Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
Nope.
I don’t think things like that about myself anymore.
Even though whales are lovely animals.
Alec helps me across the pool, around the island, to the alcove he mentioned. He’s right. For being in the center of everything, with the way the cave’s walls curve and how the little island is situated, it’s almost private.
“Here.” Alec reaches into the bag and takes out a bar of soap in a net bag like you use to wash delicates. It smells like lavender. It isn’t mine. Must be more demon clog booty.
I tell Alec to turn around, and when he does, I lift the towel, ball it, and thrust it over his shoulder. He grabs it and drapes it around his neck.
I immediately sink down until the water is up to my chin and exhale. It’s amazing. For a moment, I just soak in the weightlessness and the wonder of it all—this place, the fact that I’ve done what I’ve done, the male guarding me like it’s the most serious kind of business.
Eventually, I use my hands to scrub myself. Although it’s the homemade kind of soap that doesn’t make much of a lather, all the tackiness and dried sweat washes away until my skin is cool and smooth and slippery.
I float on my back to wet my hair and stare up at the stalactites and the framed patch of bright blue sky. A ray of sunshine streams in at an angle, shimmering in the air, reminding me of the picture in our mythology textbook of a human god visiting a female on earth as a shower of gold.
The light lands on a tableau a few yards from the pool—two ratty upholstered chairs on either side of an overturned barrel. A knitting bag spilling over with yarn sits by the foot of one chair. On the seat of the other, there’s a thick, clothbound book left open and upside down to hold the reader’s place. I can’t make out the title on the spine from here.
This is a strange place. Life is lived out in the open. Shamelessly.
It’s terrifying.
The only thing that made life in Salt Mountain bearable was that I could hide myself away in the laundry or the back of the hall or in my bedroom at Miss Nola’s cottage. I was expected to hide myself.
What would it be like to be seen?
My eyes travel to Alec’s broad back. True to his word, he’s blocking me as much as he’s able, his stance wide, his hands on his hips. He’s tense. He’s always tense.
Except for when we’re touching each other.
Then he’s too caught up to be uptight. Too honed in.
Because he thinks I’m beautiful, too?
I clear my throat. Softly. Alec straightens. I imagine him glaring into the middle distance, thinking grumpy, disdainful thoughts about fluid dynamics.
I clear my throat again. Louder.
“Do you need the towel already?” he asks without turning.
“I haven’t washed my hair yet,” I say. And then, without thought or plan, I hear myself ask, “Will you do it for me?”
My lungs catch and then suck down the breath to speak while my brain scrambles for the words to say to take it back.
Never mind. I don’t know what I’m thinking.
Bad idea.
Alec grunts and tosses the towel onto the bank of the mossy little island. “Hand me the soap,” he says.
Well, there’s no getting out of it now.
I hold out the net bag. He takes it. I paddle in a circle until my back is to him. He kneels.
“Lean back,” he says, his voice deep. Deep and pleased.
I do, swishing my hair back and forth until it’s fully soaked again. He rubs the soap on his hands and then combs his fingers through the floating strands until he reaches my scalp.
“I’ve got you. Let go,” he says, and I let his hands take the weight of my head and allow my body to rise, my aching back, my sore bottom, my tired legs. I close my eyes.
I know he’s looking at my breasts. My pussy. I let my legs drift apart in the water. He makes a strangled, choking noise, and then he coughs to cover it. I arch my spine and focus on his fingers scritching my scalp, paying special attention to the place right behind my ears. My wolf sprawls, blissed out, her tail swishing back and forth.
In the pool, all sounds are far away—the wind blowing high above the roof, distant laughter muted by the earth and rock of the cave. All sounds except Alec’s breath growing heavier and faster.
The moment has echoes of when we bathed in the river, but this feels like a brand-new thing. My mind isn’t clouded by heat. My feelings aren’t so raw and bruised. More than that, I’m not on a reckless journey into an unknown future. I’m here.
I did it. I left home. I made my way. I don’t know if Old Den is going to work out or not, but if I can do it once, I can do it again. If I’ve come this far, I can go further.
“What’s that?” Alec asks.
My eyes flutter open. He taps the place where the bond disappears into my chest.
“What’s that feeling?” There’s a softness and a curve to his lips.
“What’s it feel like to you?” I ask.
The corners of his mouth fall. There I go, asking him to name feelings. Words and feelings, his Achilles heels. What on earth is he going to say?
“Good,” he says.
I laugh softly. His brow furrows.
“Feels good to me, too.” I close my eyes again, and when he stops fussing with my hair and draws me to his chest, I let him. He winds his arms around my waist, and I rest my head on his shoulder. He tilts us back so we can watch wispy white clouds drift across the patch of blue.
His body is wired with tension, but he makes no move to do anything but hold me and float.
I feel naked—Iam naked—but I also feel drowsy and safe and alive in a way I’ve never been before. Free? Is that what this feeling is?
“You know, I never did anything brave before.” I turn so my nose can nestle in the crook of his neck, and I inhale the scent of plump, ripe, dewy berries.
Alec grunts, but the bond flows both ways, and now that I’m tuning in, I sense the emotions that match the tension in his body, the aftershock of adrenaline and cortisol, the fight or flight response triggered over and over until the only relief he can get is me safe in his arms. His wolf’s satisfaction.
Even though Alec’s dick is hard and poking me in my back, he’s not turned on. He’s taking a breather while his wolf blisses out with mine.
“You’re going to want to stay here if I do—aren’t you?”
He clears his throat. “Pritchard and them, they can jerry-rig anything, but they’re trying to modernize the entire infrastructure of this place, and they just don’t have the know-how. Pritchard’s gonna talk to Cadoc when he gets back. Says he should be able to get us on the wait list for a den.”
So much for what Nia said about Alec coming without recommendation. “So that’s a yes?”
“If you want to stay, I want to stay.”
“Because we’re mates.”
He grunts, and my heart twinges. I close my eyes again and try to recapture the peaceful feeling, but the spell is broken. I start thinking about where the laundry is, and how dinner is managed here, and whether my boots are still where I left them. I’m about to give up and get out when Alec breaks the silence.
“You’ve been brave plenty of times. Remember that McKay pup on midsummer?”
Good lord, that was years ago. Some drunk idiot gave little Wally McKay a sparkler when he could hardly toddle. The poor baby caught his hair on fire, and it was pure luck that I saw it from where I was cleaning up the pavilion. None of the partiers around the big furnace noticed. I’ve never run so fast in my life. I was so panicked I didn’t think about how I was going to put it out, so I ended up grabbing his head, tucking it to my chest, and smothering the flames with my arms.
His mother went nuts when she realized what had happened. Wally lost his baby curls, and I lost a hoodie and some arm hair, but it could’ve been a hundred times worse.
“You were there?” I don’t remember Alec around, and I always kept track of him.
“I was in the river. I didn’t see Wally; I just saw you bolt. I ran, but by the time I got out of the water, you’d put him out.”
“You saw me run, so you ran?”
He hums and draws me closer, resettling me between his stretched legs.
“Were you watching me?”
“Guess so.”