by Leia Stone
‘Now,’ Cass yelled from atop his hoverboard, and I shoved off from the ground and bounded upward in the mother of all leaps.
Damn, this dude was tall as fuck. I started to drop before I’d even reached its abdominal area. It began to turn its attention toward me instead of the effects of the pepper.
No, no, no. Fuck!
But just as I began to plummet, something bolstered me, sending me racing back upward. What the…? I craned my neck around.
Tianna. Glowing like she was on fire. Hands outstretched toward me. Bless the fae-witch. I was gifting her and Cass an all-paid weekend getaway to Hawaii filled with sexy times—just as soon as we survived this. My bounty from Mack should be wire-transferred to my bank account in the morning.
Positioned right where I needed to be, I pulled my lucky left arm back and thrust the blade into the apollyon’s chest, where I dearly hoped his heart was. The stub of my katana knocked into its chest bone for a quick second with a sharp crack, before he was throwing me back. I strained to hold on to the hilt in my hand around the vibrating that spread through my arm as the demon shook me off.
Shit.
“It’s deformed. Try lower,” Molly shouted.
The demon was sputtering pepper into my hair and trying to kick me with legs the size of tree trunks. I was leaping over its feet in a twisted game of jump rope in an effort not to get punted across the forest, all while working not to breathe in any remnants of the pepper spell.
“Shoot it in the head,” I shouted at Molly. She had a shotgun for fuck’s sake.
“Duck,” she screamed, cocking Gran’s gun.
I didn’t need any other motivation. At her warning, I hit the ground and Cass whizzed out of the way.
The loud bang of a shotgun rang out, and the beast, blinded by the pepper, went down—hard.
She’d gotten him right in the neck.
Gross. Sludge shot from the wound in his neck like a geyser.
He fell over like a tree, rattling the windows of Gran’s cabin when he landed. Thick greenish, black blood bubbled from the wound as he squirmed on the ground.
“It might have healing properties. Best to…” Cass let that sentence linger.
Right.
Straddling the giant beast as best I could, I rammed my blunt weapon into its chest again, lower than before, and slid it in all the way to the hilt.
It jerked, nearly bucking me off, before going completely still. Even the goop stopped pumping from its body, diminishing to a small trickle.
“There, I think we finally got—” Before I could finish my sentence, its body started to gurgle.
“It’s gonna blow,” Molly yelled. At once, everyone scrambled to escape the area.
How could I have forgotten what happened last time? Throwing my leg off the beast, I sprinted for the open space where Brock was waiting, his desperate amber eyes tracking my every move.
The apollyon’s body liquefied, and then exploded with a garbled pop. A wet, steaming thud hit me square in the back and I groaned.
Fucking shit from the underworld. Nasty.
I spun around, taking in the remnants of the beast. Clumps of … yuck … clung to the grass everywhere. Some of it even made it onto the walls and windows of Gran’s cabin.
Disgusting.
“You got the other one?” I asked Molly.
She nodded.
“I need to close that fucking gate.” Spotting Reo and Haru, I scanned the bodies of my two warrior protectors, ascertained they were well enough, and met their determined gazes. Never had I seen them so gung-ho to settle things.
I couldn’t bring a baby into this situation. I’d be sleeping next to Brock and our little one while some giant demon was running around our back yard. Hell to the fucking no.
Reo sighed. “It’s going to be hard to close the gate without your katana, considering every history book we have says you need the sword to achieve it.”
“Among other things,” Haru added, but I let that go. We’d get to all that after I got my sword fixed.
My gaze shifted to the broken sword and cursed. “How can we fix it?”
Were there any old-school Japanese blacksmiths hanging around Eugene, Oregon?
Haru and Reo shared a look. “There’s a way, but … you’re not going to like it,” Haru said.
Brock pressed his wolf body against my leg. I could sense an argument brewing.
“Just tell me,” I said with an exasperated sigh. Surely there shouldn’t be any more bad news.
Haru nodded. “There’s a magical cove in Washington, off a small island, that’s said to heal anything broken.”
I shrugged. “Sounds great. Let’s do it.” I was too tired to argue. I wiped the hair from my face, trying not to think about all the monster goop dripping down my back and onto my favorite kickass boots.
The warriors’ faces strained. “It’s rumored to be guarded by demonic selkies,” Haru said.
Fabulous. I threw my hands in the air. Demonic selkies—bring ‘em on.
16 Alpha Sex Is the Best Sex
“No.”
Brock stood with his arms crossed staring down at my broken sword, which now graced his dining room table after a good hose-down to rid it of all the monster bits. I’d gotten a bit of a hose-down of my own to hold me over until I could shower.
“I don’t want you to go,” Brock said.
I sighed. “You can come. It’ll be like a mini road trip. I’ll dip my sword in the magic water, it will heal, and we can come right back here, where I’ll close the gate … somehow, and all will be well.”
I grinned for good measure.
Brock pinned me with a glare, tightening his arms across his chest, making his biceps bulge. “You know it won’t be that easy.”
I sighed again. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy; things with me never were. “Well, I’m sure as hell not having a baby while the gate to the underworld is wide open in our back yard.”
He grinned. “Our back yard? Does that mean you’re moving in with me?”
Brock stalked toward me and I paled. Did I say our? Well … technically, it was our back yard. I mean, it was his land, but my house backed on to it too.
“Maybe.” I squirmed. Why the hell shouldn’t I move in with him? I could make his ass take half the night feedings with our new baby, and I could have sex with him anytime I wanted—hello, sexy times. Now that I thought about it, it seemed like the only reasonable thing to do, really.
He hooked a finger into my jeans and traced the length of the band that sat low on my waist, sending a zing of heat shooting between my legs. “I don’t like maybe,” he said in a deep, scratchy voice that made my insides tight and suddenly desperate.
I moaned, wishing I hadn’t revealed how easily he fired me up. “I’m not ready to say yes just yet.”
My house was overcrowded anyway with Molly and the warriors there, but living together was a big move. What if it messed things up between us? We’d gotten off to one hell of a rocky start. We shared a bun in the oven, some warm fuzzy feelings, and sizzling sex, but moving too fast might ruin things. I wanted this new relationship with Brock to last for the long haul.
His face became guarded, but not until after I’d registered a flash of his disappointment. I hurried to add, “However, it sounds nice so I’m going to think about it, but only if we go with the warriors and fix my blade.” I wasn’t beneath using bribery to get my way, especially not when the fate of the world depended on fusing my katana back into one piece.
He yanked his finger out of my jeans and growled, facing away from me. “No. It’s too dangerous.”
“Brock, I love you and all, and I respect your alpha dominance, but I’m only asking to be nice.”
He spun, eyes wide. “What the hell does that mean?”
I shrugged. “It means I’m going whether you agree or not.” His eyes became wild and I softened my tone. “I’d really like it if you were there with me though.”
This guy an
d I were going to spend the rest of our lives co-parenting; he’d better get used to the fact that I didn’t ask permission to do shit I wanted to do.
His chest heaved up and down a few times before the wild streak retreated from his gaze. “You’re not good at taking orders.”
I grinned, stepping closer and pressing my body flush with his. “Nope.”
Bringing my face closer, I traced a figure eight on his neck with my tongue and he moaned.
“Woman, you’re going to be the death of me.” His voice was husky and raw—my favorite.
“Does that mean we’re going to fix my katana?” I purred.
He wrapped his fingers into my hair and pulled on it playfully. “Does that mean you’ll move in with me?” He trailed kisses from my earlobe, along my neck, and down to my collarbone. I nearly melted in his arms.
“It will encourage me to think highly of the idea,” I breathed, my mind unable to come up with a single strong reason why I shouldn’t. Maybe I was just scared. Scared of getting hurt.
Dammit … I was head over heels for this man.
“As long as thinking highly of the idea eventually lands you in my bed on an everyday basis…” he whispered against my ear.
I was going to take that as his agreement and move on. Because if not, I feared I’d throw him to the floor and have at him right there, right then, in the middle of his dining room. I wouldn’t even care about the wolves swarming all over the place.
Oh … but I would care about getting it on while remnants of the apollyon lingered on me.
Wriggling free of Brock’s grasp, I grabbed the two pieces of my blade and then texted my crew that we would leave first thing in the morning.
“What do you know about selkies?” I asked Brock.
Blatantly adjusting himself, he looked annoyed that I’d cut off our kissing session to make plans for tomorrow. I willed my eyes not to drift below the belt, where it was obvious that he wouldn’t have minded if I’d jumped him in his dining room. I forced my brain to focus on the life-or-death situation we were dealing with … even though it was the last thing I felt like doing.
He finally answered my question. “Selkies can strip a man of his flesh, down to the bones, in under a minute—assuming they’re in their seal forms.”
He wasn’t wrong, though from what I’d heard they were just as bad in their human forms. But I didn’t need to add that particular fact right now.
“They’re also nocturnal and hunt at night,” I said. “We’ll have a better chance of getting in and out unbothered during the day when they’re sleeping.”
He nodded. “Great. That makes me feel so much better.”
I was about to laugh when a weird flippy thing twisted inside my stomach.
Gasping, I grabbed my belly, exposed beneath my crop top.
Brock’s eyes went wide. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
He fell to his knees in front of me, coming face to face with my stomach as if it would reveal its secrets.
I laughed. “The baby. It kicked, I think.”
It was as if a butterfly were fluttering around in my stomach.
Brock’s entire face lit up, and for the first time I pictured what he might be like as a father. “You felt ... our baby?” he asked. Never had I seen him so vulnerable. “Really?”
His face split into a contented smile as he pressed both hands to my slightly rounded belly. Shifter pregnancies progressed more quickly than ordinary human gestation. Sabine said I was nearly twelve weeks along, which by shifter standards was enough to make it difficult to snap my jeans, and I only managed it because of how low-slung I liked to wear them.
“I think I felt our baby kick. I mean, I’m no expert. I’ve never been pregnant before, so I can’t be sure, but I think that’s what happened.” I was rambling. All this emotion was making me uncomfortable. I wasn’t used to doing emotion.
Shit. What if it was just gas? That’d be embarrassing.
But when I met Brock’s gaze as he peered up at me over my belly, everything outside of the connection between us, and eventually our baby, fell away. Our eyes held until I forgot that tomorrow morning we’d have to go to a cave filled with nasty selkies to get my katana fixed. I even forgot about that damn gate to the underworld with the way his eyes were shimmering with ... what exactly? I couldn’t be sure, but I knew I liked it.
“Brock,” I whispered, unsure of what I’d say next. “I...”
But then he snapped to, stood, grabbed my face in his hands, and pressed his lips against mine. His kiss was deep, insistent, and it lit my fuse in an instant. I eagerly met his tongue with my own as I wrapped my fingers in his thick hair and pulled him even closer toward me.
He pressed the length of his body against mine, proving that our passionate moment before had simply been on pause and not abandoned. He was already ready for me, and boy did I want him. I’d die before admitting it, but pregnancy made me horny. I discovered myself admiring his body more times than I cared to admit. Sex three times a day would be fine by me.
His strong hands skirted the swell of my breasts before they circled around to my back, and then lower, to cup my ass. I moaned into his mouth and any patience we might’ve had evaporated.
His hands became one frenzied sweep across my body, as if he yearned to touch me everywhere at once. I was happy to return the favor, running my fingertips along the edges of his strong shoulders, biceps, and forearms. I traced the lines of his back until they met his waist, and then I squeezed his ass and pulled him toward me, pressing his hard length against my pelvis.
We were wearing entirely too many clothes.
Brock must’ve thought the same thing, because he tugged off his shirt one-handed, separating our lips only for the instant it took to pull it over his head. His mouth crashed against mine again with feverish desperation.
He slid his hands beneath my short shirt and trailed it upward, over my bra.
“Ahem.”
Our hands froze, mine on his ass, one of his holding my shirt, the other squeezing one of my breasts. Our heads whipped around to discover Ray, who was carefully maintaining a neutral expression. His eyes wouldn’t meet mine, trained only on Brock’s face, and I immediately understood why. I was their alpha’s woman. It didn’t matter that he’d been the one about to undress me in the middle of the dining room. Respect for the alpha extended to that which was his.
Ray said nothing, only nodded once, turned on his heel, and walked straight out the front door. His message was clear regardless. Brock shouldn’t be gearing up for sex on the dining room table when he had a house crawling with wolves. Ray wouldn’t say it though, because no one told an alpha what to do. But Ray was a good second, looking out for the welfare of the pack and Brock’s position.
Brock growled, tugged my shirt down back over my breasts, and took one of my hands. Without a word, he led me down the hallway to his bedroom. If I moved in with him, it’d become “our” bedroom. A small thrill ran through me at that thought and I squeezed his hand.
When he turned to look at me, I thought he’d realize what I was thinking. But when I met his eyes, they were alight with passion, smoldering with thoughts of what he was about to do to me. I liked what I saw there and bit my bottom lip as I anticipated what was to come.
It only made him growl, deep and low in his throat.
Oh. Fuck. Me.
He practically ran to the bedroom after that, and he didn’t have to encourage me to keep up. The moment we were inside, he slammed the door shut behind us and pressed me against it.
Leaning in, he scattered a frenzy of kisses against my collarbone, dipped down across my breastbone, and then plunged lower still to give love to the area between my breasts. Tugging the neckline of my shirt down to give him better access, he growled in tangible frustration and yanked the shirt up and off, throwing it to the side.
My nipples were pert beneath the indigo lace of my bra, straining to be freed. He pushed his pelvis against mine, pressing me
back into the door, and rubbed his thumbs across the buds. I moaned as if we were already deep in the throes of passion, and I didn’t give a flying fuck about holding back ... in any way. After the shit we’d endured the last few days—heck, even weeks—I was in no mood to restrain myself.
He ground his hips against mine, squeezing a breast in either hand while continuing to flick my nipples with his thumbs.
With a moan I reached between us and undid the button on his jeans, sliding the zipper down carefully, relishing the way his hardness strained against the material. When his pants were open, I reached in and we both let loose the mother of all groans.
Hmm, moving in with him was seeming like a mighty fine idea right about now. Brock for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Yes please. Maybe I could even have him for dessert...
While I wrapped my hand around his length, he attempted to tug my pants down without breaking contact. Snapping my leg out, I kicked off my boots and managed to wiggle my pants down, stepping on the hems to get them off me.
When I stood before him in nothing but scraps of lace, he breathed deeply, trailing heavy-lidded eyes across my body. I gave him a firm tug and his eyes rolled back for a second. “You...” he attempted. “You undo me.”
I wasn’t fully certain what he meant by that, but I was pretty sure he undid me too.
He dipped his head low to flick his tongue across my nipples. They strained through the lace, the moisture of his tongue imbuing me with near desperation for better access. Arching my back, I tilted my head back against the door, rocking my hips back and forth.
Damn.
The downside of moving in together would be that I’d never want to leave this room.
Then, without warning, he slipped out of my grip and took three steps backward—three steps too many. I experienced the absence of his body against mine like a burst of arctic cold and a shiver ran the length of my body.
But then his gaze was like an open flame licking my skin as he scanned the length of me.
“You’re so amazing,” he said, his voice husky. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”