The Alpha's Desire 2 (6 page)

“Absolutely. When you open your eyes, I’ll still be here.”

“Asleep with my wolf. I haven’t done that since I was a child. Well, I mean, I used to see you in my dreams. In wolf form. I would curl up in a ball against you, your heavy legs curled around mine.”

“I know. I was there. That’s magic also, a means of projection. I could place myself in your dreams, let you sleep soundly in my protection. You used to lay your small hand on my paw. So it’s not creepy, I loved you in a different way then. It grew, changed, matured as you did, and I stopped coming to your dreams because of that.”

“Really? Anyway, those dream visits of yours meant more than you can ever know to me then. The warmth. The comfort,” I rattled on in a sleepy, diminishing voice. “When I most missed my mom, felt literal pain in a desire to have her hold me again, you’d come and my need would be quenched as much as it could.”

“I knew. I’ve always felt your every emotion, remember. I’ve hurt and smiled right along with you.”

“Hmm,” I sighed. “Tonight, in reality, I sleep with my wolf even if he is in man form.”

“With the man now, but I can do you one better until you fall asleep,” he whispered in my ear.

In an instant, I felt myself nuzzled against a belly of fur. Opening my eyes, large paws appeared above my head. While in my mind I knew I should probably be scared, I felt a feeling so familiar, comforting beyond explanation, that I let my eyes close and fell into a deep sleep.

Chapter Five

When I woke, I found myself trapped, unable to so much as roll over. Lex’s arm rested not only as a weight on my own, but his beefy hand held my waist. His thigh over mine also allowed his leg to wrap around my two like a vice. Turning my neck as much as I could to get a glimpse at his face, I smiled as his breath bathed my face. I didn’t even mind the touch of morning breath to find him still here.

More than touched, I found myself downright tickled that this time, in this moment, he held me as if I might try to get away. Regardless of his honor, of his internal fight to love or to follow the rules, when he was with me, he was really with me. I’d never felt so loved in the absolute, unconditional sense of the word. Of course, I mused, it helped that I could feel his every feeling. Yet, even without that uncanny ability, one I still hadn’t adjusted to, trying to pick apart my love from his, my fears from his, my wonder from his, he made me feel adored and treasured. On top of that, he made me feel undeniably beautiful even if I let my media-filled brain in opposition with the mirror tell me a different story at times.

On top of all this, he knew me, every single little thing about me. He’d watched, listened, felt me at every moment of my life. I had no secrets from him. The freedom of this, the love despite it, blew my mind. My smile hurt my face as my heart thumped in my chest, feeling that if it were not for my breast bone, it would soar far from me. It beat and fluttered, ached and skipped beats. I held back a giggle to think I might have to have the thing checked for arrhythmia or some other possibly fatal heart condition. Either way, I’d die now a happy woman no matter when my time came. According to Lex, that would be some time.

Funny how just a few hours in time could make a life complete. Yes, I wanted more time with him, every second I could wrangle, but if they didn’t come to pass, I’d had it all, more than most get in a lifetime of love, of happiness, and of peace.
Peace
, the word echoed through my head and brought to the forefront of my thoughts my father.  I’d spent so much of my childhood missing my mother to the point of barely living, even while pitying my father for his weaknesses. What occurred to me now like a hammer to the head was that the man had been far from weak. He’d loved so fiercely, so freely, that in the absence of that love, he’d become but a shell of a man.

It didn’t mean he didn’t love me. Somehow I’d always known that. More, the disappearance of his other half, in the most full sense of the word, had left him only half a man. He had given me what he could, loved me with all he had left, I believed now. Blessing of all blessings, to some degree, I’d always understood that fact.

“I love you,” I said to the air, to the spirit of my father that lingered with me.

“I know you weren’t talking to me, but let me just say that I love you, too,” came a husky, sleep-laden voice in my ear.

I struggled to turn to him, so he loosened his full body grip on me until, face to face, he could embrace me. Both of his arms came around my upper body and both of his legs wrapped around mine. Rather than crushing me, he gently rolled us until I rested on top of him. Despite the fullness of my figure. You’d have thought me a mere light blanket over him, one he cozied up under. I’d never tire of that lightness he made me feel, or in contrast, the look in his eyes as he took in my generous curves.

“I wouldn’t change a thing about you,” he whispered.

“What, you know what I’m thinking now, too?” I teased, a little flutter of my heart revealing my slight insecurity suddenly, if this were true.

I mean, I had no problem with him knowing everything about me, but sometimes my head was a scary place to live in. The way I worked out the world sometimes bordered on insanity. Add to that, I often worded out that insanity through tapping out words on my laptop in unfathomable worlds. Of course, my view of actual reality had altered to include some of those paranormal elements.

“No. I can’t read your thoughts. It’s just, when you’ve watched someone as closely as I have you, and for so long, you start to reference different fluctuations in feelings with what they are doing, and that reads into having a good idea what they may be thinking. What I just felt usually coincides with you looking in the mirror. I felt the tinges of it, and insecurity brought on by a cruel world, and then it lifted, like it has when I’m with you, only when I’m with you. I hope that means that you comprehend just how beautiful I think you are.”

“I guess I see it, feel it, but at times I struggle to understand it. The world has had much, much more time with my brain.”

“I guess. But, you’ll adjust. I’ll make sure of it. I plan on telling you for the rest of your life how stunning, alluring, and shapely you are in my eyes. Simply beautiful.”

I smiled and snuggled up to him more, letting all my soft curves that he seemed to favor rest against his massive, hard bulk of a body. The man could have played the hulk without special effects. And, he belonged to me.

“I finally have the perfect ending to my love story. I’ll have to re-write it. This is better, and more magical, literally, than I even imagined it,” I giggled like a school girl, reveling in the flutter of mirth that washed over my skin like a slight waterfall even as the butterflies in my stomach danced.

“You wrote a love story? When?”

“Well, I’d tried once before, long ago, but knowing little about it, having not experienced it for myself, I failed miserably. I mean, it is one thing to make up a talk about something that can’t exist, like werewolves, for example,” I laughed heartily then, letting it take any residual tension from last night from my body.

“Funny,” he laughed along with me, giving me a light spank on my ass.

“Oh,” I groaned. “You go there, I won’t be able to think.”

“Oh, I’ll go there, but first, I want to hear about this love story,” he coaxed, even though he rubbed his hand over my butt, making me wiggle as I struggled to re-focus my thoughts.

“Well, as I was saying,” I stumbled, “as with fictional, paranormal tales, werewolves and vampires…wait, are there vampires, too, then, since there are sorcerers and werewolves?”

“Yes, there are actually. Not to scare you, but I once saved you from one. But,  you are evading, I think?”

“No honestly, just putting that together. And, we will get back to that once I’m done. Not even going to let myself think on it, in fact,” I said and shuttered.

He rubbed his hands over my arms, drew me back into him even tighter.

“Anyway, after you abruptly left me a few weeks back, my only way to deal was to write. So, first I wrote out every minute of the time we’d spent together. One to re-live it, and two to sort through it, look for answers, a clue as to why you had walked out so suddenly the way you did.”

“I’m so sorry. I saw you writing, and I felt you missing me, but I didn’t realize that you were writing about me,” he mumbled.

His hand on my arm now rubbed hard, as if he could sooth away the damage with his touch. I hoped he sensed how well his plan worked.

“I know. Anyway, as far as the story goes, I decided that I would give myself a happy ending. I imagined how I wanted it to go, me seeing you again, your apology, and our happy ever after. It helped to write it out. Only now, I think I need to re-write it. My ending wasn’t nearly as wonderful as last night. You will make me a better writer. I may even try my hand at erotic romance. Who knew I was so free?”

“I always loved to watch you write, to sense the changes in you as you did. You never walk away from the keyboard worse, you always seem better. I’m glad you had that outlet to help you deal with the injustices of your life, some of the more difficult hands you were dealt. As a protector, to not be able to shield you from the pain of losing one parent and then another... well, it was a struggle I can’t explain. Oh, and the erotica thing sounds good.”

I huffed as I pondered the magnitude of that confession. “I wish I had always known that my wolf was always out there, and what he was doing. If I had known I’d had such a guardian, not only watching me, but loving me, it could have made such a difference in so many ways.”

“Maybe. But, it may have just complicated things in other ways. There is no way of knowing, but the sorceress believes that to interfere too much changes the order of life, of fate, which she strongly believes in. In a way, with her magic, when she created a new race of werewolves, she feels that she altered fate somehow, and that in some way, these other true werewolves hunting you down, well, that is karma, her fault, and you and others of your bloodline are the ones to pay the price. That is one of the reasons we are to stay close and vigilant, but to the biggest degree we can, distant and removed from your lives.”

“Yes,” I thought out loud, “I guess if I’d had to live with the knowledge that some group of men, no, not just men, but men who turned into wolves,  hunted me… well, that could have made a huge difference in the way I lived. I mean, just the attack, random as it was in that parking lot, and about money and a car rather than a personal vendetta, it changed me, the way I walked, existed in the world. I felt hunted even though I knew that man would never find me again.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through that. More, I’m sorry for my part in your terror and confusion,” he mumbled, but hugged me tighter to him until I could barely get a thin strip of air into my lungs.

I didn’t mind a bit. A song my mother used to listen to when I was young, something from some musical I think, ran through my head. My dad sang it when he’d gotten really drunk after her death. But the line that stood out to me then, but now with wonder and understanding, ran through my head.
Someone to sit in your chair and ruin your sleep to make you aware of being alive…

“Back to this story of yours. I want to read it,”
he said, and then planted a kiss on my forehead.

I tilted my head up to kiss him full on the lips. I’d never tire, never not surrender, when he cupped his hands around my cheeks and pulled me into his kiss, bruising my lips in the best way possible.

“Well, I need some coffee. So, I will get it for you and then start a pot. I have to say that someone knowing my secret, that I write, it is just one of the many gifts you’ve brought to my life.”

“Come here,” he groaned through his smile as he pulled me back down to him when I’d only raised part way up to get out of bed.

He kissed me again. He embraced me. I curved into it. I let my heart pound and flutter. I let my breath be stolen. I let him make me aware of being alive. So alive I wasn’t sure I knew how to handle it.

“Okay, go get that story,” he barked, tapping his hand on my ass again.

“You tease,” I said with a shake of my head as I struggled to get off of him.

“Coffee,” he demanded as he helped me off of his body and into a standing positon on the floor.

The sun shone brightly through the sheer curtains in my bedroom as I grabbed for a robe. When I walked into the living room, the same was true of the stream of light coming in through the sliding glass door. I’d neglected my usual ritual of closing the blinds last night before I’d gone to bed. Stretching and grinning like a fool at the way Mother Nature agreed with my mood this morning made me feel like a woman in one of those sappy coffee commercials as I padded to the kitchen to make some.

The simple ritual didn’t heighten my happiness as it usually did, only blended in with it. I wondered if I could be happier, if such a thing were possible. I’d only grabbed the coffee can from the cupboard when his voice boomed behind me.

“The story first,” he demanded, though no true power laid behind the stiff tone he’d forced.

“Wow. Sorry. I’m not thinking straight, and for once, I love it. You are the best distraction to my life ever,” I said, walking by him and kissing his cheek as I went.

Grabbing the story, totally willing to share it with him, still I took a deep breath and released it before I let the paper slip away from my fingers. I stood there a minute watching him glance at the first page.

“It’ll be alright, my love,” he grinned. “I love it already.”

“Right,” I muttered, then turned on the ball of my foot to head back to the utmost important task of making coffee. A distraction.