Fated: An Alpha Male Romance (10 page)

“Fine.”

I decided to try it one last time. “Goodnight, Rick. I…love you.”

“Goodnight.”

Then, he hung up.

Realistically, nothing had changed in my relationship with Roderick. We rarely made love, so thankfully the opportunity hadn’t arisen since my first night with Ethan. But, the thing was, I’d never minded the emptiness of the relationship until Ethan.

Like I said, Ethan gave me feelings. With Roderick, everything was mental. I would have to think about doing things for him, how to act in public with him, and the moments when touching him would be the most pivotal for a photo op. With Ethan, I just acted. I couldn’t stop touching him, and because we had to keep our relationship fairly under wraps, when we were in public, it was a struggle to not feel his skin set warmly against mine.

Wasn’t that how humans were supposed to live? Why the hell would we be allowed to have feelings if our entire purpose was to ignore them?

“Alle?” Ethan’s voice called from the bedroom. “You okay, baby?”

Just that sentence alone was already turning me into a furnace. “Yeah, I’m okay,” I answered, flushing the toilet for effect.

I washed my hands and walked back towards the bedroom of the suite. Ethan was laying in the bed looking directly at me, and my heart skipped as though it failed to notice the uneven edge of the sidewalk.

“Are you hurting?” he asked, easing up.

“Stay just like that,” I told him.

He leaned back down. “Like this?”

“Yes.”

I walked to the edge of the bed and slowly crawled onto the mattress, trying to use my “sexy” to mask my muscle pain. I maneuvered my body over his and managed to get a knee on either side of him. Then, I began tugging down his boxer briefs.

“What are you going to do?” he asked, his eyes slowly fogging with desire.

“I am going to,” his erection sprang up, “put him in my mouth.”

“You still can’t say dick,” he teased, grinning. “Or cock.”

I flicked my tongue over his thick head. “Would you rather I say it, or suck it?”

His grin slowly eased and he gave me a look that told me muscle spasms be damned, I was going to pay for my teasing later.

He secured his hands behind his head. “Yes ma’am.”

Ethan

She was so immersed in my blood that I was sure biting my lip would taste just as sweet. Whenever I wasn’t working, eating, or sleeping, I was with her. Whenever I wasn’t completely preoccupied by my thoughts, I was thinking about her. If I gave any before, I no longer gave any fucks about her relationship with Roderick. As far as I was concerned, she was mine. I was being irrational and uncharacteristic, but I didn’t care. I wanted her; it was just up to me to show her how much she felt the same way.

“Wanna hear a secret?” I asked the pair of large blue eyes looking up at me. Blonde pigtails hung loosely from the elastics in her hair, and pink-framed corrective glasses were secured by a strap behind her head.

“Yes,” she eagerly replied.

“I heard,” I leaned in a bit closer, “that a certain someone is feeling much better.”

She gasped and touched her stomach. “Who told you?”

“A little birdie.”

“Mommy, did you tell him?” She looked to her mother and placed an exaggerated hand to her forehead. “It was s’posed to be my secret to tell him, Mommy.”

“I’m sorry, Cara,” her mother answered, smiling.

“Did she tell you my other secret?” Cara asked me.

“Another secret? Hold on, let me prepare.” I pulled over a grey stool and sat across from her. “I’m ready. What’s the other secret?”

“I,” she opened her mouth to show me a gap in her bottom row of teeth, “lost a tooth!”

My mouth fell open. “What? How is this possible?”

Her little chest extended with pride. “It’s because I’m growing up.”

I pulled out a lollipop and began to hand it to her, but then pulled it back. “I don’t know. Maybe because you’re growing up and getting your grown-up teeth, I shouldn’t give you any more of my yummy lollipops.”

“Hey!” She hopped down from the exam table and stood in front of me with her hands on her hips. “But, I’m still a kid!”

“That you are.” I crouched in front of her. “I’m very proud of you for not fighting with your Mommy when she had to give you your medicine. It’s because of your hard work that you got better so quickly. Do you think you can teach your baby brother the same thing when he gets bigger?”

I extended the lollipop and she grabbed it before flinging her tiny arms around my neck.

Three-year old Cara Vincent and her mother Tanya had come in a week ago, Cara with an extremely high fever, sore throat, and the beginnings of a rash on her neck. Tanya, initially assuming that her daughter had come down with a simple cold, had waited until her daughter’s strep throat had progressed into scarlet fever before they’d come into the center.

Cara had been my patient ever since birth. She was Tanya’s adopted daughter; her birth mother was a teenaged girl who’d been addicted to alcohol but wanted to give her daughter a better life. I’d personally gone over the possible effects of a baby born with fetal alcohol exposure with Tanya, who was recently coming out of a divorce, before she’d finalized the adoption papers. Tanya had seen Cara as her calling, and while Cara did have some of the physical effects of her mother’s prenatal binge-drinking, and was tinier than most of her preschool classmates, she was as smart as a whip. She was even turning out to be a better big sister to her six month-old adopted brother, Anthony, than either Tanya or I could have ever hoped or imagined.

Now, seeing her complete her treatment for an illness that had knocked her down for a couple of weeks filled me with an enormous amount of pride. She’d taken the entire thing like a trooper, and I was ecstatic to see her back to her normal, jovial self.

“Thank you, Dr. E,” she said into my neck.

“You’re welcome Cara V.”

She giggled and was escorted by her mother out of the examination room. Standing just outside the door, Alexandra waved at them with a smile as they walked down the corridor, and I waited until they were through the doors before pinning her against the wall with my arms over her head.

“Last little patient of the day?” she asked, her beautiful brown eyes boring directly into mine.

“Yes ma’am.”

A nurse walking by hung her head and blushed when she saw us. I’d long since stopped caring about what comments others could possibly make about the closeness of my and Alexandra’s relationship. Over the past several weeks, I’d also enjoyed watching her walls come down and her head poke even further out of her shell. My plan now was to get her to step far enough out of that shell to finally take her life into her own hands. The fear of her family’s image and her uncertainty about what I wanted from her was still crippling her, but at the end of the day, I wanted her with me.

“Good,” she said. “Rick left for the airport this morning and won’t be back until Tuesday.”

“Okay…” I waited to hear the rest of what she had planned and mentally glossed over Roderick’s name.

“I’ve been thinking about our trip to California, and I want to spend more real time with you, E.”

I kissed her just for the way she’d begun to shorten my name. “What did you have planned?”

“For us to get away. A cabin in Colorado. This weekend. Just you and me.”

“And you just decided all of this?”

“I’ve actually had this planned for a couple of weeks now.”

I kissed her again. Cute was now a normal part of the vocabulary of adjectives that I used to describe this woman.

“So, do you think you can get away?” She wrapped her arms around my neck. “Spend some time with me? Your Alle?”

“So, you’re
my
Alle, now?”

She brushed our noses together and ran the tip of her tongue over my lips. “Come with me, Ethan.”

Several hours later
, our naked bodies were splayed in front of a burning fireplace. She was lying on my chest with her hands wrapped tightly around me, anchoring me to the plush rug underneath my back. I’d started to cover our bodies with a blanket, but she’d shrugged it off saying that her favorite part of this moment was lying naked together without having to feel vulnerable or exposed.

She inched up further on my body so that she could place her ear against my heartbeat, then she touched a kiss over the rhythmic thump.

“Where’s your grandfather now?” she asked, propping her chin up on her hands. “Why doesn’t he teach the classes anymore?”

“He’s in an assisted living facility,” I answered. “Half the time, he doesn’t remember that I’m the grandson that he’s always continuously telling me about. He has dementia and in the beginning, it was slow progressing. I knew that it was coming when he started forgetting people that he’d known for ages and how to find his way home. Then, he had a major stroke and it threw him into it at full speed.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she consoled. “My mother’s father had Alzheimer’s. My mother tried to take care of him initially, but it eventually became too much to handle. He started disappearing in the middle of the night and forgetting simple things, like putting his shoes on before going outside in freezing temperatures.”

“My grandfather was the same way,” I added. “At first, I tried to move him in with me, but with my work schedule, I just couldn’t give him the care and attention that he needed. Then the stroke hit, and I knew that not even a live-in nurse would be enough, especially on his “bad” days. The bad days are the ones where he tells me stories about the grandson Ethan that he raised that ended up becoming a doctor. On his good days, the ones where he actually knows who he is, he tells me about how much he likes the facility. That he’s made friends.”

She smiled and I lifted her fingers to my lips.

“Do you visit him often?” she asked.

“Every Sunday. I’ve told him about you. I’d like you to meet him one day.”

Another smile stretched across her beautiful lips. “I’d love that.”

“But tell me, how did your parents meet?” I redirected, determined to get to the bottom of what made Alexandra who she was. What made her conform. What made her stay.

“A junior cotillion,” she replied. “When my grandfather started making a name for himself in political circles, they were inducted into high society by way of ‘passive diffusion.’ Basically, they didn’t seek it out, but it pretty much still found them. So, my father ended up growing up in that type of environment, and my mother’s father was a Joint Chief before he retired early due to his illness. In case you haven’t noticed, my family is heavily military and political.”

I nodded. “Oh, I’ve noticed. Especially your father,
The General
.”

She laughed and gave me a playful swat. “Why do you say it like that?”

“Because he acts like a general.” I glanced down. “Unless I’m wrong and he really knows how to cut loose behind closed doors.”

She looked at me incredulously and I burst out laughing.

“Guess not?”

“The furthest thing from it,” she replied. “My father is, let’s just say, extremely uptight. Image is extremely important to him. It’s basically what he’s all about. He’s also very adamant about how women are supposed to act in public and in private. It would probably kill him, quite literally, if he found out that I wasn’t a virgin.”

My brows nearly touched. “Seriously?”

“I’m dead serious. For example, my mother has to ask permission to buy
anything
.
She can’t even consent to buying a carton of grapes without first getting his permission and approval. Then, black women wearing their natural hair is a big no-no in his book because, as he puts it, it looks too indigenous and unrefined, which I think is a load of bullshit. And let’s not even get started on attire. He thinks that women in pants is a heinous concept, skirts without stockings is lunacy, and he forbid me and Gia from wearing red nail polish or lipstick because it made us look like we were aspiring to work in a brothel.”

I wasn’t sure if Alexandra noticed how much she’d gotten off of her chest in the span of that explanation, but I was getting a crystal-clear sense of how she’d sustained a long, yet unsatisfying two-year relationship with Roderick. Through very ardent child-rearing, her father had managed to turn her into a clone of her mother.

“So, what happened with Gia?” I asked. “To me, it seems like she pretty much does what she wants.”

“Pretty much, she does,” she said, smiling. “Gia did something that I’m still not entirely sure I have the courage to do: she made the choice to be herself. She wears her hair however she wants, wears whatever colors that she sees fit, listens to music that suits her mood, and tosses our father’s standards back in his face with amazing finesse. She’s happy in her own skin and successfully found someone who loves her just as she is, in that skin.”

The fire blazing next to us paled in comparison to what I saw burning behind Alexandra’s eyelids. Between the admiration and pride that it was evident that she held for her sister, I saw mountains of envy. The desire to do the same.

“Why does it scare you so much?” I asked. “Being your own person. When you think about it, in your head, what’s the worst thing that could happen?”

She took a moment to think over her answer, and then lowered her eyes. “As much as I admire my sister, I wonder if there’s a hole somewhere in her Teflon,” she replied. “The way that my parents talk about her, you would think that she was nothing but a disappointment. Yet, she’s been successfully running her own art business since she was eighteen years old. Normal parents would consider that a pretty decisive win, but all my parents see is failure because she deviated from the path that
they’d
created for her. It makes me wonder if it leaves her feeling alone, and if there is a small part of her that still wants to embrace their identity simply for the sake of removing the label of the family blemish.”

I felt her chest expand into mine and for a moment, felt guilty that I was even broaching the subject. It was something that caused her obvious anxiety, and I felt like I was pushing her into a decision that I wasn’t sure that she would ever be ready to make. On the other hand, however, I wanted her. I wouldn’t ever have her unless she came into her own. It was hard not to push when I was ready to selfishly claim her as mine and mine alone.

“I won’t lie to you and say that I completely understand,” I told her. “But, I am beginning to get why it’s so difficult for you. This is who you’ve been your entire life, so it’s like you’re in a hundred mile long comfort zone. But, what I can say is that laws were made to protect us from ourselves and others. Policies were made to run corporations and organizations. Rules were made so we could all understand how to play the game. Your father says that skirts without stockings is lunacy, but how isn’t it equally as crazy to impose further sanctions on ourselves from what we already deal with in our everyday lives? Order has never changed the world. You and I here together wouldn’t be possible without someone challenging the status quo.”

The fire transformed the brown in her eyes into a sensual orange which, set against her lashes, was as spellbinding as an aphrodisiac.

“My entire life, I’ve walked around with this grey cloud hanging over my head that, no matter what I did, made everything appear dismal and gloomy,” she said, tracing a circle on my chest. “But ever since that first conversation you and I had in the hallway, the world has felt a bit different every single day. It’s lighter. Freer. And, the more I get to know you, Ethan, the more I realize that there is nothing about me that you expect me to change. There’s no one else that you expect me to be. I get the feeling that my flaws could be staring you in the face and you’d simply side-step them to get back to
me
.”