Wanted by the Alphas (An Extremely Sensual Paranormal Shifter Romance) (9 page)

They make small talk as she pushes a trolley
down the aisles. He goes to the cheese section and gives her
rundown on the different cheeses from different places.

“Do you like Brie?” he says.

“I have never tried it before.”

“It’s French. A little crumbly if you like
that kind of texture.”

“I prefer Italian cheeses in my pasta. This
is what I mix when I make a cheese sauce.”

“I like fruits like apricots and raspberries
mixed up in my cheeses,” he says. “I usually eat them with water
crackers.”

She finds herself warming up to him again in
that easy camaraderie they seem to share. Almost as if they are
boyfriend and girlfriend.

When they pass a door with the sign ‘STAFF
ONLY’ somewhere between the dairy and frozen sections, he suddenly
grabs her hand and pulls her through it.

“But what about my cart – ?” she begins, but
the rest of what she was about to say is lost when he presses her
back against the tiled wall and kisses her ferociously.

Ohhh!

His mouth devours hers with insatiable
hunger. It is as though he is so penned up with physical need for
her that he cannot contain himself. His kisses are hard on her
mouth, and she cannot help but respond to them. Her loins are
turning into mush.

Someone will see us, she thinks in a haze.
But he doesn’t seem to care.

“God, I need you now,” he murmurs against her
mouth.

He fumbles with her skirt. She is fully
dressed. Her jacket is in the push trolley together with the rest
of their groceries just outside this door. He hikes her skirt up
and gropes for her panties. She is already very wet, and her juices
have soaked through the thin strip of material which forms her
crotch.

“Lucien, someone will see us.”

No one in the little storeroom, which is
white-tiled. The air smells of refrigeration and the room is filled
with racks laden with goods and deep freezers. A passage leads to
somewhere else, and Shannon can hear voices in the next room.

“I don’t care. I need you too much,” he says
heavily.

He unzips his jeans. Out springs his enormous
erect cock. He takes out a condom in a foil wrapper and quickly
snaps it onto his hot flesh. Her arms are around his shoulders as
he lifts her up and sandwiches her against the wall. The entire act
is rough and urgent, and it is also thrilling and filled with the
danger of public discovery.

She realizes how much she has missed his
touch.

He doesn’t take her panties off, but instead,
pushes it to one side so that her pussy is revealed. Then he
penetrates her with one swift stroke and seals his mouth on hers
before she can cry out. This time, the pleasure is instantaneous. I
must be getting used to his girth, she thinks. Their coupling is
frantic and graceless. Her ears have too much of a blood rush in
them for her to hear what the supermarket workers in the next room
are saying, but it sounds as though they may come in here anytime
soon.

But she is too lost in her own pleasure to do
anything but let him pound into her. There are no niceties this
time – just a good, hard fuck where both of them will derive the
maximal amount of pleasure in the shortest period of time. The
smell of sex from their joined organs mingles with the air of the
stockroom.

“Need two cartons of Stella Artois over at
Aisle 7!” says someone who is striding through the passage. His
shadow is thrown against the wall.

The urgency to finish sends her over the
edge. She tips herself over to orgasm as she clutches as his neck
and shoulders tightly.

“Ohhhh!”

Her cry explodes something inside Lucien as
well, and he climaxes as a stock boy carrying a box comes into the
room.

“Oh!” he says in surprise.

Lucien uncouples from her and smoothens down
her skirt. Her panties are still askew and she is flushed and
bothered and very embarrassed.

The boy backs away as quickly as he came.

“Sorry,” he calls out, although they should
be the ones who are supposed to apologize for being in a place they
shouldn’t.

“No problem,” Lucien calls back. He chortles
as he rips off the condom, drops it into a trash receptacle by a
shelf and tucks his penis back into his pants. “You decent?”

Her cheeks are burning hot. She checks
herself. She left her purse out there in the trolley, and she hopes
no one has made off with it. But this town is known for a very low
theft rate. Unsolved killings, yes, but a very low theft rate.

“I think so.”

“Great. Then let’s go before we get into
trouble.” He grins.

They check themselves out of the stock room.
The trolley is still there with her purse and groceries. A woman
with a funny straw hat more suited for a vacation in the Bahamas
gives them a funny look as she selects a carton of milk. But other
than that, no one seems to be perturbed.

The excitement of unrestrained and unexpected
sex stays with her through the rest of their shopping journey.
Lucien is still on a high, and his hands run down her back often,
craving the contact with her.

When they reach the checkout counter, Lucien
takes out his wallet.

“No, Lucien. This is mine.” She withdraws her
wallet from her purse.

The girl at the checkout counter does a
double take at the sight of Lucien. No doubt someone who looks the
way he does doesn’t line up at her aisle often.

“I have my cheese somewhere in there,” he
says.

“It’s only one packet of cheese. I have a
whole load of groceries.” She says firmly. She doesn’t want theirs
to be that kind of relationship.

Would what they are doing constitute a
relationship? So far, it has only been incredibly hot sex.

They are holding up the line, and so he
finally concedes. “OK, but let me take you out to dinner.”

He helps her push the trolley out to the
parking lot.

“I can’t tonight. Jared is expecting me.”

“Tomorrow?”

“For more sex?” she teases.

He has the grace to look abashed. “Look,
Shannon, I know we’ve had hot sex twice already, but that’s not the
reason I want to see you again. OK, maybe partially the
reason.”

They are treading on careful ground here, she
knows. They are dancing around each other.

“Then what’s the main reason?” she asks.

They have reached her car, and he appears
nonplussed and at a loss for words. She waits for him to speak.

He laughs and runs a hand through his blond
hair. “I don’t know it myself,” he confesses, and she senses
honesty in his words. “It’s just that I like talking to you and
being with you, even when we are not having sex.” He shrugs. “Is it
so wrong to want to see more of you?”

He is right. She is not pressing him for a
commitment or anything. They are just two young people who happen
to like each other’s company. No point in making elaborate plans
for a future which might never materialize.

“I can do dinner tomorrow,” she says. She has
to admit she wants to see him too. A whole lot more of him.

The nagging image of the handsome doctor
treads on her mind.

Stop it!

“Great,” he says. “Can I see you safely home?
I can drive behind you to make sure you are OK until you get home.
Where is your home anyway? We have so much to catch up on.”

She tells him.

He raises his eyebrows. “The old Pullnam
house? Is it safe? I don’t know if I should tell you this, but it
fringes a part of the woods where people have known to
disappear.”

“I know. I was given a bit of its colorful
local history. As long as I don’t wander into the woods alone, I
think I’ll be all right.”

“Yes. Please don’t go in there by yourself.
Or with anyone.” He hesitates, as though he has something important
to tell her. Then he decides against it. “Are you working now? Did
you manage to find a job?”

“Yes. I’m working at the Orthopedic and
Rehabilitation Center as a physiotherapist.”

At this, Lucien’s face changes.

“Under Kirk Fitzpatrick?”

“He is the head, yes, though I work under the
Physiotherapy unit. Why? Is there anything the matter?” She catches
the undertones and wonders if there is rivalry between the two men.
After all, they are both young, single, probably the most
attractive catches in the entire Dolphin’s Bay community.

A tic makes his right cheek flinch.

“No,” he says, “nothing is the matter. Just
that you should be careful around him, that’s all. He is not
everything he appears to be.”

“But neither are you,” she counters.

“That’s true. So I’ll pick you up tomorrow?
At seven thirty?”

“OK.”

It’s a date. Her second with him in a span of
a week. Her entire being is lifted up with joy as much as she
doesn’t like to admit it.

As she waves him off and gets into the
Toyota, her mind is filled with what Ellie said about his family of
burned witches.

EATING CHINESE

The date with Lucien ends up with sex again
at his Chatterly suite. They can’t seem to get enough of each other
in bed and out of it. He talks to her about things in Dolphin’s
Bay, but she notices that he steers clear of most topics of
conversation regarding his family.

She doesn’t ask him about the witches, and he
doesn’t ask her about Jared. That is their tacit agreement.

On Sunday, he asks to see her again.

“Going out with him again?” Jared says
jealously.

She checks her look in her mirror. Her
complexion is in high color, and her eyes sparkle. It must be all
that sex, she decides. And she’s also happy. Deliriously happy.

I am not in love with Lucien Walker. I am
just enjoying his company.

“Yes,” she replies.

“Didn’t you go home with him yesterday? And
last week?”

She doesn’t mention Friday, of course.

“What’s it to you?”

He has been out pretty much too in a
different capacity. And she knows exactly what he has been
doing.

“You know the saying. Don’t get too close to
a witch or you’ll get burned.”

“There’s no such saying. Besides, Lucien is
not a witch. Just because he comes from a family of ancient witches
doesn’t mean he’s a witch himself.”

“You never know, Shannon. You never know. You
got your gifts from your mother’s side of the family.”

“My mother never had them.”

“She probably had them, but she was too
stoned most of the time to ever get them to work.”

Shannon grins. That much is true.

Work is particularly busy for the next week,
and she hardly sees Kirk because he is even busier than most people
at the center, if possible. Anyway, they run in different
divisions. Lucien is involved in the family business and he has to
be out of town for most of the week, and so she won’t get to see
him until he returns from Portland on Saturday. But he calls her
every day to hear her voice and to have phone sex.

She laughs a lot over the phone, as does he.
When they are not heavy breathing, that is.

Friday comes with a patient load that would
have stunned even general hospitals in Portland, with several
walk-in cases appearing out of the blue. It is eight thirty in the
evening when Shannon finally finishes.

She is walking out, getting ready to go home
for a light dinner, when Kirk lopes up.

“Hey, Shannon. Wait up.”

Shannon turns. Her breath catches. The sight
of Kirk always lifts her stomach a little higher, as if she’s
floating on air – he is that beautiful. He has changed out of his
usual green scrubs and his rich dark hair is free flowing around
his shoulders. He wears a leather jacket over a T-shirt which says:
‘DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS’. Through Patty, Shannon has learned that
he volunteered with that charitable outfit to be stationed in the
Sudan, Africa for a year.

Kirk Fitzpatrick, in Patty’s parlance, seems
destined for sainthood.

“Sorry I didn’t catch up with you all week.
How has your first two weeks been?” he says.

“Busy. But great.” She smiles at her
boss.

He nods. “I’ve heard you’ve been doing some
great work. The patients are already talking about you.” He
gestures to the door. “You wanna grab a bite to eat?”

She hesitates, and then says, “Sure.”

“It’s the only time I have to catch up with
you. I hate it when we get so busy that I barely have time to break
a new employee in. You drove here?”

“Yeah.” She can’t help noticing how the
fluorescent lights catch the shimmers in his glorious hair.

“You can hop into my car and I can drop you
back here later. Or would you rather go in yours and follow me? How
well do you know the area?”

“Fairly well. It isn’t that big a town,
though I hardly have time to explore it.”

He laughs. “It must be my fault then. Come
on. You can tag after my car. It’s the big Tahoe upfront. The place
I have in mind isn’t far from here.”

Yes, she knows it’s his car. Everyone knows
it’s his car because it is parked in his reserved spot.

She drives the Toyota after his Tahoe. Night
has fallen already, and the final shoal of sunset is a glimmer over
the forested horizon. The ocean is a dark presence to the west. It
is chilly out tonight, and she makes sure her jacket is nicely
buttoned down her front.

The place he has in mind is a Chinese
restaurant called Wing Lee’s a short distance away. They both park
together in the half-empty parking lot, side by side.

Once inside, Kirk takes a seat by the window
so that he can look out into the distant forest and the hills. He
does not draw her chair for her as this is not a date.

The waiter comes over to give them their
menus.

“Do you like Chinese food?” he asks.

“I honestly haven’t had that much of it.”

His green eyes flash. “Do you trust me to
order?”