Mating the Alpha (6 page)

That was surely the truth. He approached me slowly and then took my hand again. With a gentle tug, he pulled me toward the tub. He sat down on its porcelain edge. His hands whispered down my body to rest on my hips. Even sitting down, he was still almost as tall as I was. He reached behind me, and I felt the tug on the zipper of my dress. It didn’t make a sound as it slid down to the small of my back, and I didn’t even try to catch it as it fell away.

Lukas took a deep breath and seemed to be trying to keep himself calm. “I can’t tell you how hard it is for me not to touch you all the ways that I want to, but you’ve been through an ordeal. Right now, this is just about you. I’m going to take care of you for once.”

His words were so sweet and felt so genuine that they brought tears to my eyes. I nodded mutely as his fingers made short work of my bustier that served as my bra under the dress. My breasts sprung free, and I saw his eyes devour them with a hungry stare. I wasn’t ashamed of my body because Lukas was looking at me as if I was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

“Put your hands on my shoulders. I’ll keep you steady as you step out of these,” he said, motioning toward my underwear. I did as he requested. Then I gasped as he swept me up into his arms. He pressed his lips against my forehead, and then he gently navigated my body down into the water.

Instantly, I felt my tense muscles relax, and I moaned in pleasure.

“Is the water too hot?” he asked.

I shook my head as I let my limbs float freely in the water. “This is heavenly. Thank you, Lukas.”

He looked at me for what seemed like forever, and I couldn’t quite read his expression. There were no words that felt exactly right, but I felt better than I had in a long time.

“I’ll be right back,” he said finally. “Just relax.”

There wasn’t an ounce of anything inside of me willing to argue with that logic.

I felt like a complete jackass as I stepped out of the bathroom. My erection was more than evident under my robe and causing me physical pain, but that wasn’t what Maren needed. She needed someone to take care of her and put her at ease, not ravish her with no regard for what she had just been through. But certain parts of my body definitely had a mind of their own, so I needed to get my shit together and calm down.

Ever since seeing Maren underneath that brute as he pinned her to the ground, I’d been seeing red. I would have killed them both if Billy hadn’t stopped me. Which was what reminded me I had left him in Black Falls Cove with the two goons. I crossed the bedroom and made a quick call to the police station. With any luck, Billy would come up with a cover story, and the whole thing would be swept under the rug before morning with none of the Summit attendees any the wiser. Still, what Maren said about Joshua concerned me. I’d have to have Billy look into that as soon as possible.

Feeling better that the current situation was under control, my thoughts returned to the woman in my bathroom. Every emotion I felt earlier in the day had done nothing but intensify since finding out that she was gone. Now that I had her back, I couldn’t think of any scenario that was acceptable where I would let her go. It wasn’t going to happen. I was going to change our destinies. Maren was mine, and it was time I told her everything. She deserved to hear it.

Taking a deep breath, I returned to the bathroom. I slipped inside and saw that the tub was almost full. The bubbles I had snuck into the water were covering all of the parts of Maren that I really wanted to see. That was good though because seeing her naked body again would serve as nothing but a distraction. I padded as quietly as I could across the floor and turned the knob to stop the stream of water.

Maren had taken one of the washcloths next to the tub and placed it over her face. She looked perfectly relaxed, but I knew better. No matter what she said, her mind was in overdrive reviewing every moment that had happened that evening. She was searching for nuances and things she had missed that might be important. That was just the way my girl’s mind worked.

“Can I get you something for the pain?” Her jaw looked swollen, and unless I was wrong, she’d have a fairly nasty bruise on her cheek by morning. I really wished that I had been able to kill the man responsible for that damage.

“I’m sure it looks worse than it is,” Maren said. Her voice was tired but strong. That made me feel somewhat better.

“You’d be wrong,” I said with a wry grin. “Hopefully you have a stash of make-up. Covering that up is going to take some work.”

Maren groaned, and the washcloth slid down so that her eyes were uncovered. “I have no idea what I’m going to tell my dad. He is going to freak out. Then he’ll want the inside scoop on everything that happened so he can publish it on the front page.”

“Your father was always such a concerned soul when it came to your well-being,” I said. It wasn’t a secret that Mr. Lene didn’t think too highly of me. Actually, I’m pretty sure the guy hated my guts. The news of Maren’s attack and the fact that it was my fault wouldn’t sit well with him at all. It would be just another nail in my coffin as far as he was concerned.

“My father has never made it a secret that he lives and dies for the story,” Maren said. There was a subtle wistfulness in her tone that spoke volumes if you knew her. Maren probably wouldn’t want to admit it, but going into journalism and following in her old man’s footsteps was her way of trying to get his attention. It was sad what we did to get the attention of those we cared about. I knew that better than anyone.

“That doesn’t make it right,” I said.

We fell into a semi-awkward silence. The words that I needed to say gnawed at my insides, but I had no idea where to start or how she was going to react. There were things that needed to be said, and I hoped I hadn’t waited too long to say them.

“Lukas…” she started.

“No, Maren, I need to tell you something,” I said in a rush. “Something I should have told you before, and you deserve to know. After what happened with the announcement with Vivian, I realized that I should have told you already. Then maybe you wouldn’t have felt like you needed to run away from me. You have to trust me when I tell you how I feel about you. It’s going to take some doing, but I’m going to make things work. But only if you want me.”

The cloth slipped completely from her face then and into the bubbly water. I saw her shocked expression, and her mouth opened and closed several times. It was adorable and silly and made me want to kiss her. But I couldn’t do that. Not yet.

“The truth is that I lied to you.”

“You…lied? When? About what?” I saw the guarded expression spring into existence across her face. It was one I was well familiar with and for good reason. Me lying to her wasn’t that unusual of a situation. I lost count at one point how many lies I told her, but they were always in an attempt to cover my true feelings for her. Often, it was stupid stuff to keep her attention right where I wanted it to be: on me. I was a horny, confused, thoroughly idiotic teenage boy, and being a shifter seemed to bring out every negative quality I had in spades.

I felt awful because I knew her mind had immediately gravitated toward me lying about what I had said to her earlier in the day. She probably thought I had told her a fine tale to start the process of getting into her pants. In her pants was exactly where I wanted to be, but that wasn’t what I had lied about.

“I lied about not trying to communicate with you in the last ten years,” I said. “I did try. Three times.”

Her mouth fell open. “You did?”

I felt a strange sense of loneliness waft over me then.  I nodded and looked away from her. “The first time was about three weeks after I left. Markus was out of town on a business trip, and so I decided to find a way around his orders. I had been expressly forbidden from calling you, and that was the kind of thing that he would have found out about anyway because he told your father about what happened, or at least a part of it.”

“My father was part of it?”

I snorted. “Of course, he was. He couldn’t wait to see my backside. I was never the kind of influence he wanted around you. I’m surprised he didn’t throw a party the day that I left town.”

“I didn’t see you,” Maren said. “If you came back, I didn’t see you.”

“You wouldn’t have seen me unless I wanted you to,” I said. “I thought for sure after what happened you’d be as miserable as I was. I wanted to see you so badly and tell you how I felt about what happened between us and what it meant to me. I wanted to ask you to wait for me, which I realize now was selfish and stupid on my part.”

Maren sat up a little straighter in the tub. “I was miserable. I felt completely lost and alone.”

“I couldn’t come back to Greyelf without permission, so I had to wait for you to leave town and go somewhere else. Remember you used to work at that store in the mall over in Huntersville? I waited in the parking lot all day for your shift to be over, and for you to walk out to your car. When I saw you, you looked the furthest thing from miserable,” I said quietly. “I watched you talking on the phone to someone. You were laughing and twirling your hair around your fingers as you walked. You must have changed to go out afterward because you were wearing a shirt of yours that I thought was the prettiest one you had. I know I told you that at least a couple of times. I followed you to the bowling alley down the street. You met Kevin Milton there in the parking lot.”

Maren shook her head. “You have got to be kidding me. My one and only date with Kevin Milton was the night that you came back to see me. I can’t even believe it. My dad set that whole thing up. Since he forced me to go, I did my best to make it tolerable.”

“I left before I had to watch anything else,” I said. “But that wasn’t the first time. A couple of years later, Bea let it slip where you had gone to school. I wasn’t allowed to ask anything about you, but apparently you had written something that your dad put in the paper.”

“It was a story about a new club that formed on campus for shifters,” Maren said with another rueful shake of her head. “I barely dated in college, so you can’t tell me that you came to see me, and I was on a date again.”

“No, not that time,” I said. My heart beat against my chest painfully. It hurt to think about the images of Maren from that time. I had wanted so desperately to approach her and talk to her. I had berated myself the entire drive to her school’s campus, but that hadn’t stopped me from waiting for her in the quad. “I told myself that I was going to talk to you that time no matter what. It took me all day long to talk myself into it, but I was determined to go through with it.”

“So what happened?” Maren moved so that she was closer to me. The bubbles still covered all the intimate areas of her body, but they were starting to diminish at a rapid pace. I cleared my throat and glanced in the other direction. This confession was hard enough the way it was.

“I saw you walking with your nose stuck in a book. You looked so much older than the girl I remembered, but yet still exactly the same. I started to walk toward you, and I was about to call out your name when someone else beat me to it. I remember you looked up, and I thought that you saw me. Your face lit up in this huge smile, and it took me a minute to realize that you weren’t looking at me at all. There was a crowd of kids that burst into the common area, and you ran toward them. Everyone started talking at once, and then it was as if the crowd absorbed you from my view. But it was so obvious to me how happy you were. They crowded around you as you all walked off, and I knew that for once, you were the center of attention, and why wouldn’t you be? You were always smart and funny and gorgeous. But when you were friends with me, you were always forced to be in my shadow because I needed to be the one that everyone was looking at. I had to do everything I could to keep the eyes glued on me because for some stupid reason that made me feel better about my sorry life.”

Maren reached up and touched my hand. I stared at it. It was so small compared to mine. She was trying to comfort me just like she always did. I was supposed to be the one taking care of her. No matter what I did, it always seemed like she was taking care of me.

“Lukas, you should have said something to me that day. I would have loved to see you then.”

“That was why your greeting in the hospital a week ago was so warm and fuzzy, right?” It wasn’t fair, and I saw her eyes narrow. This was something else that we did well. Fight. But I didn’t want to fall back into our old patterns; not anymore. I had to open myself up to her and hope for the best. “I’m sorry. You had every right to be upset with me.”

“Maybe if you had started with what you’re telling me now, the conversation would have gone differently,” she said.

“I have spent the last ten years convincing myself you were better off without me,” I said. “Despite everything inside of me that said differently. I believed you deserved better.”

“What was the third time?” she asked softly. “You said that you came to see me three times.”

I sighed. “I was there the day you graduated.”

She looked surprised. Then her expression changed, and she shook her head. “You were there. Of course, you were. I thought I felt somebody watching me that day, but Dad said I was being paranoid.”

“No, that was nothing but your resident shifter stalker checking up on you,” I said. “That was the third and last time. I just had to make sure that you were still happy. I remember thinking your dad actually looked proud of you that day, and I thought that you’d go far. You had the world in front of you. You didn’t need me getting in the way of that.”

Maren rolled her eyes. “I moved back to Greyelf and went to work for my dad. You wouldn’t have interfered with much.”

I sank down onto the floor as we stared at each other, and I was less distracted by the constantly disappearing bubbles. “I’ve told you already that you are an incredibly talented writer, Maren. You are only here in Greyelf because you feel an unnecessary obligation to your old man. You could easily go anywhere to any newspaper or magazine in the country, probably even the world, and get a job without even blinking. You’re that good. So don’t tell me that this town’s rag was your only option.”

She bit her lower lip, and I saw by her expression that she was calculating her next words carefully. For being a writer, Maren wasn’t usually one to mince words when it came to verbalizing how she felt or what she was thinking. That was just another thing that I loved about her.

And that was the crux of the whole thing. I loved Maren Lene. I probably had since the day I first saw her when we were ten years old. But I had been too dumb and wrapped up in my own turmoil to recognize it. By the time I wizened up, the opportunity to tell her how I felt about her had passed me by.

“Lukas, you think that I came back to Greyelf to work for my dad because I felt an obligation to him?”

“Don’t you?”

“The only requirement my dad had for paying for my college degree was that he wanted me to be a journalist. He never said
where
I had to be a journalist. I had three offers from city newspapers and a national publication before I even started my senior year. I never applied anywhere, and I turned them all down because I wanted to be here in Greyelf.” I felt my chest tighten as I waited for her next words.