The Alpha's Desire 2 (7 page)

While the coffee perked, he read. While we both sipped at our steaming mugs, he read. When I went to indulge in the much welcomed warmth of the fall sun, he followed me out to the balcony, and he read. Those words he devoured were the last part of myself he didn’t know, the exact inner workings of my mind. Especially that story, the one I’d written about him.

“I exaggerated the story a bit, too. Embellished if you will, to make it one of those love at first sight things. I didn’t know at the time why you felt so familiar, like I’d known you all my life, at the time I wrote it,” I mumbled. “Still love at first sight, though, just not feel. That would only make sense to you, of course.”

The idea of what he read, the more I thought on it with him sitting there perched on the edge of his chair hunched over my paper, had begun to make me antsy. I squirmed in my chair for the hundredth time in a half an hour. I’d already had two cups of strong coffee to his barely touched first cup. So, maybe the indulgence in caffeine had gotten to me, or the fact that my soul lay bare before his eyes. A fate worse than being naked and chained to a post, I mused.

The image of him, bare, bound, built, got me wiggling for different reasons.

“Can’t you hold still?” he teased. “I’m nearly done. And if it helps, I love every word. And, before you accuse, I’m not just saying that to save your feelings. I honestly mean every word I’m saying,” he muttered, stuttering over the words as he continued to read even as he spoke.

I used to do the same to my father when he’d come home late and tried to ask me about my day before he got too drunk, but he’d caught me in the middle of a good book. It used to amuse him, as very few things did. He’d always said he didn’t understand how I could do two things like that at once, read and talk, or study and watch TV. But, he’d seen the proof on my report card.

“You are so talented,” Lex stated, as he slapped the pages down on his lap. His head shook as he continued, “I wish I had the words to convey just how much so. But I’m not a word guy. You will just have to understand that I am blown away not only by the content, but by your phrasings. I swear you could describe anything, a simple inch worm, and it would be entertaining to read. And I hate to read. Hope that doesn’t diminish me in your eyes.”

“No. Of course not. I’m not one to judge people because they have different interests than mine. Although, I’ll admit to judging others when they are intolerant of others’ differences,” I confessed with a quick and slight tilt of my head.

“Amazing,” he slurred over the ‘z,’ hanging onto it for emphasis or as if he’d forgotten how to articulate.

He stood up and walked the two steps to where I sat. Kneeling down before me, he shook his head, his eyes searching mine, before he took my face in his hands and kissed me. I felt the tingle in my toes as I wiggled them in my slippers. Our tongues met, teased, as he pulled my body to his. My legs wrapped around him as he lifted me as he stood. I got fuzzyheaded just with that thrill alone. He held my ass hard as he walked me into the apartment.

“Wait, I wanted to know about the vampires. I want to play more with our magic. While I don’t mind the sex at all, at some point I’ve developed more questions, and I want answers eventually?”

“You’d rather talk than have my cock inside you?”

“Hell no. But we have to rest sometime, and then, I want answers. It’s just I waited so patiently while you read, you gave me too much time to think,” I got out between his kisses as he walked.

“You think too much. And, sometimes you talk too much. I love you still. I love everything about you. It’s so amazing, mind blowing, to be able to confess my feelings, and to act on them,” he mused in a gravelly voice that vibrated through me even as he laid me out on the bed.

After batting off my slippers, he untied my robe. With an outward sweep of his hands, he uncovered me. His eyes drank me in with a hunger I felt in my soul, a deep churning that tightened my stomach.

“Turn over,” he commanded. “Get up on your knees. I’m in charge this time.”

As I rose, I let the robe fall from my arms. Without moving it from the bed, I turned over until I positioned myself doggie style in front of him. His hands fell to my ass, rubbing over the fullness there, pressing his fingers into the softness. As I closed my eyes to just experience the sensation of his heated massage, a hand fell heavy on my back, pushed my head to the mattress, raising my ass to him. My wet folds opened, revealing me fully to him.

That animalistic grumble of his shook the bed slightly. I eased more into the pose, encouraging him to touch me, to take me. His hand fell hard onto my right cheek, the sting of it pulling a yip from me. The vibration of it sent a tingle through my pussy. I wiggled my ass at him, an instinct to beg for more.

“You like that,” he hissed with a low approval to his tone. “I love that.”

His hand fell several more times, alternating cheeks as I squirmed, begging for more. Each swat fell harder. Each harsh touch of his palm to my flesh got closer and closer to my wet folds until they trembled in anticipation of being touched. My legs shook even as I tensed up the muscles in my thighs, curled my toes in tight. 

I yipped again like a tiny dog when his tongue touched between my folds. He licked me hungrily at first, before he took to sucking. His tongue teased my opening, making it clench up in want of him.  Luckily, he didn’t make we wait long. His hand clenched in my hair at the base of my neck, just seconds before he released a curse and let go.

“Damn woman, you’d make me lose my head if it weren’t attached. I want inside of you so much, I can barely think of protection, as you well know from experience.”

I just laid there, my forearms starting to ache against the mattress, but my focus remained on the twitches inside as I heard him reach for a condom and sheath himself. While it seemed an eternity, he returned his hand to my neck, grasping my hair as he plunged inside me. The roughness of it had my insides begging for more. I pushed back against him, meeting, encouraging him to take me as savagely as he wanted. I needed to be possessed, to be taken by him as much as I’d needed to control him last night.

The power plays between us were not about control exactly, but about possession, a marking of territory if you will, as we mated, joined together completely in the most basic of ways. As he pushed in to the hilt, he hit places inside me that turned my blood to fire. My entire body ignited thanks to his thrusts. I saw stars as I held tight to the sheets and thrust back into him. He’d unleashed the animal in me. I felt sweat bead on my skin as I continued to move with abandon, pushing my body to its limits, taking him in as fully as it would allow.

We found ourselves moaning and growling in unison as our orgasms took over. The contraction, tight and hard, sent a warmth from my head to my toes. At some point I fell flat to the bed, my muscles melted to mush under the heat of our passion. He fell on top of me, though I could tell he held himself to one side to protect me from his full weight. Covered with him, we panted together as the aftermath of our orgasms still wracked our bodies. 

“You are so open, so free when you give yourself to me. There are so many things I want to do with you in and out of the bedroom. I’ve had years of fantasies to go on, too. Things I never imagined in a million years I would ever get to do with you, but I now feel you will be open to. To have a girl as beautiful as you, that I love more than I ever thought possible, be so open in the bedroom... well, it seems an unfathomable situation even as I live it out with you,” he whispered through heavy breaths.

“I never knew I had such desires in me. But, with you, I feel free to unleash wants and desires, and that leads to me finding things out about myself sexually that I hadn’t tapped into before. I feel so safe with you I’d try anything. As I know just like in life, in here, in bed or wherever, you would never let me get hurt.”

“No, I would not,” he said through a kiss on my cheek.

A hard knock on my door startled us both. Figuring it for a neighbor just looking to chat on a Sunday afternoon, I grabbed my robe, tugging it out from under him as he rolled with a silly grin on his face, watching me.

“Just let me get rid of whoever it is. Probably my neighbor down the hall. She usually wanders over on Sunday afternoons just to talk, pass the day, and relax. I’ll get rid of her.

Chapter Six

I practically flew to the door. My steps light and quick as I tied my robe around me, I undid the lock and threw open the door. I expected that my messed hair, red face, and goofy grin alone would tell her just what I’d been doing. One look at me and she’d probably apologize as she gave me the thumbs up and turned to leave.

Once I’d pulled the door fully open, a bit of shock skittered over my flesh to find no one there. Stepping out into the hall to catch the prankster running away, I screamed, though no sound escaped me. To my right, a wolf, one black and as large as my wolf, was hunched down as if ready to spring at me and attack. Hearing a slobbery snarl to my left, I turned my head fast enough to send a nerve in a hot protest of pain. There, two more wolves, one brown, one a mix of colors, hunched in the same position as the first.

Again, I felt air push through my lungs, burn my chest, but nothing but a slight squeak came out. Forced to the ground suddenly by paws on my back, the air was forced out of my lungs as I hit the ground, wondering if my spine had been snapped with the force of it. I panicked as I struggled for breath from the force of the fall and the weight on my back.

Another snarl came from one of the other wolves. My head to the side, cheek pressed to the carpet, out of the corner of my eye, I could see my wolf head butt the one on top of me. As the paws on my back slid to the side a bit from the force of it, a chocked cry escaped me. Stepping off, the beast picked me up by my robe, with just his teeth, and tossed me back into my apartment. I hit Lex before we hit the floor.

My door slammed shut as one wolf started to shudder, to shake and growl like his body had been hit with seizures. A painful cry tore from deep within the animal as I watched the claws retract into a paw that seemed to meld slowly into a hand.

As Lex picked me up, brought me to my feet and pushed me behind him, I saw a naked man, face contorted in pain and anger, stand up. The other two remained wolves. Flanking him on both sides. I felt every muscle in Lex tighten as he stood there in only unbuttoned jeans.

“So, the protector has become the lover,” the man grunted. “Will make it all the more of a win when we take her from you. Imagine me screwing her, impregnating her, forcing her magic, which I will nurture in my own barbaric way into our bloodline. We know a twisted sorcerer or two now ourselves that has promised to help us with her, to relieve us with her ancient magic of the torment our curse bears. You screwed up royally in your screwing her. ” He grinned at his own play on words, knowing just how they would play off of Lex, I was sure.

“You’ll never take her,” Lex growled as he magically transitioned into a wolf. A welcome distraction, I felt the swirl of power around him stir a tornado of energy in my own body. I swore, at that moment, I could shoot those white streaks of power from my fingertips like you see witches do in the movies.

In a more painful, laborious process, the man turned back into a black wolf himself. He cried out as it sounded like every bone in his body broke to contort into his beast. I got quick glimpses of skin tearing, muscles and bone revealed, before a thick pelt of hair covered him. Swallowing down the nausea that rose up in my throat, I turned to the commotion at my right.

Lex, as my wolf protector, had leapt onto the multi-colored wolf, having turned him over on his back as he bit into his neck. With a real animal squeal of pain, paws batted at the air. Seconds later, both the brown and black wolf landed on my wolf’s back as I stumbled back, only to find myself grappling for the arm of the couch that I’d hit. Off balance, I found myself free-falling to the floor, only to feel paws land on my shoulders. My world went black.

Chapter Seven

When I came to, I opened my eyes to the blurry vision of a wolf’s muzzle. Not my wolf, mind you; the teeth snarled, dripped with saliva and making me move to avoid getting slobbered on before my head had been ready. Stars swam before my eyes in accordance with the sudden, sharp, shooting throb in my head. Blinking, my wolf, Lex, in fur from head to toe, or paw to paw, stood on stiff legs, snarling as well. The two other wolves laid bloody on my carpet, lifeless on their sides.

While I knew in my heart it had been kill or be killed, they looked like overgrown dogs, like the ones that break your heart in those support-my-animal-rescue-cause commercials they play late nights on woman’s channels with a marketing brilliance. New to all of this werewolf fighting, or mauling I should say, I cut myself some slack. Besides, stupid me, what did I really know about the age old fight between these factions, other than what Lex had told me in the last few days?

My worn and dingy carpet, that had gone from a speckled cream to mostly brown in places, was now soaked a crimson that turned a shade of black around the edges of the puddles of blood that seeped from the dead wolves. Bunches of hair in matted and bloody balls, one just a foot from me, moved the acid from my stomach up into my throat. It burned, and I blinked in reaction as much as in an attempt to see something different. No fluttering of my lashes did a damned thing to change the horror, the gore that had taken up residence in my living room. So much for the safe haven of home.

The gnarling and gnashing of teeth grew in intensity until the floor beneath me literally shook. Stalemate or threatening, maybe even a bit of bullying, I couldn’t tell from the emotions that washed over me from my wolf. In this stance, in this situation, ready to defend me no matter what the cost, I supposed, I didn’t fully comprehend his feelings. Reading him when he was in human form wasn’t so hard. In fact, we often felt the same things. So, his emotions merely intensified my own, or when different, washed through me in gentle waves. Yet, when Lex appeared as my wolf, I didn’t really get the harshness of his anger, his need for blood or vengeance. Maybe just the thoughts of one spelled to be a protector, they were still foreign enough to me to exist only as a shivering, harsh and jagged, as each emotion of his beast ripped through my soul.

This didn’t help my own anxious and fearful plight. Between the floor trembling, the almost painful shivering, and my own shaky nerves along with my jittery body, I didn’t think I could have stood if I’d wanted to, or been allowed to. I gulped and then cleared my throat, only turning the attention of two furious and threatening wolves my way. Brought back to my plight by a loud growl in my ear, I looked back and forth between the two wolves left standing. My wolf grumbled a threat through a low sound that ripped from deep in his chest.

My attacker wolf, the one that wanted to take me, impregnate me, and use my magic, breathed heavy, blowing my hair into my face. Close, way too close, he guarded his prey or prize, whatever he saw me as. Lex, as my wolf, while just a jump away, stood still, poised in a defensive stance, almost a version of down dog, though far from relaxed. His muscles bunched to spring. I felt his rush of fear like a hot wind before a brutal summer storm. That emotion, I got clear as day. If he feared for my safety, then I guessed I should, too. Of course, in shock maybe, it took his fear to make me realize that my hands already shook so that you could see their tremors. I just didn’t feel them, and instead, even my enemy could tell his intimidations had worked on me. 

My mouth so dry that I could barely swallow, I licked my lips in a desperate attempt to stop them from sticking together. At least, no one asked for my opinion. I couldn’t have weighed in if I’d wanted to. The werewolf behind me moved an inch closer until the tops of his legs rested against my shoulder and arm on one side. The cold sweat that had broken out over my skin made my clothing cling to me. With wide eyes that threatened tears, I watched for my wolf’s next move.

My sore back against the couch was all that held me up. I slouched again as my sight went grey around the edges. The intense breath of the wolf guarding me rolled my stomach. Something akin to bad meat and stale morning breath, I clenched my lips together until only a tiny bit of air could get in and out. I didn’t dare use my nose to breathe again, lest I vomit in the middle of my living room, in the middle of all of this.

A hair caught in my eye from his breath blowing it forward. So I swiped a hand at my face. My sudden movement started the war. I watched, motionless, stunned into a statue, as paws flew over my head. The unwanted wolf in my apartment planned to keep me behind him as he fought my wolf. After a leap and a brief pause, the wolf jumped on mine, his mouth open and going straight for the neck. The tearing of his hide vibrated in my ears, as the fresh scent of blood hit me again. The rush of the intense smell sent a metallic taste to my mouth. Could have had something to do with my biting my lip, though.

Like I was watching a cage match, I saw legs, all eight of them, moved and tangled, then jumped again until all I could make out became a blur of fur. Tails and teeth the only verifiable parts, once blood spurted, I lost sight of those, too. Parts shook off and then made jerky movements forward and back. Their growls became one unified roll of sound bouncing off the four walls of a room I’d once thought large, but which now felt so small. 

A lunge followed by a cry stopped the movement. My wolf laid on the floor. Blood, thick and a dark, crimson red, soaked the fur around his upper arm and shoulder more predominately than any place else. Hair and flesh hung to give glimpses of tendons, muscles, and bone.

Heat rose from my core until my brain ached. Shoulders up and arms down to my sides, I stood, using my fisted hands to help me practically jump to my feet. My attacker victor I couldn’t take lying down, or even leaning on the couch. The vicious snarling going on between the two in a precarious standstill made them both unaware of little old me, though. Cringing at the whimper that crept into my wolf’s growls from time to time, the sound rippled through me, set my teeth on edge, like nails in a chalk board.  I stomped to the kitchen, each heavy footfall sending a vibration up through my legs. My face and chest flushed so that I radiated heat.

Fury spurred me forward. My knife block in the corner of the counter, I went for that long, thick knife, the one a single woman like me with few cooking skills never used, didn’t even have a clue what it was for. Now I did. Defense. Protection. Rescue. I’d kill the slime ball who’d come for me myself if I had to. No one took down my Lex, wolf form or not. I wouldn’t lose him now when it had taken so much to get him back.

Storming back into the room, my stomps gained me some attention, but too late. The knife gripped tightly in my hand, up above my head in what I could only describe as serial killer stance, I brought the sharp metal down between the shoulder blades of the wolf over mine. As he crumbled, I both winced and smiled in realization that I’d miraculously hit some prime spot. I’d thought
aim for the heart
even as the blade had come down. I’d felt my hand had been guided though, not under my control exactly.

That force, that tornado of energy in my stomach that Lex had made me focus on and bring forth into my hand, had shot from one point to the other until my hand had felt enflamed and somewhat possessed. Had my magic actually guided my hand, directed my knife to some kill point? I shook my head at the seeming impossibility of it. I’d gotten lucky, but who knew anymore, in this world I’d so abruptly become immersed in.

Kill
, the word echoed through my head. I’d never taken the life from anything. Me, one so traumatized by death at an early age, I wouldn’t even own fish for fear of having to flush their dead, cold carcasses. Now, something had stopped breathing at my hand, my doing. I’d plunged a sharp metal blade into a heart. I’d robbed someone, or something, no, some beast, of life. With it, the man wouldn’t see another minute either.

Lex, covered in blood, emerged in his human form from under the dying or dead wolf. Thankfully, the result of my actions let me focus on the intent that had driven me to the point of being made murderer. Just the word set my teeth on edge. Lex’s shoulder badly mangled, still even in his human form, the gashes shown forth as being bone deep. Not one for blood, I swallowed at the nausea that rolled in my stomach and rose in my throat.

“It’s okay,” Lex muttered to me, re-focusing my attention from his wounds, which appeared life-threatening. “I will be fine. But, you, you look so pale. Please, drop the knife and sit down.”

I looked down at the blood-covered knife that hung from my hand, my fingers barely holding onto it, and let if finally drop. Careless, it hit the floor next to my toes and bounced an inch or so away. Gulping for air, my chest shuttered and rose with each attempt. Bile rose as the smell of blood this time took on a different meaning. I’d spilled it. As my throat tightened, giving my lungs reason to really panic, tears stung my eyes. My chin quivered, so I clenched my teeth in some weak defiance of my traitor of a body. I needed to focus on Lex now, dead wolf or wolves later.

“It’s okay, Christina,” he wheezed, his breath hitching over the words. “It had to be done. I’m alive because you are so brave. I don’t know any woman who would dare go against a werewolf. Regardless, he forced your hand. Kill or be killed.”

The words echoed as familiar in my brain. I’d thought the same of him when he’d protected me. I now needed to think the same of myself, as I’d protected him.

“I don’t know what possessed me. I just saw you lying there, bleeding, hurting… I felt this pain from you, not one physical, though, emotional,” I surmised, trying to explain out loud what I couldn’t even rationalize yet.

“I felt the pain of failure as I laid here, unable to get to you,” he growled.

I’d never get completely used to that animal sound coming from a man, but then, he wasn’t just a man. He made another sound as he tried to move, once more that of a wounded animal, a cry at first high that then went more to a low baying as he stumbled, but stood.

“We need to get you to a hospital,” I choked out on a sob as I went to him.

Grabbing the hand on his uninjured side, I tried to lead him to the door. My mind raced as to the location of my purse and keys. Scanning, I saw that I’d dropped them at the small table by my door in my haste to get to the window last night when I’d returned home. The keys rested close to the edge, but my purse lay on the floor, on its side, with only a few non-essentials like lipstick and tissues having fallen out.

“Don’t worry about me, love,” he hissed, bringing us to an abrupt halt. “My magic, what makes me a shifter in a sense, it gives me the power to heal quickly. I’ll be fine.”

“But,” I got out as I dared look at his shoulder again.

Though still painful looking and frankly gross, the shreds of skin had already moved, merged back together enough that they looked like gashes from four long claws. I dropped his hand and gingerly touched his chest. No idea why. I wanted some kind of confirmation that he was real. Not sure why holding his hand hadn’t been good enough for that. I shook off my stumbling and stupidly random thoughts.

His hand came up to his chest to cup mine, but paused inches from it. The blood that had been on his paws, his claws, now dried on his fingers and hands. I looked away, but that only brought into my line of vision the state of my living room. A bloody war zone didn’t cover it, the space having had four oversized wolves battle it out.

With no idea how long I’d been unconscious after my graceful trip backwards over the couch, I now saw that not a single piece of furniture remained standing. Not that any of it had cost a whole lot, but none of it could ever be used again. The coffee table rested as a mound of wood. It could no longer hold as much as a cup, but it could make a good start for a bonfire.  In fact, burning down this room seemed the only logical way to hide the evidence. I’d just killed a man, so why not add arson to my list of crimes?

Anger welled up inside me, at myself, for what I’d done as well as for the self-criticism of my actions. Even that didn’t make sense. My life, was so out of control, and I teetered on a thin line between powering through and shutting down. My favorite candle had been sliced in half, I guessed by a reckless claw. This didn’t upset me, though, like the book that had not only lost its bookmark, but some of its pages. A sweet love story, a book had never seemed more like fiction than that one did right now.

“Maybe it deserved its fate,” I spit out.

“It?” Lex questioned. “Is that also how you see me?”

“What?” I asked confused.