Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
Alec’s muscular thighs are tensing, and he’s loosened his grip on the back of my head to stroke my hair. He’s close. I relax my throat. He likes me to swallow, and I don’t want to spit in front of him, so I do.
“That’s so good, Flora. So good.” He grunts, his hips jerk, and a blast of hot cum shoots onto my tongue. My throat convulses, but I get it all down, desperately swallowing spit to keep it down. His dick slips out of my mouth. A string of cum and saliva dangles from my lips to the shiny, reddish head of his cock.
“Let me see,” he says.
I open my mouth wide like he taught me and stick my tongue out flat to show him that I got it all down. The string snaps and sticks to my chin. He smiles, teeth and everything. My heart tumbles around in my chest like a dryer ball.
He tucks his softening dick, still wet with my spit, into his shorts. I come back to myself.
My cheeks are damp from my watering eyes. My knees ache. My butt’s sore from perching on the heels of my sneakers. Devilled eggs and cum slosh in my belly.
Alec bends over, and like I weigh nothing, he grabs me by the waist and hauls me onto my feet.
“Nice one, Flora,” he says, taking his phone out of his pocket and scanning for missed messages. “Give me ten before you come down.”
And then, without a backwards glance or another word, he lopes off through the trees toward the pack’s gathering place at the river.
I brush off my knees, but the moss has ground in, staining them green. Good thing I know everything about laundry.
I guess I’m supposed to hate myself now. Call myself a slut or a whore. Swear to myself that this is the last time.
Instead, I turn to lean against the tree that Alec had been lounging against, prop my foot on the trunk exactly where his was, and exhale. His taste is in my mouth, and the hinge of my jaw is sore. Behind me, Salt Mountain rises, its peak still snow-covered, and in front of me, the woods are filling with shadows as dusk descends. The bullfrog chorus begins.
I didn’t get to come, but I still feel floaty and full. I don’t hate myself.
I know Alec uses me, but in a way, I use him, too. He is my holiday. I live for the quick soar of my heart when he catches my eye. The rush when I sneak away. The buzz when his scent fills my lungs, and my eyes feast on his beautiful body and his harsh, handsome face, for once, allowed to look at a male packmate without bending my neck and averting my gaze. The headiness of knowing that even though I don’t exist to him most of the time, when he’s in my mouth, I’m the center of his world.
So, yeah, I guess I’m not proud of what I’m doing, but I’m not sorry, and I definitely don’t want to stop. I’d never willingly give it up. Harriet, the rare hour when all the washing is done, and sneaking off with Alec Cameron. That’s what I’ve got, and I’m not ruining anything with shame or regret.
I take a few more deep breaths of early summer evening before I retrieve Miss Nola’s plate and make my way back to the pack’s full moon gathering place. By the time I get there, the picnic will be cleaned up, and folks will be getting ready for the run. The sun will set behind the mountain soon. My wolf is awake. Energized.
She wants to shift and race through the moonlight so badly that I can taste the rush of night air over my cold snout. Pretty soon, I’m going to have to do what Alpha Shaw wants and let them take me to the shifter circuit fights to see if my mate is in one of the other packs. He must be.
I’d be more pressed about it if not for Alec. My wolf doesn’t care about finding her mate. She just wants to run with the wind in her fur.
I get back to the clearing in time to see the elders and mated couples race off in pack formation, howling as they follow Alpha Shaw north along the river. They always leave first and return early so they’re in bed by midnight.
The unmated males take their time stripping, joking and playing around with the unmated females who hang out, drinking hard lemonades and shrieking when the males playfully throw them over their shoulders.
Because I work at the laundry, it’s my job to collect the clothes and take them back to the village. I wander over to the cleared buffet table to wait until the remaining males leave. Most everyone’s either drunk or well on their way at this point, and that never bodes well for a low-ranking wolf like me.
Alec is in the center of the group again, listening to Bram Blackburn and Leith Munroe argue about something. It’s hard to tell whether they’re joking around or about to brawl. Could be both.
Bram, Leith, and Alec are considered the top contenders for alpha once Conall Shaw’s day is done. Bram is a meathead—and a dickhead, too, when it comes down to it. Leith is the mountain shifter version of a surfer, with sun-streaked hair and a blinding white smile. He’s the kind of easygoing that feels like a cover.
I wouldn’t want to bare my neck to any of them.
A memory of Alec brushing my hair off my shoulder flashes across my mind, the scratchy pads of his fingertips grazing my skin. My cheeks heat, and I feel a gush in my panties. Ugh. They’re already ruined from earlier. I must reek. Another reason to hang out over here and wait for everyone to leave.
I tie my hair back again and pull my hood up, tugging the strings taut even though it’s getting muggy. I want to hide, but if I bail without getting the clothes, someone will snitch to Brenda, and I’ll get shit for it. I slide onto a picnic bench and pinch the foil around the edges of Miss Nola’s plate for something to do with my hands.
Bram and Leith are raising their voices.
“We go to the waterfall,” Bram declares, peeling off his tank top and flinging it to the ground.
He’s got concrete blocks for abs and a pelt like a bearskin rug. I can’t believe I let him in my pants. I was so easy. All it took was him dropping by the laundry, applying some light pressure, and I let him punch my V card in the utility closet. I try not to beat myself up about it, though. I was eighteen, Alec was with Isla Sinclair, and loneliness is a mindfuck.
“The waterfall is played out,” Leith scoffs, shucking his shirt, puffing his ripped and waxed chest. “I say Tall Pines Lake.”
Bram waves his hand dismissively. “Tall Pines Lake smells weird.”
“Your dam smells weird.” Leith flashes his white teeth. It’s both a smirk and a challenge.
Bram responds by letting his fangs descend and circling Leith. Leith cracks his neck. I smother a sigh. Nine times out of ten, the males end up brawling before they run. It leaves a lot of mending and stain removal for me.
“What do you say, Alec?” a Campbell asks to drag Alec into the disagreement and set him up as the decider. Every little thing in this pack is about scoring status for your guy, and the Campbells are team Cameron all the way.
Alec shrugs, reaching behind his head to grab his collar, and tugging his shirt over his head. My breath gets stuck. The way the moonlight hits his chiseled chest, his bunched, veiny arms—my mouth waters. He’s perfect. Beyond perfect. Without thinking, I stand to get a better view, and that’s my first mistake.
The movement draws Rhona Blackburn’s attention. She scowls at the sight of me, her nose wrinkling, and with the moonlight also shining in her cold, black eyes, I see the exact moment she decides to mess with me.
“Hey, laundry bitch,” she calls over. “Can you put down the food for a second and do your job? You just gonna leave everyone’s clothes in the dirt?”
I look down. My fingers are still mindlessly pinching the aluminum covering Miss Nola’s plate. I snatch my hands to my side and drop my head.
“Come on, Fluffa,” Greer Munroe jumps in like she always does. “Tear yourself away from the chow. It’ll be there for you when you’re done.”
Of their own volition, my eyes seek Alec. He’s the only one not staring at me. He’s crouched with his back to me, methodically untying his shoes.
“Quit gawking at the naked males, Fluffa, and hop to it,” Rhona snaps and laughs. It sounds like metal scraping rock.
The words drive into me, hot nails driven into my tender belly, a shiv in my soft side, but I’m not going down. I know how to make my legs move while I’m skewered like the lady at a magic show with swords through her middle.
They’re just words, and they’re not new. Everyone thinks I’m disgusting. I’m above it, and if I’m not, then soon enough, I’ll be over it, and as they say, the only way over is through.
While my skin burns with humiliation, I force myself to walk over to where the others are gathered as if that’s what I was going to do anyway. I squat to pick up a shirt. I know better than to bend over. I can feel their eyes track me, sneering at my body.
My wolf’s fur bristles, and she bares her fangs. She doesn’t understand the hostility. I’m bigger than the other females. They should show deference.
I can’t soothe her, not with humiliation shorting my brain, and for some reason, she seems closer than usual. Looming.
I ignore it all and focus on working my way through the clustered packmates, collecting clothes, my gaze cast down and chin so low my neck strains. Bram and Leith continue to argue. No one makes room for me, so I try to make myself small as I wind between them, careful not to accidentally brush anyone with my boobs or my butt.
Everyone has gone back to ignoring me, but by the way they stand, stances wide, hands on hips, they make it clear that I’m interloping in their space, even though they called me over. This is how they claim rank. They shove me down, and then they act like I don’t exist.
I get a few feet from Alec, next to the clothes he’s shed. The compression shorts are still stuck in his athletic shorts. I fold them over my arm with the rest and grab his shirt. There’s a scent coming from it.
My stomach flips, and my wolf alerts. She trots right up to the boundary between us.
It smells good, familiar and new at the same time. It makes me think of summer afternoons when I was little, helping my dam in the kitchen in our matching red-checked aprons, the impossibly blue sky framed by the square window above the sink.
I can’t help it. I raise the collar to my nose and inhale. My wolf lifts her muzzle and howls. A wave of heat crashes into me like I’ve opened an oven.
In the background, I vaguely register Leith complaining, “The waterfall is tired.”
“You’re tired,” Bram shoots back.
I blink up at the scene unfolding around me, a sense of total unreality descending over me. My body has gone crazy—feverish and tingling and dizzy—and this shirt smells impossibly delicious, like bubbling strawberry jam in a pot or the way you imagine champagne tastes before you’ve had it and you’ve only ever read about it in books.
“You wanna say that to my face?” Leith says to Bram.
“I just did, dumbass.” Bram gives him his back, turning to Alec. “Bro, you call it.”
Like usual, everyone has formed a loose circle around the three highest ranking males, and now, they’re all looking at Alec, and he’s—
He’s looking at me. I’m crouching, trying to fish a pair of shorts out from under Isla Sinclair’s heel with his shirt pressed to my nose, and he’s staring at me. Everyone’s eyes follow the path from his face, all the way across the circle, down to me. Another wave of heat explodes inside me like a starburst.
Something’s terribly wrong.
The males are all naked, and I’m throbbing between the legs, and the air reeks.
The only thing stopping me from hurling is the scent of Alec’s shirt. What is that stench? Something died. Something very big.
“What the fuck is Fluffa doing?” Rhona says to Greer.