Fated To The Alpha: A Paranormal Shifter Romance (10 page)

Jeremy rubbed a hand over my head. “I can tell you’ve got a lot going on in that head of yours,” he said. “Why don’t you give your poor head a rest until tomorrow? We’ve got a roof over our heads, a bed beneath us, and hot water in the shower. Can’t we relax and enjoy this?  Besides…” he added, leaning in towards my ear, “when was the last time we made love somewhere other than in the dirt?”

Okay, I had to admit, that improved my mood. I turned my head and looked up at him with a smile. “Well, okay. I just have one more thing I’m wondering.”

“And what’s that?”

“Why the hell did you bother putting those clothes on in the first place? Did you just want me to rip ’em off?”

His mouth curled up into a smile. “Maybe I thought it could be fun.”

I rolled onto my back, bringing my feet up onto the bed, as he peeled the towel away from me. As I became exposed to his eyes, he ducked down and began kissing my neck and collarbone, while I rolled my head back with a soft moan, stroking the back of his head. He kissed along the slope of my breast, while my feet came up, kicking back and forth to work those pajama pants off his legs.

When he rose up on his knees and stripped his shirt away, I sat up to wrap my arm around his torso and began hungrily kissing his chest. He ran his fingers through my hair as my lips suckled at his flesh, and then bent me back down onto the bed where he kissed me deep on the lips. His hands pawed at my breasts, and my back arched up off the bed, my feet squirming about below us.

I brought my hand down to grasp his cock, which by now was standing stiff and ready, while his fingers started petting my wet, puffy pussy lips. I pushed my crotch up against his hand, urging him to rub harder.

He moved lower, taking my tit into his mouth, cradling it in his hand as he suckled at it. I gasped, rolling my head from side to side as his mouth and tongue pleasured my nipple. I cradled his head, writhing beneath his expert tongue.

As he kissed his way further down my body, my legs parted to welcome him between them. And when his mouth reached the junction of my thighs, I lit off like a rocket, screaming to the ceiling and clawing at his hair.

He put my thighs on his shoulders and hooked his arms around them, holding onto them like the handlebars on a rollercoaster. And with the way I was bucking beneath him, he might as well have been on one. But he held on for the ride he was on, just as I rode out what he was doing to me.

Before too much longer, I realized he was about to get me off. Hard. I wasn’t ready for that yet. I wanted him to be in me when I came, and I wanted him to know that in no uncertain terms. I sat up and lifted his head up by his hair, pulling him up to kiss me. His lips carried the tangy flavor of my juices on them.

I grasped his shoulders as I lowered back down and he crawled over me, lining his throbbing cock up with my wet, hungry slit. I reached down to take hold of his cock, guiding it into me as he lowered down between my spread legs. I groaned as I felt his mushroom head parting my folds, slowly penetrating into my depths.

I held him inside me once he finally bottomed out. So many times we had done this out in the woods, surrounded by nothing but trees and animals, where any kind of creature could be coming around the pike at any time. And yet I never felt safer than when joined with him like this, buried inside me, his arms engulfing my body as mine did the same to him.

The same still held true now, when we finally had four walls around us, a roof over our heads and a bed beneath us. Ironically, I felt a lot more vulnerable here than I ever did out in the woods. For that reason alone, this was already the best sex we’d had yet. And we’d barely even gotten started.

He started slowly thrusting, looking down at my face as he did. “No one’s going to hurt you here,” he said softly. “Not from my pack, not from yours. I’ll never let them get close enough.”

I brought my hands up to cup his face. “I believe you,” I said. I pulled him down to kiss me, moaning softly into his mouth as he continued thrusting.

He gradually built up his rhythm, groping at my breast and planting little vampire kisses on my neck when my head rolled to the side. I focused on flexing my vaginal muscles, trying to squeeze him inside of me in time with his in and out motions.

When he ducked his head to take my tit into his mouth, I finally let loose with that orgasm I’d been trying to hold back from earlier. Ever since Jeremy had introduced me to the feeling of coming with him inside me, I could never get enough of it. I loved having his stiff shaft there for my walls to convulse around, much better than I ever felt getting myself off with my pussy so achingly empty.

He paused his fucking motions as I rode out my orgasm, and continued to hold still after I came down from it, pausing to catch my breath for a moment. But as soon as I recovered, he started moving again, moving me along my way to another release.

I took charge, rolling us over to put myself on top and pushing myself up on my arms, my hands resting on his pectorals as I stared down at him, my hips moving back and forth on his lap. His hands gripped my hips, holding my upper body steady as I rode him.

I stared down at him, not wanting to think about the heaviness of our situation. For right now, I wanted there to be nothing but him, me, and his cock filling me up. I let myself become lost in his slate blue eyes, in his hands reaching up to cup my bouncing breasts, and the sensations shooting up through my body from my loins.

I leaned forward, draping my body across his and wrapping my arms around his head, kissing his face while he stroked my back. He started to grunt, beginning to thrust harder up into me, signaling that he was nearing his release. I worked my pussy muscles more, urging him along, until he finally exploded up inside of me. As we stopped moving and took slow, heavy breaths, I continued to hold him by the head, and kept planting kisses on the side of his face, more slowly now, but with no less passion.

I slowly rolled off to the side, letting his softening dick slip out of me, but keeping my arms about him as I rested my head on his chest. “I think I needed that,” I said, my fingers lightly stroking his chest.

“You and me both,” he said.

“Really?” I replied, lifting my eyes to his face. “You seem pretty okay to me.”

“Don’t let my calm face fool you,” he said. “I’ve been just as anxious about this whole thing as you are. I know exactly what all your fears are, because I have them too.”

I frowned. “So, all your posturing about how you’re not going to let anything happen…”

“It’s not posturing,” he declared without hesitation. “I meant every word. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you, Evelyn. I’m not going to let them hurt either of us. That doesn’t mean I’m not still afraid.”

“Well,” I sighed, “I guess you’re just a better actor than I am.”

“I hope at least one of us is a convincing actor,” he said. “For both our sakes.”

*

I woke up the next morning to find Jeremy’s bed space next to me empty. I knew he hadn’t gone far; I could still smell him in the house, and I could hear someone moving in another room. I got up, put on a robe, stepped out of the bedroom, and found him hard at work in his kitchen, with cluttered dishes all over the place, and smoke starting to rise from the skillet, as he rushed to lift it off the stove and save the eggs he was cooking. He scrambled—no pun intended—to find a spatula and scoop off what was left of his creation onto a plate.

“I take it you’re not much of a cook,” I observed.

He looked up at me a bit sheepishly. “I’m not used to having company for breakfast,” he said. “My usual breakfasts consist of a bowl of cereal, and maybe some Pop-Tarts.”

I laughed a little. “Well, I’ll still eat your cooking anyway. It’s the least I can do.”

“‘The least you can do?’” he said. “I’m the one making my home yours here. You’re not taking pity on me, are you?”

“Any reason I should?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” he said, before getting a look on his face and adding, “Unless you know something I don’t?”

I laughed some more, and shook my head.

While the eggs ended up being a little overcooked, the rest of breakfast came out more or less okay. “This actually isn’t too bad,” I told him around a mouthful of bacon.

“Thanks,” he said. “I was starting to worry for a minute.”

Of course, that only served to remind me that breakfast was the least of our worries. “You realize we’re going to have to go out and face the pack after we’re done here.”

“Yes,” he sighed. “You think you’re ready for that?”

“We faced them all last night,” I said. “That went pretty much okay.”

“That was only for a few minutes,” he pointed out. “The real test is going to be interacting with them, going through a normal day, acting like one of them. We have to be able to keep up the ruse that you’re just a stray from up north for long term. That’s what you need to be ready for.”

I sat and thought about it for a moment. Then I looked up at Jeremy with a weak grin and said, “Well, if I could act like I was happy about having to marry my alpha back in my own pack, then I’m sure I can play the part of being someone I’m not. Shouldn’t be too hard.”

I tried to laugh, even fake laugh at my own comment. It wasn’t funny.

“You’ll have to watch what you say,” he said gravely. “If they start to suspect you’re a Caldour, even for a second, it’s all over.”

“No pressure,” I muttered.

“I mean it,” he said.

“I know you do,” I said, getting up from my seat and walking over to hook my wrists about his neck. “Don’t think for a second I’m underestimating the situation. But the more we stress about it, the guiltier we’ll look.”

He sighed. “Yeah, you’re right about that.”

“I just have to make sure not to say or do anything to raise their suspicions. I don’t mention the name Caldour, or name anyone from my pack, and they shouldn’t have any reason to suspect me, right?”

“I hope it’ll be that simple,” he said.

I kissed him, trying to reassure myself as much as him. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go face the music.”

I started walking toward the door, when he suddenly said, “You’re not trying to get away from my cooking, are you?”

I looked back to my unfinished plate of breakfast, and grinned sheepishly. “Okay, maybe I’m a little scatterbrained this morning,” I said as I returned to my plate.

“I wonder why,” he said.

So we finished our meal, and then, holding hands we stepped out into the village.

CHAPTER SIX

As soon as we emerged, we saw several more of Jeremy’s pack going about their business, many of whom stopped and looked up when they saw me. I suddenly had a very strong compulsion to duck and hide behind Jeremy’s back. “They’re all looking at me, aren’t they?” I asked, looking down at the ground.

Jeremy laughed a little. It was a bit of a dry laugh, but it was a laugh. “Nothing suspicious, remember?” he said. “You’re just a new face to them. Don’t be more than that.”

“Well… can I just be a shy new face?”

He shrugged. “I guess there’s nothing suspicious about that.”

A strawberry blonde she-wolf with her long curls tied back came striding up toward us, her attention definitely on me more than him. “Hi there,” she said. “I’m Tara. You’re Elena, right?”

It took me a second to recognize my fake name. “Uh, yeah, that’s right. Uh, nice to meet you…”  I somewhat awkwardly extended my hand, suddenly feeling like I should have done that in the first place. Tara laughed good-naturedly, and accepted my hand.

“So you’re the one who broke the heart of half the ladies in this pack,” she grinned at me.

That got me feeling a little less timid and a little more curious. I turned and looked at Jeremy with a raised eyebrow. “Is that what I did?”

Jeremy shrugged again. “Well, I didn’t want to sound like I was tooting my own horn.”

“Really?” Tara said. “You never mentioned your track record with the ladies? About how she-wolves in this pack have been throwing themselves at your feet since you grew big enough to howl?”

“I didn’t think she’d find that very endearing,” he defended himself.

I looked at Tara with a tilted gaze. “Did you and he ever…?”

“A few times,” she admitted. “During howls, mostly. But there have been a lot of others along the way. And… I think some of them are still pretty attached.”

I hesitated a moment, before asking, “Should I be worried?”

“Absolutely not,” Jeremy said.

“Maybe a little,” Tara said.

“Definitely,” said a skinny teenage brunette who came walking up to join us.

“Um, hi,” I cautiously greeted the new arrival.

“Elena, this is Maggie,” Jeremy said.

“And I’m the girl who was gonna get that wolf before you came along,” the newcomer sassed me.

Jeremy laughed. “She has a lot of confidence,” he pointed out.

“Bigger confidence than her britches,” Tara smirked, her arms folded.

“Can you back it up, cutie?” I said, lightly taunting Maggie. “You ever get with him?”

“Not yet,” she smirked, looking me in the eye.

I blinked. “You’re right. She
is
bold.”

“Hey Maggie,” Tara said, “why don’t you go find your friends? Touch up your makeup a bit. You’re going to need to be in top form if you’re going to take her on,” she finished, pointing to me.

Maggie pursed her lips, and starting walking away, keeping her eyes on me. “You watch your back,” she told me, still wearing a slight grin. “This girl doesn’t give up without a fight.”

As she disappeared into the distance, I turned to Jeremy and asked, “You don’t think she’s really gonna try something?”

“Nah, she’s just an infatuated kid,” he brushed her off. “She’s more bark than bite.”

I spat out a tiny laugh. “Does that include when she’s four-legged?” I quipped.

He laughed back a little bit. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“Come on,” Tara said, “let’s introduce you to some of the others.”

She and Jeremy started leading me around the village. “That’s Astrid and Kevin,” Tara said, pointing to a couple who were busy tending to a row of carefully planted crops. “They’re the ones who provide most of our homegrown vegetables. There’s a few others with green thumbs around here, but none that put out as many tomatoes. And then over there, that’s Jason, Samuel and Doug,” she said, pointing to a trio of tough guys in muscle shirts sitting around with open beers by a pile of sawed wood. “They’re the best carpenters we have around here. I think they’re working on building a new garage for Saul’s old pickup.” She turned to me and added, “The old one finally got too many termites.”

We heard the sound of a sputtering engine, and turned to see a rusty blue pickup truck driving in through the trees. “Speak of the devil, there’s Saul now. He was just on a trip into town to pick us up some more food and supplies.” 

Then we came upon a group of kids playing a little game of baseball. It was a simple game with a pretty soft-looking ball and a hand-carved bat, without much protective gear involved, if any. Some of the kids were actually playing in the buff, the better to suddenly shift to four legs and run between the bases (which of course were some big rocks that had been picked up and placed in the more-or-less appropriate places, not always equidistant to each other). They also didn’t seem to have any problem with gender equality in this game, since I saw about as many girls playing as boys. I laughed a little as one of them threw off his hat and shifted to his four-legged shape, and ran up and caught a fly ball in his mouth.

“Who are those?” I asked with a smile.

“That’s Tony, Anna, Becky, Nicky, Jaime, August, Luke, Ginny, Charles, Kate, Bobby and Candice,” Tara rattled off, smiling brightly the whole time. “And that one’s Ricardo’s son, Stefan,” she added, pointing to the twelve-year-old on the pitcher’s mound. “Our little pups. Our hope for the future. And I think some of them are cheating,” she chuckled.

Seeing them made me miss the pups in my own pack. I missed little Mia and her beautiful paintings, which she always wanted to show off to anyone, whether they wanted to see them or not. I missed little Jackson, always nipping at the heels of his brother Grant, wanting to go out on adventures with him. I missed little Wayne, and his endless stories of misadventures with this animal or that or trips down to the river or whatever was chasing what through the gulley and got caught…

I wanted to sigh with homesick longing. But that was one of the things I couldn’t show to my hosts here.

Still, looking around me, I couldn’t help but wonder at the idyllic atmosphere that I could see in every direction. The kids were just the prime example of the simple, happy souls that made up this pack. This in no way resembled the filthy, wanton, scum-filled Morgandorf cesspool that everyone in my own pack had always described. When I took it all in, the years of strife and hostility that had existed between our two packs just made no sense to me. Why would anyone wish harm on the wonderful people all around me? What did any of us have to fight about?

“Ah, there you are,” someone said. I turned to see Ricardo approaching us, beaming at me with a welcoming smile. “I’ve been looking for you all morning. Are you enjoying your stay?”

“Yes, it’s beautiful here,” I said. “Your pack is… very nice.”

“Thank you,” he said. “It sounds like your fears about pack life have been laid to rest. Is it so different from your old pack?”

“Not really,” I shrugged. “Most of my pack was okay… except for not supporting me in trying to get away from my alpha. He was the big problem.”

“Well, you have a much better one here,” said a forty-something woman with red hair who stepped up beside Ricardo, slipping a hand through his arm. “And you don’t have to worry about this one, ’cause he’s already taken,” she added, looking up at him with a schoolgirl smile.

Ricardo smiled back at her before looking to me again. “Elena, this is my wife, Laura.”

“Really curious when I heard Jeremy came back with a stray,” she said. “And a pretty one at that.” She looked up at Ricardo again and said, “If I didn’t already have this one wrapped around my finger, I might almost feel threatened.”

“Um… thanks, I think.”

I heard some more shouts and cheers from the kids behind us, and turned my head to look back at the game the kids were playing as one of the kids came racing toward home plate before Ricardo’s son made a stellar play, snatching the ball out of the air and chucking it hard to the catcher. “Your pup’s got a good arm,” I offered.

“He does, doesn’t he?” Ricardo beamed. “Already flexing his muscles, trying to show he’s got what it takes to be alpha someday.”

“Is there competition for that job?” I asked.

“He has an older sister,” Laura said. “Her name’s Andrea, and she’s fifteen. She’s probably over by the lake right now. There’s some sentiment that the next alpha should be whoever she eventually ends up marrying, instead of her little brother taking the role over her. But it’s way too early to decide that yet.”

I could only hope whoever she eventually ended up marrying was actually someone she wanted. Because I found myself envisioning some strapping hotshot who thought he was God’s gift to she-wolves everywhere trying to marry his way into the alpha position.

“I’m honestly really glad you decided to give us another chance,” Laura said. “Of all nights to show up, you had the rotten luck of picking the night when those horrible Caldours showed up looking for trouble! It must have been terrifying!”

I fought hard not to flinch at the spiteful mention of my own pack. “Yeah… real terrifying…”

“At least you were lucky enough to find your Romeo in the right pack,” Tara said. “You could just as easily have been saddled with those beasts! Then you might actually have had to worry about being snatched up and forced into something.”

This was too surreal. I felt like I was in a mirror universe. This was just the way my pack always talked about this one. And yet, the ironic thing was that Tara didn’t know how right she was.

“Elena,” Ricardo said, “why don’t you join us for a howl tonight?  We ought to give you a proper welcome.”

I nodded. “I’d like that.”

“Wonderful! We’ll have a special howl for you tonight. In the meantime, feel free to go where you please.”

“Thank you.”

As Ricardo and Laura walked away, I turned to Jeremy with an uncomfortable look. I couldn’t say what I was thinking in front of Tara, but I was pretty sure he could read me. After all those days in the woods spending a lot of our time in our four-legged forms, we’d gotten pretty good at communicating non-verbally.

“Would you like to go meet Andrea?” Tara asked. “I think she’d love to meet you.”

“Uh, sure,” I shrugged.

“Come on,” Tara said, “the lake’s this way.”

She started to turn to lead me in another direction—and then stopped suddenly, finding someone standing in her path. The man before us was a large, bald guy with broad shoulders and an ornate neck tattoo, standing with his hands in his pockets, looking at me.

“Oh, I’m sorry Lucius,” Tara said. “You were so quiet, and you’re standing downwind. I didn’t even know you were there.”

“Yeah,” he said in a deep, rumbling voice. “That was kind of intentional. So this is the new girl?”

Tara took a step to the side, allowing him a better look at me. “Yeah, this is her.”

“I’m Ev… Elena,” I said, still having to remember to not give my real name.

“So I’ve heard,” he said, taking a small step toward me. Impulsively I shrunk back, feeling like he was studying me, and not in a nice way. “So you’re supposed to be a runaway? From up north?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Hmm,” he mused, looking at me intently. “Where was that exactly?”

Was I being interrogated?

“Some place I’d rather forget,” I answered.

He didn’t look satisfied with my evasive non-answer. “You said you dropped by the night the Caldours attacked,” he said. “Run into any trouble?”

“A little,” I said. “Jeremy got me out of there before it got too bad.”

“Well ain’t he just a boy scout, then?”

I started growing nervous. This was the first member of this pack I’d encountered who didn’t look like he was buying it. But why, in a whole pack full of wolves, was this guy the only one who looked suspicious?

And come to think of it, why was his scent so familiar?  I knew him from somewhere… but how was that possible?

“Well, hope you enjoy your stay,” he said. “And don’t get in too much trouble with the neighbors.”

With that he walked away. Tara, Jeremy and I stared after him as he left. “What was that about?” Tara asked.

I looked at Jeremy. “Who is he?”

“Lucius? Just one of our resident tough guys. Leads a lot of our hunting parties, and… attack groups.” He turned a look to me, his meaning starting to become clear. “One of the more aggressive in our dealings with… the… neighboring pack.”

I started to get the picture. I didn’t doubt that some of the scars that Leon had likely came from this Lucius guy.

Was that it? Was that how I’d smelled him before? Had he shown up in our village at some time that I couldn’t remember now? I couldn’t imagine when; I hadn’t been present for most of the confrontations that happened between the Morgandorfs and the Caldours. But I knew his scent from somewhere…

*

Tara brought us down to the lake where we found a small group of teenagers either swimming or lounging about in their birthday suits, with their clothes either casually tossed aside or folded into neat little stacks. A few of them were sitting about in their four-legged forms, too. They all turned their heads to look up at us as we approached, while I raised a hand with an awkward, “Hi.”