Alpha’s Prey: A BBW Bear Shifter Romance

by Rose, Renee

  “Oh shit. Go—I’ve got this. Do you want to give me the keycard for the last suite?” There are three suites on this top floor.

  She looks around distractedly. “No, I’d better not. Could you just finish this place up and head back downstairs? I’ll call Samuel to let him know what happened.” Samuel’s our boss, the head of housekeeping. “Don’t forget to stay away from the desk in the office.”

  “Sure thing. Get out of here.” I make a shooing motion. “Go be with your kid.”

  “Okay.” She digs her purse out from the cart and slings it over her shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “I hope he’s all right,” I say to her back as she leaves.

  She flings a weak smile over her shoulder. “Thanks. Bye.”

  I grab the vacuum and head back into the bedroom. When I finish, I hear male voices in the living room.

  “Hope you can get some sleep, Nico. How long’s it been?” one of the voices asked.

  “Forty-eight hours. Fucking insomnia.”

  “G’luck, see you later.” A door clicks shut.

  My heart immediately beats a little faster with excitement or nerves. Yes—I’m a fool. Later, I would realize my mistake in not marching right out and introducing myself, but Marissa has me nervous about the Tacones and I freeze up. The cart stands out in the living room, though. I decide to go into the bathroom and clean everything I can without getting fresh supplies. Finally, I give up, square my shoulders and head out.

  I arrive in the living room and pull out three folded towels, four hand towels and four washcloths. Out of my peripheral vision, I watch the broad shoulders and back of another finely dressed man.

  He glances over then does a double-take. His dark eyes rake over me, lingering on my legs and traveling up to my breasts, then face. “Who the fuck are you?”

  I should’ve expected that response, but it startles me anyway. He sounds scary. Seriously scary, and he walks toward me like he means business. He’s beautiful, with dark wavy hair, a stubbled square jaw and thick-lashed eyes that bore a hole right through me.

  “Huh? Who. The fuck. Are you?”

  I panic. Instead of answering him, I turn and walk swiftly to the bathroom, as if putting fresh towels in his bathroom will fix everything.

  He stalks after me and follows me in. “What are you doing in here?” He knocks the towels out of my hands.

  Stunned, I stare down at them scattered on the floor. “I’m...housekeeping,” I offer lamely. Damn my idiotic fascination with the mafia. This is not the freaking Sopranos. This is a real-life, dangerous man wearing a gun in a holster under his armpit. I know, because I see it when he reaches for me.

  He grips my upper arms. “Bullshit. No one who looks like”—his eyes travel up and down the length of my body again—“you—works in housekeeping.”

  I blink, not sure what that means. I’m pretty, I know that, but there’s nothing special about me. I’m your girl-next-door blue-eyed blonde type, on the short and curvy side. Not like my cousin Corey, who is tall, slender, red-haired and drop-dead gorgeous, with the confidence to match.

  There’s something lewd in the way he looks at me that makes it sound like I’m standing there in nipple tassels and a G-string instead of my short, fitted maid’s dress. I play dumb. “I’m new. I’ve only been here a couple weeks.”

  He sports dark circles under his eyes, and I remember what he told the other man. He suffers from insomnia. Hasn’t slept in forty-eight hours.

  “Are you bugging the place?” he demands.

  “Wha—” I can’t even answer. I just stare like an idiot.

  He starts frisking me for a weapon. “Is this a con? What do they think—I’m going to fuck you? Who sent you?”

  I attempt to answer, but his warm hands sliding all over me make me forget what I was going to say. Why is he talking about fucking me?

  He stands up and gives me a tiny shake. “Who. Sent. You?” His dark eyes mesmerize. He smells of the casino—of whiskey and cash, and beneath it, his own simmering essence.

  “No one...I mean, Marissa!” I exclaim her name like a secret password, but it only seems to irritate him further.

  He reaches out and runs his fingers swiftly along the collar of my housekeeping dress, as if checking for some hidden wiretap. I’m pretty sure the guy’s half out of his mind, maybe delirious with sleep deprivation. Maybe just nuts. I freeze, not wanting to set him off.

  To my shock, he yanks down the zipper on the front of my dress, all the way to my waist.

  If I were my cousin Corey, daughter of a mean FBI agent, I’d knee him in the balls, gun or not. But I was raised not to make waves. To be a nice girl and do what authority tells me to do.

  So, like a freaking idiot, I just stand there. A tiny mewl leaves my lips, but I don’t dare move, don’t protest. He yanks the form-fitting dress to my waist and jerks it down over my hips.

  I wrest my arms free from the fabric to wrap them around myself.

  Nico Tacone shoves me aside to get the dress out from under my feet. He picks it up and runs his hands all over it, still searching for the mythical wiretap while I shiver in my bra and panties.

  I fold my arms across my breasts. “Look, I’m not wearing a wire or bugging the place,” I breathe. “I was helping Marissa and then she got a call—”

  “Save it,” he barks. “You’re too fucking perfect. What’s the con? What the fuck are you doing in here?”

  I’m confounded. Should I keep arguing the truth when it only pisses him off? I swallow. None of the words in my head seem like the right ones to say.

  He reaches for my bra.

  I bat at his hands, heart pumping like I just did two back-to-back spin classes. He ignores my feeble resistance. The bra is a front hook and he obviously excels at removing women’s lingerie because it’s off faster than the dress. My breasts spring out with a bounce, and he glares at them, as if I bared them just to tempt him. He examines the bra, then tosses it on the floor and stares at me. His eyes dip once more to my breasts and his expression grows even more furious. “Real tits,” he mutters as if that’s a punishable offense.

  I try to step back but I bump into the toilet. “I’m not hiding anything. I’m just a maid. I got hired two weeks ago. You can call Samuel.”

  He steps closer. Tragically, the hardened menace on his handsome face only increases his attractiveness to me. I really am wired wrong. My body thrills at the nearness of him, pussy dampening. Or maybe it’s the fact that he just stripped me practically naked while he stands there fully clothed. I think this is a fetish to some people. Apparently, I’m one of them. If I wasn’t so scared, it would be uber hot.

  He palms my backside, warm fingers sliding over the satiny fabric of my panties, but he’s not groping me, he’s still working efficiently, checking for bugs. He slides a thumb under the gusset, running the fabric through his fingers. My belly flutters.

  Oh God. The back of his thumb brushes my dewy slit. I cringe in embarrassment. His head jerks up and he stares at me in surprise, nostrils flaring.

  Then his brows slammed down as if it pisses him off I’m turned on, as if it’s a trick.

  That’s when things really go to shit.

  He pulls out his gun and points it at my head—actually pushes the cold hard muzzle against my brow. “What. The fuck. Are you doing here?”

  I pee myself.

  Literally.

  God help me.

  I freeze and pee trickles down my inner thighs before I can stop it. My face burns with humiliation.

  Now, the anger and indignation I should’ve had from the start rushes out. It’s the exact wrong moment to get lippy, but I glare at him. “What’s wrong with you?”

  He stares at the dribble on the floor. I think he’s going to... Well, I don’t know what I think he’ll do—pistol whip me or sneer or something—but his expression relaxes and he shoves the gun in its holster. Apparently, I finally gave the right reaction.

  He grips
my arm and drags me toward the shower. My brain is doing flip flops trying to get back online. To figure out what in the hell is happening and how I can get myself out of this very crazy, very fucked up situation.

  Tacone reaches in and turns on the water, holding his hand under the spray as if to check its temperature.

  My brain hasn’t turned back on, but I wrestle with his grip on my arm.

  He releases it and holds his palm face out. “Okay,” he says. “Get in.” He draws his hand out of the shower and jerks his head toward the spray. “Clean up.”

  Is he coming in there with me? Or is this really just about washing off?

  Fuck it. I am a mess. I kick off my shoes and step in, panties and all.

  I don’t know how long I stand there, drowning in shock. After a while, I blink and awareness seeps back in. Then I freak out. What in the hell is happening? What will he do with me? Did I really just pee on his floor? I want to die of embarrassment.

  Keep it together, Sondra.

  Jesus Christ. The mafia boss who stands on the other side of the shower curtain thinks I’m a narc. Or a spy or rat—whatever they call it. And he just stripped me down to my panties and pointed a gun at my head. Things could only get worse from here. A sob rises up in my throat.

  Don’t cry. Not a good time to cry.

  I stumble back against the tile wall, my legs too rubbery to stand. Hot tears spill down my cheeks and I sniff.

  The shower curtain peeps open right by my face and I jerk back. I didn’t know he was standing right outside it.

  About Lee Savino

  Lee Savino is a USA today bestselling author, mom and chocoholic.

  Warning: Do not read her Berserker series, or you will be addicted to the huge, dominant warriors who will stop at nothing to claim their mates.

  I repeat: Do. Not. Read. The Berserker Saga. Particularly not the thrilling excerpt below.

  Download a free book from www.leesavino.com (don’t read that either. Too much hot, sexy lovin’).

  Excerpt: Sold to the Berserkers

  A ménage shifter romance

  By Lee Savino

  The day my stepfather sold me to the Berserkers, I woke at dawn with him leering over me. “Get up.” He made to kick me and I scrambled out of my sleep stupor to my feet.

  “I need your help with a delivery.”

  I nodded and glanced at my sleeping mother and siblings. I didn’t trust my stepfather around my three younger sisters, but if I was gone with him all day, they’d be safe. I’d taken to carrying a dirk myself. I did not dare kill him; we needed him for food and shelter, but if he attacked me again, I would fight.

  My mother’s second husband hated me, ever since the last time he’d tried to take me and I had fought back. My mother was gone to market, and when he tried to grab me, something in me snapped. I would not let him touch me again. I fought, kicking and scratching, and finally grabbing an iron pot and scalding him with heated water.

  He bellowed and looked as if he wanted to hurt me, but kept his distance. When my mother returned he pretended like nothing was wrong, but his eyes followed me with hatred and cunning.

  Out loud he called me ugly and mocking the scar that marred my neck since a wild dog attacked me when I was young. I ignored this and kept my distance. I’d heard the taunts about my hideous face since the wounds had healed into scars, a mass of silver tissue at my neck.

  That morning, I wrapped a scarf over my hair and scarred neck and followed my stepfather, carrying his wares down the old road. At first I thought we were headed to the great market, but when we reached the fork in the road and he went an unfamiliar way, I hesitated. Something wasn’t right.

  “This way, cur.” He’d taken to calling me “dog”. He’d taunted me, saying the only sounds I could make were grunts like a beast, so I might as well be one. He was right. The attack had taken my voice by damaging my throat.

  If I followed him into the forest and he tried to kill me, I wouldn’t even be able to cry out.

  “There’s a rich man who asked for his wares delivered to his door.” He marched on without a backward glance and I followed.

  I had lived all my life in the kingdom of Alba, but when my father died and my mother remarried, we moved to my stepfather’s village in the highlands, at the foot of the great, forbidding mountains. There were stories of evil that lived in the dark crevices of the heights, but I’d never believed them.

  I knew enough monsters living in plain sight.

  The longer we walked, the lower the sun sank in the sky, the more I knew my stepfather was trying to trick me, that there was no rich man waiting for these wares.

  When the path curved, and my stepfather stepped out from behind a boulder to surprise me, I was half ready, but before I could reach for my dirk he struck me so hard I fell.

  I woke tied to a tree.

  The light was lower, heralding dusk. I struggled silently, frantic gasps escaping from my scarred throat. My stepfather stepped into view and I felt a second of relief at a familiar face, before remembering the evil this man had wrought on my body. Whatever he was planning, it would bode ill for me, and my younger sisters. If I didn’t survive, they would eventually share the same fate as mine.

  “You’re awake,” he said. “Just in time for the sale.”

  I strained but my bonds held fast. As my stepfather approached, I realized that the scarf that I wrapped around my neck to hide my scars had fallen, exposing them. Out of habit, I twitched my head to the side, tucking my bad side towards my shoulder.

  My stepfather smirked.

  “So ugly,” he sneered. “I could never find a husband for you, but I found someone to take you. A group of warriors passing through who saw you, and want to slake their lust on your body. Who knows, if you please them, they may let you live. But I doubt you’ll survive these men. They’re foreigners, mercenaries, come to fight for the king. Berserkers. If you’re lucky your death will be swift when they tear you apart.”

  I’d heard the tales of berserker warriors, fearsome warriors of old. Ageless, timeless, they’d sailed over the seas to the land, plundering, killing, taking slaves, they fought for our kings, and their own. Nothing could stand in their path when they went into a killing rage.

  I fought to keep my fear off my face. Berserker's were a myth, so my stepfather had probably sold me to a band of passing soldiers who would take their pleasure from my flesh before leaving me for dead, or selling me on.

  “I could’ve sold you long ago, if I stripped you bare and put a bag over you head to hide those scars.”

  His hands pawed at me, and I shied away from his disgusting breath. He slapped me, then tore at my braid, letting my hair spill over my face and shoulders.

  Bound as I was, I still could glare at him. I could do nothing to stop the sale, but I hoped my fierce expression told him I’d fight to the death if he tried to force himself on me.

  His hand started to wander down towards my breast when a shadow moved on the edge of the clearing. It caught my eye and I startled. My stepfather stepped back as the warriors poured from the trees.

  My first thought was that they were not men, but beasts. They prowled forward, dark shapes almost one with the shadows. A few wore animal pelts and held back, lurking on the edge of the woods. Two came forward, wearing the garb of warriors, bristling with weapons. One had dark hair, and the other long, dirty blond with a beard to match.

  Their eyes glowed with a terrifying light.

  As they approached, the smell of raw meat and blood wafted over us, and my stomach twisted. I was glad my stepfather hadn’t fed me all day, or I would’ve emptied my guts on the ground.

  My stepfather’s face and tone took on the wheedling expression I’d seen when he was selling in the market.

  “Good evening, sirs,” he cringed before the largest, the blond with hair streaming down his chest.

  They were perfectly silent, but the blond approached, fixing me with strange golden eyes.

 
Their faces were fair enough, but their hulking forms and the quick, light way they moved made me catch my breath. I had never seen such massive men. Beside them, my stepfather looked like an ugly dwarf.

  “This is the one you wanted,” my stepfather continued. “She’s healthy and strong. She will be a good slave for you.”

  My body would’ve shaken with terror, if I were not bound so tightly.

  A dark haired warrior stepped up beside the blond and the two exchanged a look.

  “You asked for the one with scars.” My stepfather took my hair and jerked my head back, exposing the horrible, silvery mass. I shut my eyes, tears squeezing out at the sudden pain and humiliation.

  The next thing I knew, my stepfather’s grip loosened. A grunt, and I opened my eyes to see the dark haired warrior standing at my side. My stepfather sprawled on the ground as if he’d been pushed.

  The blond leader prodded a boot into my stepfather’s side.

  “Get up,” the blond said, in a voice that was more a growl than a human sound. It curdled my blood. My stepfather scrambled to his feet.

  The black haired man cut away the last of my bonds, and I sagged forward. I would’ve fallen but he caught me easily and set me on my feet, keeping his arms around me. I was not the smallest woman, but he was a giant. Muscles bulged in his arms and chest, but he held me carefully. I stared at him, taking in his raven dark hair and strange gold eyes.

  He tucked me closer to his muscled body.

  Meanwhile, my stepfather whined. “I just wanted to show you the scars—”

  Again that frightening growl from the blond. “You don’t touch what is ours.”

  “I don’t want to touch her.” My stepfather spat.

  Despite myself, I cowered against the man who held me. A stranger I had never met, he was still a safer haven than my stepfather.

  “I only wish to make sure you are satisfied, milords. Do you want to sample her?” my stepfather asked in an evil tone. He wanted to see me torn apart.