Dark Alpha (ALPHA 2) (2 page)

“Chrissie!” she hissed frantically, at the same time as she gave a harried look around the coffee shop to see if anyone was listening to their conversation.

Apart from the two men sitting at the next table, that is.

Because there was no way they couldn’t have heard Chrissie’s last outrageous remarks...

In fact, Nicky was sure that they had; seemingly not looking at either her or Chrissie, the scary guy dressed in black now had a hard and mocking smile curving his lips. The gorgeous man in the suit looked less amused as he scowled down at the screen of his phone.

Oh to hell with what those two men thought or didn’t think. She was never going to see either one of them again anyway, so what did it matter what opinion they had of her and Chrissie. The man in the suit was mouth-watering, yes, but way out of her league. And the man with the scar, although handsome in a muscled bad-boy sort of way, was also scary.

Nicky wrinkled her nose in distaste. “And what if I don’t like the idea of having some old guy pawing me, even once or twice a month?”

“How hard could it be—I didn’t mean it like that!” Chrissie began to giggle as Nicky gave a shocked gasp.

The whole conversation was becoming so ridiculous that Nicky found herself laughing again too. “Where would I even meet this rich old guy? Is he going to walk in here one evening while I’m working, do you think, and be overcome by my beauty? Or maybe he’ll come in to the pizza shop and order a take-out? I somehow don’t think so.” She gave a rueful shake of her head. “Let’s face it, rich guys, old or otherwise, just don’t enter into my world.”

“It was such a good plan too.” Chrissie looked crestfallen.

“So is going to listen to Lucien Wynter’s talk if we want to graduate.” Nicky stood up pointedly.

Chrissie gave an irritated shake of her head as she rose to shrug her backpack over one shoulder. “I still say he’ll be ugly and smelly, and wearing his pajamas!”

As Nicky discovered, when she entered the university lecture hall just twenty short minutes later, Lucien Wynter preferred to wear perfectly tailored designer-label suits, silk shirts, and soft handmade leather shoes.

He also had laser-sharp green eyes set in a harshly chiseled face, and tousled just-been-fucked dark hair...

Lucien saw the girl from the coffee shop almost immediately when she entered the lecture hall. Mainly because she had come to an abrupt halt in the doorway, blocking everyone else’s entrance, as soon as she saw him on the podium in quiet conversation with Adam Grant.
 

Lucien’s long-standing acquaintance with the older man was his only reason for being here today.

The two men had met in New York twelve years ago, when Lucien had been an up-and-coming young entrepreneur, and Adam a prominent financial advisor on Wall Street. Adam had finally tired of the stresses and strains of that life eight years ago, moving to London to teach rather than do.

Lucien wouldn’t usually have agreed to appear in public like this for any reason, but Adam Grant was one of the few people he respected enough not to say no to.

Completely out of his comfort zone, Lucien had arrived too early for the lecture, and so decided to take a walk around the university. Accompanied by the ever-watchful Dair, of course. His cousin took his duties as Lucien’s head of security very seriously, to a degree he had insisted on acting as Lucien’s bodyguard himself today. Lucien had thought his cousin was going to have a heart attack when he told him he had decided to go for a walk to pass the time.

Still with half an hour to kill after the walk, Lucien had suggested—much to Dair’s added disgust—they go into a coffee shop just off campus.

The place had been heaving, with both students and young office workers, but even so Lucien had noticed the redhead long before he and Dair sat down at the table next to where she sat drinking coffee with her friend. With those vibrant red corkscrew curls and chocolate brown eyes, a smooth and creamy complexion, and pouting lips just perfect for… Well, she possessed the sort of wild, untamed beauty it was impossible for him to miss.

Admittedly, she wasn’t Lucien’s usual type, but if he was honest, he had grown tired of his ‘usual’ type and was looking for a new diversion.

Unfortunately, not quite the diversion he had gotten from listening to the conversation between the redhead and her friend.

The woman’s eyes were now wide with shock as she gaped across the room at him, quickly followed by a blush of consternation, as she obviously guessed who he was, and just as quickly recalled that earlier conversation with her friend in the coffee shop.

A conversation she must know Lucien had overheard.

Lucien had little sympathy with the girl’s discomfort now. Hearing himself described as a smelly recluse who spent his days watching porn had not been amongst his top ten most pleasant experiences. Although Dair had certainly found the conversation amusing.

It was true that Lucien preferred not to give interviews, or have his photograph taken. He also lived in a penthouse apartment of a building owned by him, and when he traveled it was always in his own private jet, or limousines with tinted windows. But he had his own reasons for guarding his privacy so obsessively. Reasons that involved his security since moving back to London four years ago, and nothing at all to do with being a smelly recluse who watched porn all day.

The tiny redhead and her tall friend had taken their seats now, way at the back of the auditorium, the blonde still chattering non-stop, the redhead’s gaze still riveted on him. And, unless he was mistaken, touched with more than a little apprehension.

Of him?

Or more likely what, if anything, he might say to Adam Grant about her?

Lucien may be more than a little irritated at the things he had overheard earlier, and guard his privacy to the point of obsession, but even so he had never asked anyone else to fight his personal battles for him. Why should he, when he was perfectly capable of fighting them himself?

And where the wild-haired redhead was concerned, a little revenge might even be sweet...

Oh god, oh god, oh
god.

The same wild litany kept going desperately around inside Nicky’s head as she stared down at the podium at the man she was now sure had to be Lucien Wynter.

Had he overheard her and Chrissie’s conversation in the coffee shop earlier?

Those awful things Chrissie had said about Lucien Wynter? That stupid conversation about Nicky finding herself a rich old man to pay off her debts?

How could he not have heard, when Chrissie had made no attempt to lower her voice?

“Wow, I take back all that I said earlier—even I can appreciate that is one fine man,” Chrissie murmured softly. “Why do you suppose a man who looks like that would want to hide himself away?”

Nicky knew absolutely nothing about Lucien Wynter’s private life. No one did. Even the financial pages of the newspapers only ever reported on his business acquisitions, never his personal life.

Now that she had seen him for herself, Nicky couldn’t help wondering why that was.

The man was more handsome than any movie star she had ever seen, utterly charismatic, and those rapier sharp eyes were beautiful, so why had the newspapers and media, who felt absolutely no shame in hounding other less photogenic personalities, decided to leave him alone?

Unless he happened to own those media outlets, of course? Which, considering his wealth, was a distinct possibility, Nicky recognized ruefully.

There was no doubting he was ‘one fine man’, as Chrissie had commented, but anyone looking into the depths of his hard and challenging eyes couldn’t help but also see the coldness, the icy ruthlessness, that bordered almost on cruelty.

As Nicky was now doing...?

The only way she could possibly be seeing into the depths of those cold eyes was if Lucien Wynter was also looking up at her.

Which he was. Straight at her. One dark eyebrow raised in mocking challenge.

Because he
had
overheard that conversation earlier? Because he now recognized her as being one of the two women having that conversation?

Embarrassment didn’t even begin to describe how Nicky felt as she had to wrench her gaze away from that mocking green one.

She determined not to look at him again. Professor Grant stepped up to the microphone to insist there would be absolutely no photographs taken of their guest before then introducing the younger man.

The lecture passed in a state of misery as far as Nicky was concerned. Not even the deep melodiousness of Lucien Wynter’s educated voice managed to penetrate her misery. All she wanted was for this nightmare to be over with so that she could get out of here and never set eyes on Lucien Wynter again.

She almost made it too. Would have managed to sneak safely past the podium, shielded by the groupies currently gathered about the guest speaker who was under the watchful gaze of the scarred man in black, if it weren’t for Professor Grant calling out to her just as she was about to make her escape.

Even then Nicky might have tried pretending she hadn’t heard him—if another more commanding voice hadn’t stopped her in her tracks.

The same rich and melodious voice that had held her, and everyone else in the lecture hall, totally mesmerized for the past hour...

Chapter 2

“A word, if you please, Miss McKenzie,” Lucien loudly repeated his request as the redhead, after freezing in her tracks for several seconds, now looked set to make a run for it.

Her face was pale as she slowly turned and walked towards him with all the enthusiasm of a prisoner approaching the gallows.

She was even shorter than Lucien had realized, barely reaching his shoulder, those red corkscrew curls a wild tumble over her shoulders and down her back. She was dressed in the usual student garb: a faded green T-shirt that fitted snugly over the surprising fullness of her breasts, ragged jeans tight against slender hips and legs.

But it was her mouth that completely held his attention. He had never seen lips quite like them before, so full and pouting, and shaped in a perfect bow, the top lip fuller than the bottom.

As an indication of her sensuality?

Lucien was more than a little surprised to feel himself harden and swell, as he had a sudden image of those plump lips parting over his cock as she took him deep into the warmth of her mouth and then to the back of her throat, those corkscrew curls entwining erotically with the darker curls at his groin.

The image was so strong that for a moment his mind went completely blank of everything else.

“You wanted to speak to me, Mr. Wynter?” The young woman, who he now knew to be called Nicky McKenzie, tried her best to look composed and only mildly curious, but Lucien could hear the underlying strain in the husky attractiveness of her voice.

A husky, soft voice that only made his cock throb all the harder, damn it.

He nodded coolly. “Adam tells me that you’re currently his star student?”

A blush now colored those creamy cheeks. “Oh I wouldn’t go so far as to say that!”

“You didn’t, Adam did,” Lucien drawled tightly as his groin hardened even more when he spotted an enticing—and delicious—mole just beneath her right earlobe. “You have what, another six months before you finish your degree?”

A frown appeared between her eyes as she answered him uncertainly. “Yes...”

Lucien could never remember having had quite such an instant and visceral reaction to any woman before today.

His only reason for talking to her had been to exact a little revenge for the conversation he had overheard earlier, but his libido obviously had a much deeper, and different, need.

Lucien took out his wallet and removed a card, using his pen to write something on the back before holding it out to her. “Give me a call when you graduate. I might be able to offer you a job.”

“I—thank you.” She took the card, her slightly trembling hands as slender as the rest of her; she was surely going to need to use both of them to wrap around his cock.

Lucien smiled as he noticed the care she had taken not to allow her fingers to come into contact with his. Because she also felt the attraction between the two of them? He hoped so, for her sake. He really wasn’t used to denying himself something he wanted. And right now he knew what he wanted was Nicky McKenzie. Quite badly.

“No problem.” He nodded dismissively before turning away to take his leave of Adam Grant; he had deliberately ignored Dair’s scowl of disapproval as his cousin listened to the exchange between Lucien and the unusual and beautiful Nicky McKenzie.

No doubt Dair was already marking Lucien’s interest in a university student as being a security nightmare.

He might be right.

But Lucien wanted her anyway.

Nicky stood frozen to the spot for several seconds after she knew she had been summarily dismissed, hardly able to believe the conversation that had just taken place.

Had Lucien Wynter really just offered her a job when she finished university? Well, the chance of a job, anyway. It didn’t seem possible, after the way he had been scowling at her earlier—

Nicky’s breath caught in her throat, the noisy chatter around her fading completely into the background, as she looked down and saw what Lucien Wynter had written on the back of the card.