words he had uttered had been in a toneless voice, one void of any hint of emotions he might have been feeling. I needed to get in the shower, and fast, just in case he did return. Wouldn’t want to scare him off again with one look at this creepshow visage I had going for me now.

Finding myself statue-still, a scoop of coffee in my hand hanging over the pot, I put myself back into the job at hand. I adjusted the filter as if I were going to photograph the thing before I let the coffee grinds fall into the filter in a slow waterfall.  Measuring out the water, I dumped a little out and then refilled a few drops until I had the line of water perfectly at the four cup mark. I seriously put myself into the task whole-heartedly even though I felt motivated to do nothing but sit and stare at the door all day, willing him to come back. I wouldn’t let myself fall that far, though.

With the coffee prep meticulously done, I’d only delayed the inevitable thoughts from coming. I needed a good dose of caffeine, the warmth of it running through my body, before I tackled the memory of last night with any details. Not sure what good I thought would come of all that, except maybe an explanation as to the why of it all hidden somewhere. I knew it was unlikely, of course. Regardless of knowing or not knowing, I still had no way to contact the man if he chose not to get back in touch with me.

Hugging my now full mug to my chest, I set myself up out on the balcony again. All the ‘why’ questions bombarded me. A tidal wave of thoughts threatened to drown me. In reality, all they accomplished was to make that dull pain in my head move on to a full-on headache. The fuzziness the pain brought didn’t help my plight, although it did impede the inevitable analysis.  With each faint beat of my heart, I took another sip from my mug. I prayed to the cup of joe that it give me some magical insight into the events of last night. I held the mug in a reverent double-handed grip. I’d grabbed a different mug this time, one that looked like a prescription bottle. Yet, healing right now, in the first light of my day, seemed a far out there wish.

I didn’t understand how a guy who had been so kind, who’d had all the right words to say, could have stood speechless before me, and then disappeared. Seemingly out of the blue, he’d refused to talk before walking out my door. I pressed my tongue between my curled-in lips as I shook my head at the memory. The low guttural sounds vibrating my chest were all I could get out now, too. Of course, I had no one to talk to anyway. Didn’t want to end up the talk of the apartment building by becoming the woman who talked out loud to herself on her balcony. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that such a gentle lover had been so cruel as to skip out on me right after.

Would it forever evade me, the reasoning behind the timing of it all?

I’d told him about the attack, the fear and pain of being tackled to the ground and mugged last weekend. I’d not left out a thing. Even details I’d denied myself until that moment, I’d let fall from my mouth. I’d have sworn at that moment that I could tell him anything. And, I had shared secrets about my writing and my wolf spirit that I’d held close to me, never even shared with my best friend. At those points, he’d seemed touched by my freedom of speech, where he was concerned. He’d been so easy to talk to. Maybe too easy, but still... he’d seemed interested. Genuinely interested in every word I had to say, in all my thoughts and my dreams, along with the way I viewed the world. Yet, as soon as I’d mentioned the wolf who had saved me from the mugger, he’d fled.

There had to be a connection there. Surely that wolf couldn’t have seemed any more insane than the story of my wolf spirit. Yet, it had to be something I’d said. The wolf thing out, I went back through the story again. And, again. I searched each word, each movement like a scientist on the midst of a breakthrough who just couldn’t catch that final break. I hungered for any morsel, any tidbit of an answer, even as my stomach growled for real food.

“Could he have been my mugger?” I said out loud, startling myself with the squeaky voice that emanated from me.

I stopped to look around at the balconies around me. No one sat on any of them. It was a little too cold this time of year, our first days out of the seventies this season. But, I didn’t care. I didn’t even feel it. Instead, I placed my hand on my rumbling stomach as I caught my breath. My thoughts had worked me physically into a stressed-out state.

Mugger? Really?
Sure, he was your mugger. Then he couldn’t believe his luck when he met you in the bar. He brought you home to devour you sexually so he could leave once you fell asleep with everything valuable you own,
I talked to myself, my voice snarky even in my head.

The whole train of thought proved ridiculous. Obviously, anyone who saw my apartment would quickly realize I had nothing. From there, the whole insane idea did a downward spiral, if ever possible at all. Could it be he hadn’t recognized me, not until I’d related my story? His car and clothes didn’t make it appear that he needed for anything. Still it seemed more the mention of the wolf that had set him off. Or, maybe that was just the point at which his guilt had taken over.

“Shut up,” I scolded myself and looked around again.

Lex was not your attacker! It’s improbable, at the least. Move on! 

Taking my own advice, listening to my intuition, I chose to believe in what I’d seen and heard from him last night before things had gone south. I made a conscious decision to hold onto every amazing thing he’d said about me, about my beauty, as truth. I’d felt the sincerity, and I trusted my instincts. They hadn’t failed me yet. Even last night, despite the way it had ended, having listened to my instincts at first about Lex had gotten me about the best night of my almost non-existent dating life.

I had to hold onto that even if it was all I’d ever get, even if it remained just a one night stand. The screeching of tires followed by a car horn, one held far too long, pulled me from my obsessive thoughts.

Asshole,
I thought about the jerk who’d blown the horn. New York City drivers, easy to piss off and hard to calm down. I wondered if the jerk I could hear yelling about the other guy not looking behind him before he’d backed out of the space had just come from church this fine Sunday morning. It was about that time. Besides, if you didn’t go to church or work on Sunday, you slept in. The incident had happened in the side parking lot, though, so I couldn’t see the people involved. I strained my neck, despite the clear impossibility of being able to see anything. It was official. I’d lost it, and was just looking for any distraction.

Another voice decided to partake in the yelling. He went on about people making mistakes and blind spots, for the love of lame excuses. I had to just muse at the fact that not one ‘sorry’ had been uttered. Seconds later, a voice that came from a few floors above me added in his two obvious cents to explain how they should shut up because people were trying to sleep in on their only day off. I laughed despite my mood. I loved it when people in the apartments opened up their sliding glass doors to add in their infinite wisdom in a situation that didn’t involve them at all.

Ah, the city. Let’s shove as many people into one building as we can. If we give them stressful work and insist they buy more than they need, and trap them basically, then they have themselves one hell of an experiment in the depravity of man. Not a cup half-empty kind of girl, I still sometimes felt that way, given this kind of day anyway.

Life goes on, doesn’t it,
I mused, my lips out in a full frown. Absolutely no one cared about me up here, with only a cup of coffee to share my woes with. Sure I could call Chloe, wake her up, I was sure, but I actually didn’t want to relate all the details yet, at least not to anyone else beyond the air. Besides, a part of me feared what advice she might have for me. I couldn’t imagine that even she could come up with an explanation as to his abrupt exit, nothing good or fitting at least, and she was very experienced with all kinds of men.

Where I had mousy brown curls and blue eyes, my best feature by the way, Chloe had dishwater blond hair that she kept highlighted. To add to this fortune, she had those ocean blue eyes. Hers were far more striking than mine, made only better by the combo of being a blond and skinny, and just all around beautiful. She kept her hair short and stylish, always going for the latest cut shown in the magazines. While she was a girly-girl, she wasn’t vain. She went on and on about how cute I looked all the time. I’d never once gotten a vibe that she was playing me just to be nice. She found beauty in all types, even as shown by what she pointed out in magazines.

Chloe really enjoyed magazines, clothes and make-up. Me, not so much. Sure, I liked to wear something pretty as much as the next girl, but I didn’t spend much time on it. Shopping for me involved getting there, getting what I needed, and getting out. Lucky for me, Chloe experimented on me as much as she did herself. She kept me fashionable despite the fact that I often just lost track of the time in a fictional world and didn’t have the time left to bother before going out.