by Kathryn Moon
He remained unimpressed. “Accidents happen. Keep the door locked.”
“Well, I was trying to nap earlier. If I kept the door locked, I’d have to get up when you knocked,” I said, holding out a hand in invitation. “When I would much rather just lay here and wait for you to come lay here with me.”
He laughed and shook his head, taking a step into the doorway but no further. His hair was pulled back, but some strands were coming loose around his face. I wanted to dig my fingers into the whole ashy blond mess and then drag him down to cover me.
“I’ve got your courting gift,” Bullet announced.
My eyes widened and I grinned at him, wiggling my fingers in the air. “Gimme.”
He grinned and shook his head. “Not here. You’re gonna have to come with me to get it.”
I pressed my lips into a line and narrowed my eyes. “Is it gonna be worth it? ‘Cause I could think of a couple things you could give me on this couch right now that definitely would.”
Bullet growled again, a sound that made my bare toes curl into the couch cushion and my knees fall open. “Kitten. Don’t tempt me.”
A giggle escaped. A full, foolish, girlish giggle. “Why not?”
“Kitten. Get that lovely behind up off that couch right now,” Bullet said, an unexpected bark in his voice that had me leaping up off the couch before I knew what hit me, a spike of adrenaline rushing through me.
I stood on my tiptoes, eyes wide with shock, heart slowing from a racing pace as I stared at Bullet. “You alpha’d me.”
Not one of the pack had used his alpha bark with me since I’d arrived, and if I would’ve guessed who would be first, it wouldn’t have been easy going Bullet. Who was now blushing.
“I did. Sorry. Quit tryin’ to distract me. Put your shoes on.” If he hadn’t looked twice as startled as I did, shuffling nervously in the doorway, I would’ve given him a harder time about it. As it was, I was getting curious about what kind of gift he might’ve got me that he couldn’t bring here.
I hoped it wasn’t a motorcycle. Or maybe I hoped it was a motorcycle, but it would’ve been a shame that it was too cold for me to learn to ride it. I crossed over to the door, nudging my slip-on sneakers with my toes.
“Will these work?”
“Yeah,” he grunted, eyes lowered. “Didn’t mean to bark.”
I stepped into my shoes and then rose up to my tiptoes, and even then I only reached Bullet’s cheek because his head was lowered as he stared a hole into the floor. His skin was warm under the soft kiss I left, the curl of his beard tickling my skin.
“You’re forgiven. I was having too much fun playing with you,” I said.
“You nearly got your way, lookin’ like dessert laying there,” he said, eyeing me as I settled. His voice had a purr caught in his throat and he lifted an arm around my back, leaving it there for me to choose whether or not to lean in. I curved into his side, and the vibration thickened.
“I can think of occasions worthy of that bark,” I said, unable to resist the impulse to tease him a little more. “It might be fun in bed, for instance.”
“Kitten,” he growled.
“Where are we going?”
“My office, it’s just down the hall.” He jerked his head to the end of the hall. “Grab your keys. Lock up.”
He may not have been barking, but Bullet was pulling ahead for bossiest of my alphas. I followed his orders, grabbing the key where I left it on the counter. “Why do I need shoes for your office?”
“Kitten, any time you step out of the apartment you should put your shoes on.”
“I kind of hate shoes.”
“Then you should get a piggy-back ride,” Bullet said.
“Why didn’t you offer one?”
“‘Cause I didn’t know you were gonna be a pest, but I’ll throw you over my shoulder if it comes down to it.”
I would’ve taken him up on it, but we were already at the door. He unlocked his office with a raised eyebrow and a pointed glance at me. Right. Bullet was security for the pack. Big fan of locks.
I stepped inside and whistled. Tall windows wrapped around the right corner of the room, with a kitchenette closest to me and a door leading to a bathroom on the left.
“This is a studio apartment,” I said. It was missing the bed though.
“It was, yeah. Scorch and I decided it was the best place for me to set up. It’s got a good view of the corner and the entrance to the parking lot. Front of the bar, too.”
Old Downtown didn’t make for a pretty view, but it definitely had character. And artwork if you counted the graffiti on the old brick across the way. I searched the room, looking for a bow or a basket or even more leather. I’d been getting gifts all week, little things like Chef coming up with new recipes for me in the diner, or the dark chocolate from Tornado. And then the bigger deals like the jacket from Dusty and care package from Jonah. I was learning to accept them gracefully simply because I could see how proud my alphas were when I did. It might have been uncomfortable for me to have presents I wasn’t sure I deserved showered on me, but it made them feel pride in providing and if I followed that logic, I could behave for them.
“You lookin’ for something pretty, kitten?” Bullet purred from behind me as door swung shut.
“Maybe,” I said, spinning to face him. “Never really know what to expect with you guys.”
“Check out the table by the window,” he said, stuffing his hands into his pockets, cheeks full of a grin he held back.
I bounced on the balls of my feet twice and then hurried to the table set up in the corner. It took me three tries of looking at the cluttered table before I realized what he meant. There were handcuffs dropped on a stack of paper, which was an intriguing proposition. Binoculars too, although less promising. But the longer I looked the clearer it was. Bullet had pushed the clutter to the side, leaving an open space in the center of the table where a matte black handgun sat, moderately large and very clean.
“That’s a gun!” Bullet’s throat cleared, and I looked at him over my shoulder, eyes wide. “You got me a gun?”
As a present?
I reached for it, and he stomped forward. “Hold up. You know what to do with that?”
“Hell no,” I said, laughing slightly.
“Then why you reachin’ for it?”
“‘Cause… is this my present?”
“Yeah. Don’t just grab a gun if you don’t know what you’re doing, kitten,” Bullet growled.
Now I really was laughing. “Why’d you get me a present if I’m not allowed to touch it?”
“Do you even know if it’s loaded?”
“No, but I assumed you would know,” I said, grinning. “Did you get me a loaded gun?”
Bullet shook his head. “Of course not, I left it unloaded like you always should. But what if someone broke in here while I was gone, put a cartridge in, and let themselves out?”
I frowned. “That seems…unlikely.”
He met me at the table, hand reaching up to hold my chin between his thumb and forefinger. “It is unlikely. I’d’ve known if someone got in. But still, what if.”
“Okay,” I nodded. “So no touching my gun. What do I do with it, then?”
He grinned. “I’ll teach you. First lesson, always assume a gun is loaded. If you don’t, and it is, things will go badly. Second lesson, I’m gonna teach you how to tell if it’s loaded. Grab that seat.”
I tugged the seat out from the table and sat down as Bullet pulled another out to join me, the space between us filling with roses as he settled in. I tried to hold my smile in check. Gun safety lessons were definitely not a typical courting gift, but that was alright with me. I wasn’t a typical omega and I hadn’t chosen a typical pack. I could embrace doing things our own way.
“Good, now lock the slide back,” Bullet instructed, hours later.
My brow furrowed as I thumbed the side of the handgun where the lock button was as I tugged back the slide. It cl
icked into place, and I smiled in satisfaction. More had gone into the simple process of learning how to tell if my new present was loaded than I’d ever expected. A lesson on the anatomy of the gun and then Bullet coaching me through dismantling, cleaning, and reassembling so I understood the mechanics. If I understood the mechanics yet, which I was less certain about.
“Check the chamber,” he said. I did and then dipped my finger in to be sure like I knew he was about to tell me to. I checked where the magazine should’ve gone.
“Empty,” I said.
“Check again.”
I huffed but did as he said, understanding that his perspective came from a place of caution, not assuming I was wrong.
“Empty.”
“Close the slide.”
It snapped shut, and I set the gun back down on the table, looking to Bullet who was beaming with his chest puffed up. “Perfect, kitten.”
It didn’t matter that I wasn’t especially interested in guns, or that I’d found most of the lesson tedious and fiddly, I still preened at the praise.
“We’ve got more ground to cover before I’d take you to the range, depending on how much you remember next time. But you were perfect.”
“Is this how you learned to shoot?” I asked.
Bullet snorted. “Hell no. When I was a teenager my uncle handed me a gun, put me in front of a target, and told me to squeeze the trigger. Till I went into the army, I was lucky not to shoot my own ass off. Thought I was hot shit.”
“I bet you were kinda hot shit,” I said, grinning. He was now at least.
Bullet purred and shook his head. “The army kicked the worst of it out of me. Scorch and the guys took care of the rest.”
“How’d you find them?”
“Moved to the area five years back, had a bike, found the bar,” he shrugged. “Nine recruited me.”
“The Nine?” I asked, head cocking. Had there only been nine of them at the time?
“No,” Bullet said, expression sobering. “Nine was… Nine was Prez for a long time. Up until a few months ago.”
“What happened?” I could imagine all sorts of things. A crash at midnight, a rival MC, a drug deal gone bad. I knew the club was above board and legal now, but maybe…
“Cancer,” Bullet said softly.
“Oh.” Oh. Shit.
My surprise must have been clear on my face because Bullet found my hand and tangled our fingers together, smile faint. “I get it. Doesn’t seem like the way we go out. Nine just got unlucky. That’s part of why Scorch has been putting truces back in place recently. Some clubs are sniffing for territory, trying to see if we’re wobbling. But we had warning it was coming, even if it came on fast, and Scorch was always gonna ascend to the throne sooner or later.”
“Was Nine the one that smelled like soap?” I asked, thinking of the scent cards at the Center.
“Hmm. Guess… yeah, I guess he did.”
My eyebrows lifted. “You don’t notice it?”
“I notice you,” he said, grinning. “Makin’ my mouth water. And I guess I catch the others sometimes. Like background noise. You dig into me, hook me and reel me in.”
“You smell like roses,” I said, leaning in and breathing in deeply.
Bullet blinked, surprised by the announcement. “Roses in the garden where I grew up.”
I don’t know what I imagined about Bullet as a child, but it definitely wasn’t that. “I… I forget sometimes that I don’t really know any of you.”
“You will. You’ll learn us, our histories and habits. We’ll learn yours too.”
I smiled at the thought, and let my eyes travel over Bullet’s broad frame, filling the chair. Maybe it was the heat—okay, it was definitely the heat—but there was definitely somewhere I wanted to start when it came to learning this man.
I stood up from the chair and before Bullet could follow me, I held a hand out to stop him rising and then perched myself on his lap. He leaned back, an arm curving around my hip and his other hand tangled with mine in the skirt of my dress. I pressed my face to his throat, nuzzling slightly, feeling him twitch in his pants beneath me.
“Can I start learning now?”
He groaned as I started to perfume, and his own pheromones grew stronger in response. “Kitten. We should… I should…”
“We should,” I said as if in agreement. “You should.”
I lifted my face until we were nose to nose, his eyes were a crystal clear shade of aqua, slightly hooded now as he took deep breaths.
“I don’t know if I’ve been very clear on the matter,” I said slowly, tasting his breath on my lips as he panted and sat stiffly in the chair beneath me. “You’re one of the reasons I chose this pack. I want you, Bullet. Want you to be my alpha.”
He groaned again, and the hand around my waist raised to hold the back of my neck, keeping me still as he leaned in. His mouth captured mine, devouring me in full strokes and long presses. His tongue wasted no time, sliding in on my first gasp, stroking against mine in a steady rhythm. I reached up, holding his face to me—not as though he was likely to go anywhere—and tried to twist on his lap, straddle myself across his hips. He dropped my hand and grabbed my ass with rough fingers as I moved. Then he lifted me, lifted us both from the chair, mouth still connected.
“Gotta get you back to the others,” he rasped.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I snapped, stealing another kiss, enjoying the echo of his laugh against me.
“Table’s too crowded.”
“Apartment’s too far,” I whined.
Bullet growled and sucked my tongue between his lips as I wrapped my legs around his waist. His hand slid beneath my skirt, or my skirt rucked up, and then his fingers were pressed to my panties right over my sex.
“Fuck. Kitten. You’re wet.”
“Been wet since you barked at me,” I breathed against his mouth, my hands tugging at his t-shirt that was so tight it might as well have been painted on. Lovingly. “Floor. Fuck me on the floor.”
He growled again and the sound was so loud I could feel it in my now soaked panties. “Not fuckin’ you. Definitely not fuckin’ you on a floor, kitten.”
“But I’m wearing shoes,” I said, in a perfect demonstration of how completely I’d lost my mind in the haze of lust.
Bullet turned and suddenly I was perched on the side edge of the table. Papers went rustling down to the floor and then handcuffs with a clatter. Which was a shame. I might have had a use for those. I leaned into Bullet, nipping at his throat, squirming myself against his chest and hips for friction, as he reached around me and cleared the desk. The gun went into a drawer, snapped shut with rough efficiency. Everything else hit the floor.
Then my alpha leaned back, holding me at bay with one hand on my shoulder and the other pinning my chin in place to look up at him. “Not fuckin’ you,” he said sternly. “Just gonna make you soak those panties even more.”
I managed a grin and then Bullet’s hands were taking mine up, up, up over my head, guiding me back to the surface of the desk with him on top of me, perfectly stretched out. His hard cock nudged at my center through his jeans and his eyes glinted blue while he grinned above me.
“You gonna be a good girl and leave your hands where I set them?” he asked.
I nodded, although I had a feeling it was a lie. Gently, he wrapped my fingers around the far edge of the table, and I moaned as the action made him grind our hips together.
“I like this dress,” he said.
“Me too.”
“It’s got buttons so I don’t have to rip it,” he continued, and my eyes widened. Then he started to rock forward and my eyes slammed shut, another moan falling loose. “Put your legs around me, kitten.”
I did and he kept rocking, his fingers reaching forward to the delicate buttons down the front of my dress, slipping them free one by one down to my waist.
“I want more kisses,” I said, pouting at the way my voice took on a whine when I was feeling the
heat and craving him faster than he could deliver attention.
“More kisses, comin’ right up,” Bullet said, grinning briefly before his expression straightened with intent.
He took charge of the kiss and I followed gratefully, too wired from the position he’d put me in, the steady rhythm of him against my clit, slightly too rough but twice as wonderful for it. His hands groped at my breasts, tweaking my nipples and then gripping full handfuls of me. He purred into my mouth and I shivered on the table as the legs started to squeak beneath us. It was pushed against the window ledge, my fingers safe from being pinched, and I wondered if it would give out under our combined weight.
Bullet’s tongue was fucking my mouth and it left me craving the stretch of being filled up. I hadn’t been fucked, not properly, since before I’d discovered I was an omega. As much as I appreciated the pack’s determination not to rush me, I was starting to miss good old fashioned penetration.
I tore my lips away, and Bullet skipped my throat in favor of diving down to my breast and sucking a nipple into his mouth, making me arch and roll my hips into his.
“I can’t wait to feel your knot,” I said, all air in my voice.
Bullet tensed above me and then immediately the table began to squeak faster and harder, thumping against the wall. I grinned as Bullet nipped at my breast, tongue swirling as he grunted and rutted on top of me, warmth swirling in my core and threatening to drag me over at any second.
“Want that stretch. Wanna know what it feels like,” I moaned. It was all true. I just also happened to be enjoying the thought of Bullet’s control snapping like a rubber band that had met its limit. I released the edge of the table, scratching my nails down Bullet’s back and digging my fingers into his loose ponytail as I tried to meet him thrust for thrust.
He only went faster, mouth drifting across my chest with drags of his teeth that made me writhe until he was sucking harshly at my other breast. His hands slipped between us, under my skirt, and he pulled my panties aside, thrusting two fingers inside of me and making me shout. Before I’d caught my breath he was rubbing frantically at my clit.
I came with a wail, pulling at his hair and digging my heels into his ass. When he didn’t let up, even as I shuddered my way down from my climax, I tugged gently at his shoulders.