Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
The muscle at his left temple twitches.
I poke a little more because that’s not all of it. Not by far. And I’m riveted.
He also wants to look at me. He wants me to drop my arms and arch my back to lift my breasts like an offering. He wants me to sit back on the stacked mats with my heels on the edge, and let my knees fall apart.
He wants me on all fours, my ass spread, so he can see everything. Everything. He wants me to present.
Desperately.
My face is burning. My gaze flicks up to his. Does he know what I know?
There’s tension in his rigid neck and jaw, but there’s no other clue that his brain’s a riot. Because mixed in with all the porn, he wants to kill whoever pushed me out of the locker room, and Art Floyd and Vaughn Lewis, and even poor Mr. Arnold?
He’s not sure if I’ve had enough to eat, and he’s really concerned about that. He wonders if I should always be so red—is it a symptom of some kind of untreated medical condition?
He doesn’t like that I don’t make sense. It makes him nervous.
He thinks I don’t make sense?
He’s worried that he’ll hurt me—that he won’t know his own strength or he’ll lose control. He’s completely freaked out that he didn’t sense I was in trouble until I was thrown naked at his feet.
He’s angry at his wolf, and his wolf is silent. Removed.
There’s a looming threat, a terrible danger, an impending loss—all of it a suffocating weight that he’s holding up, but it’s crushing him into the ground.
Everything is there, a book of it. Volumes. I blink up at him.
Why is he letting me this close?
He can’t know what I can see. He wouldn’t let it happen if he knew.
All of a sudden, it doesn’t feel right. I let go, let the bond slip through my fingers, wade back out of the strange, dark place until Cadoc is a stern, menacing male again with cold, blank eyes.
I gnaw my lower lip. “I can’t help blushing, you know. It’s not a disease or anything.”
The crease appears between his eyebrows.
“If you were wondering—it’s fine. Just a blush.” I poke a spot under my clavicle to show him how my skin blanches white.
When my arm moves, I flash the very top of my left nipple. He licks his lips, and then he shakes himself, finally dropping his hands from my elbows.
“You’ll want clothes,” he says, and without hesitation, he peels his T-shirt off, revealing rippling, honed muscles still slick with sweat. He bunches the shirt, and before I can react, he’s yanking it down over my head. I quickly stick my arms in while he smooths it down, hands skimming my sides, fingers racing the fabric.
His breath hitches. When his hands reach my hips, he grips them like they’ve caught him. His shirt is damp, and the cotton’s rough. It chafes my aching, peaked nipples.
I think he tried to cover me up, and I think it’s not working.
He drags me by the hips until I’m so close that his hard cock presses into my soft lower belly. If I look down, I bet I’ll see the head peeking out of his waistband. I keep my eyes up, glued to his face.
He’s rocking the slightest bit, side to side, his eyes focused over my shoulder on a wall of shelves. From another vantage point, he would probably look disconnected, aloof. His usual cold, emotionless self.
But I can hear his heart pound through the thick slabs of muscle. His cock twitches as it grows impossibly harder and thicker, and the bond crackles, the static now a steady stream of thoughts and feelings I’ve somehow learned how to decode.
I fascinate him. Like a snake charmer or a lion tamer or the edge of a huge abyss.
And his fascination makes me curious.
I raise my hands to rest them on his forearms. He is bigger than the other males. Not comically, like how my wolf is larger, but proportionately. He’s a quarter more male than the others in the pack. Enough that everyone has to look up to him—that I have to crane my neck to stare into his expressionless eyes.
If I wanted to loop my arms around his neck, I might not be able to—even on tiptoes.
But I wouldn’t do that. It’s way too familiar.
I do curl my fingers around his arms. His muscles harden. It’s like he’s chiseled out of stone, like there can’t possibly be blood inside him. He must be solid through and through.
His thumbs begin to stroke the divots under the jut of my hip bones. Tingles spread over my belly, between my legs. A whimper catches in my throat.
His breathing quickens. “This feels good?”
Why does he need to ask? Can’t he tell through the bond?
“Is it—” He clears his throat. “Do you like it because of the heat?” His touch wanders, and he skims his fingers along the crease where my thighs meet my hips, smoothing his palm over the ticklish skin above my mound, sliding his hands around my waist and over my bottom. He cups me, lifting, squeezing gently.
My heart pitter pats, and my lungs catch—they start and stop simultaneously—and the imbalance makes me stumble for no reason. Cadoc’s grip tightens, and my cheeks spread, my pussy parts, and wetness dribbles into my dark curls.
His nostrils quiver. “Rosie,” he says.
I can’t tell if it’s a sigh or a nudge to answer his question, and I don’t respond because I’m gobsmacked and quivering and excited and terrified, all at once, altogether.
What did he ask? Does it feel good because I’m in heat?
“I don’t know.” Does it matter?
I lengthen my spine, arch it back, lift my chin. He’s already bending, searching out my mouth, brushing his lips across mine. For a male who’s always frowning, always cold, his kiss is gentle. Sweet.
He tastes me, a hand rising to cup the nape of my neck, holding me in place so he can draw my top lip between his, and then the bottom.
I’ve never done this before, but I don’t think he has either. He’s just so—careful. It’s not at all like when the males who visit Drona eat her face, shoving their tongues down her throat.
What Cadoc’s doing—it isn’t so pushy. It’s slow brushes and soft tasting. It’s making my insides swirl.
When I inhale, I breathe in his breath. Our noses graze. His shaved chin is sandpaper against mine.
The bond is an anchor, steadying us.
He pulls my top lip into his mouth, and I do the same to his bottom lip. He groans, his fingers digging into the base of my neck, all his muscles tautening. His wolf rumbles.
I do it again.
I get lost.
He tastes like the forest, not like dirt or plants, but like the wide openness of it, the sunshine, the earthiness. Kissing him feels like summer afternoons, like thawed ground in spring, like the first snow of winter.
I want to wrap my arms around him, but I don’t dare, so instead Ifeel. My breasts ache, my clit throbs, and I’m antsy all over.
Cadoc’s shoulders rise as he draws in my scent. He groans and whispers, “Is it time, Rosie?”
“For what?”
“Heat.”
“I don’t know.” I can’t focus. His hands are stroking up my spine, down my sides, returning to my ass to knead and sculpt, and my hands are wandering, too, over the planes of his pecs and the ridges of his abs, the hard nubs of his dark nipples, so unlike mine, the fine hairs leading to his belly button and lower—
“You need a nest,” he says.
A what—?
And like a strong wind driving the clouds out of a gray sky, my mind clears, and I begin to piece together what he’s saying, what he means. He thinks I’m in the full throes of heat. That I’m going to present. Here in the fucking equipment room. No nest. No privacy. On a damn stack of wrestling mats where anyone could walk in anytime, and everyone who walks by can hear and smell.
That’s what he thinks I am. An animal.
I jerk free of his hand and scramble back onto the mats, a half-formed idea that I’ll duck past him somehow and bolt, but he’s got too much range, and I end up trapping myself.
I’m on my knees, hands raised, warding him off.