Downpour (Alpha Love - A Paranormal Werewolf Shifter Romance Book 1)

by Olivia Stephens

  “I’ll be right there.” Luke takes one last look at the happy couple climbing into the pickup truck like the Beverly Hillbillies and smiles to himself as he thinks about how the expression on that meathead’s big fat face is going to change when he sees what’s coming.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The tension between Ashton and Sofie in the truck is so strong she feels her body buzzing from it. She doesn’t know whether to kiss him or pick a fight with him over what he did to Luke, and he seems to be feeling the same way about her.

  “I didn’t say that I didn’t appreciate it. All I said was that you crossed a line. You can’t just go around punching people.” Sofie rubs her temples as the gravity of what played out in the bar hits her. “Especially not people that I work for!”

  “You’re telling me that he didn’t deserve it?” Ashton eyes flash, and Sofie sees that tinge of gold in his blue eyes that he seems to get sometimes when he’s angry. “Look at your wrist, his handprint is still there!”

  Sofie looks down at her arm and, just as Ashton described, there it was, the red mark of a hand. Tomorrow it would be a bruise, and tomorrow she would have to face Luke and the consequences of Ashton’s form of justice.

  “I told you that I wouldn’t let him hurt you and I meant it. Can you deal with that? Can you deal with someone treating you like you are worth something?” His words find their mark, and Sofie feels like she’s just been punched in the gut.

  “Don’t use your werewolf mojo on me, Ashton. If you have something to say to me then say it.” Sofie looks out of the window, as he parks the car outside the house.

  She feels him taking a few deep breaths. “That first time we spoke—on the ridge. I asked if you were running away from something or towards something. I think we both know what the answer was. You don’t trust people. You trusted your parents and look where that got you. But you can trust me.” Ashton takes her hand, but she’s too emotional.

  “You don’t know what you’re asking of me.” Sofie slips out of the truck and slams the door behind her, heading into the house. Why do I have to go on the defensive all the time? He’s telling me things, treating me in a way that no one ever has. Why can’t I just go with it and see where it takes me? She leans against the kitchen counter, mentally beating herself up for being the emotional retard that she is. She hears Ashton walking slowly inside, the screen door creaking closed behind him.

  He doesn’t touch her, just mimics her posture, leaning against the counter in front of her, crossing his arms, waiting.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to go all neurotic girlfriend on you.” The words are out of Sofie’s mouth before she’s had time to edit them, and she really wishes that she had. She tries to rub away the label that she’s just attached to herself by babbling. “I mean, it’s not that I don’t appreciate what you did, what you’re trying to do.”

  “You said that already,” Ashton says, his voice in a low rumble. When she looks up at him, she sees the amusement playing in his eyes.

  “Yeah, well, sometimes I repeat myself. That’s something you probably didn’t know about me and believe me there’s a whole lot more.” Sofie searches around to think of something that will prove how little he really knows her.

  “Like?” Ashton sighs deeply, like he’s indulging her moment of madness.

  “Like I’m kind of a disaster. I’ve been in my apartment for six months for Christ’s sake, and I’m still living out of boxes!” She throws her hands up to illustrate the chaos of her life.

  “I can deal with that.” Ashton shrugs, like what she’s saying isn’t a big deal.

  But Sofie hasn’t got to the part that neither of them has spoken about, the giant elephant in the room. “Ash, I live in DC. You live here. There, I’ve said it now, and as much as I don’t want to have the whole ‘where is this going’ talk after only a few days, that is the reality, and it’s not going to change.”

  Ashton shifts uncomfortably from one foot to another. It’s the first time she’s seen him lost for words, and she really wishes that he weren’t. It’s clear that she’s not the only one who has had these thoughts, and it seems like he’s not any closer to an answer than she is.

  “You want me to trust you, to depend on you. But I can’t do that. Not when our lives are so far apart. I can take care of myself. Besides, you’re not going to be around all the time to step in and save me like my own personal knight in shining armor. And I can’t expect you to be.” Sofie tries to keep the emotion out of her voice, but there’s no avoiding it. She knows that in a couple of days she’s going to be on a plane home, and Ashton will be here.

  “You know that I can’t leave the pack.” The emotion in Ashton’s voice mirrors her own, and his eyes are full of pain.

  “I know and I would never ask you to do that,” Sofie replies firmly. She knows how important the pack is and his position in it, and she would never want to come between him and them. She would never make him choose. “And you know that my life is in DC, my job…that’s if I still have a job after you assaulted my boss.” Sofie looks pointedly at Ashton who shows zero signs of remorse, not that she had really expected him to. In his position, she wouldn’t have either. “I’m a scientist, and there’s not a whole lot of work for people like me in Beaumont.”

  Ashton nods slowly. What she’s telling him clearly isn’t news, he’s been having the same conversation with himself. They’d both just been avoiding the inevitable.

  “So what does that mean?” Ashton looks at her, looking paler than she’s ever seen him.

  “I don’t know.” Sofie shrugs. It was an honest response, the only one that she can give. But the idea of not seeing him, not being with him, makes it hard to breathe.

  “Come here.” Ashton opens his arms to her, and she settles herself against his chest, listening to his heartbeat and feeling the warmth of his body against hers.

  They stand like that, holding each other, neither wanting to call time on what they’re doing, what they’re feeling.

  “So you’re my girlfriend, then?” Ashton’s chest is vibrating, as he lets out a low chuckle.

  She tries to get her embarrassment under control before she looks up at him, frowning. “I was hoping that you might have skipped over that part.”

  “Not a chance.” Ashton looks down at her, his blue eyes dancing. But his expression turns serious. “I don’t want to let you go.”

  “I don’t want you to either,” she says in a hushed voice, as the magnetism between them ratchets up a notch. “Kiss me.” She lifts her face to his and loses herself in the feel of his lips on hers, the taste of him, and the sense of him all around her.

  She runs her hands up his cheeks, feeling the bristles of his beard scrape against her soft skin, and it sends a thrill of delight through her. His kiss makes her feel as light as a feather, like she could float away. She palms him through his jeans and feels him standing to attention. She knows what she wants to do, and the thought of it makes her knees weak with desire.

  “I think it’s my turn now, right?” She grins at him, licking her lips in anticipation.

  “Your turn for what?” Ashton looks at her with a curious smile.

  “You’ve tasted me, now I want to taste you.” She says the words against his lips, the heat of their breath mingling together. She unbuttons his shirt slowly, wanting to feel the hard muscles of his chest underneath. Her hands skim over his body, and he lets out a long breath, like he’s preparing himself.

  She kneels down in front of him and gets to work on his jeans, concentrating on the buttons one-by-one. She sits back on her ankles, looking at him. His cock really is magnificent, long and hard and perfect, perfect for her. She feels the heat between her legs, as she thinks about taking him in her mouth. She’s never been this turned on before simply thinking about giving a guy a blow job. But, like everything with Ashton, this was different.

  She wraps her hand around his shaft, feeling the weight of him, how swollen he is. But before sh
e can get down to business, Ashton pulls her up to face him, as if she weighed nothing.

  “You don’t have to do this.” He looks at her seriously while he busies himself stripping her down to her underwear. “Christ, what are you doing to me?” He looks down at her in awe. She’s wearing the tiniest panties possible, the black lace setting off the paleness of her skin. Her bra is completely transparent, and he can see how hard her nipples are already. He buries his head in her chest, breathing her in and his hand slips down to her panties as he touches her through the lace, feeling her slickness. “You’re always so ready,” he whispers into her ear, and she moans as he strokes her, making her pussy ache.

  “Hold up, hold up.” Sofie takes his hand, stopping the perfect way that he’s touching her. “I can’t concentrate if you keep that up.” She looks at him meaningfully and slides down his body until she’s on her knees again in front of him. She knows that he’ll have a perfect view of her as she tastes him.

  She takes hold of his shaft again, looking up at Ashton, making sure that he’s not missing any of this. His expression and shallow breath tells her that he’s already lost in the moment. She leans forward and licks his tip, feeling his body shudder out of need. She traces a long line with her tongue from the base of his shaft then up the underside, paying particular attention to just under the tip where all the nerve endings meet, and she’s rewarded by his groan of pleasure.

  Emboldened by his reaction, she starts to take him into her mouth. She wraps her lips around his cock, taking as much of him as she can before she gags. She squeezes the base of his shaft lightly as she rocks back and forth, taking him into her mouth and licking him down to the tip.

  “Sofie. Sofie.” The sound of Ashton moaning her name as he knots his fingers in her hair, guiding her to take him deeper into her mouth makes her even wetter.

  She builds up a rhythm, sucking him, tasting him, and letting her tongue run along his cock. She uses her teeth, letting him feel them graze against his shaft. Ashton rocks back, holding onto the counter behind him for support. His eyes are dark with lust, and he’s breathing deeply, trying to regain some control. But that’s exactly what Sofie doesn’t want him to have. She’s in control this time, and she’s loving every minute of it.

  She sucks harder, licking his swollen cock and rolling his balls in her hand, making him lose it completely. His hips start moving, signaling the release that she knows he’s desperate for.

  “Sofie, you’re amazing. You look so fucking sexy with my cock in your mouth.” He’s straining to get the words out, aching with need for her. Sofie feels the answering warmth between her legs. “I’m coming, don’t stop, baby. I’m going to come hard.”

  This is the part where Sofie would usually step politely away and hand the guy a tissue. Blow jobs were something she did for them, not for her. This is the first time that she wants a guy to come in her mouth, wants to taste him, to take him inside of her, any way he wants. She’s so wet between her thighs that she needs her own satisfaction, she can feel how close she is. She does something that she’s never done before. She looks up at Ashton to make sure that he’s watching and drops her hand between her legs underneath her panties, while she sucks his cock. She starts to touch herself, feeling how hot and wet she is. She strokes herself, moaning, thinking about Ashton fucking her mouth. She starts to breathe hard, ready for her own release.

  Sofie feels his body jolt, and he lets out a growl as she sucks him hard, taking him to his climax. She comes hard along with him, her pussy dripping wet. He spills his seed inside of her mouth, and she swallows him, tasting his saltiness, sucking him dry until she feels his body go limp above hers.

  They’re both breathing hard, still riding high from their orgasms. Ashton lifts her up again to him and kisses her hard, like he’s trying to convey something deeply important with his kiss. She feels his cock, harden against her stomach, and she breaks away, looking up at him, amused and not a little impressed.

  “I don’t know what you do to me. But I need to have you, again and again. It’s never enough.” Ashton holds his face between her hands, gazing at her with something that looks a lot like love.

  They make love again and again. Sofie’s need for Ashton mirrors his need for her. Neither want to sleep or to lose one precious moment of this togetherness that they share; this feeling of completeness that they only experience with each other. They finally make it to Ashton’s bed and, as the fingers of dawn stretch across the sky they lay lost in each other’s arms. They’re spent, physically and emotionally, but still as close to each other as they could possibly be. It was as if they didn’t want to let anything come between, not until they had no other choice, no time left.

  “When will you go back?” Ashton talks sleepily into her hair, as he strokes her from her hip up to her shoulder, making her shiver.

  “Tomorrow. With the site no longer viable, there’s not much more for us to do here, just wrap up a few loose ends.” Sofie thinks about the rock sample from the woods that she’s been carrying around with her since that morning. She didn’t want to run the risk of Shale knowing anything about it, and she wouldn’t put it past Luke to rummage through her room. “What do you know about the rocks in the woods at the foot of the mountain? The dark ones, like the one that you switched out on me?” Sofie looks over her shoulder at Ashton, as she feels his hold on her tighten.

  “Why are you asking about that now?” Ashton tries to sound casual, but she’s gotten to know his tells, and there’s definitely something that he’s holding back.

  “Nothing, it’s just not something I’ve really seen before. Thought you might know more about it than you’re saying.” She stretches lazily against him, trying to cover the hurt that she feels over the secrets he’s clearly still keeping from her.

  “You’re the geologist. I’m just a knuckle-dragging redneck.” Ashton’s voice is full of sarcasm, and Sofie laughs at the memory of Luke’s eyes bulging out of their sockets in anger after Ashton had hit him.

  “Yeah, that sounds about right,” Sofie teases and lets out a little yelp when Ashton swats her on the butt. She turns to kiss him lightly on the lips, wishing that it didn’t feel so much like a kiss goodbye. “I’d better go.”

  The clock on the wall tells her that it’s time for her to get out of bed. She knows that if she has any hope of keeping her job that she’ll have to see Luke before he flies out. She asks herself if she even really wants this job that she’s so desperately trying to hold onto. She loves the work, the science, but she doesn’t love what Shale does, what it stands for. Ultimately, she sees just how low Luke is willing to stoop to get what he wants. Now that included her. But she also knows that she doesn’t have the luxury of giving up a job. The people who are expecting her to pay her father’s debts are scary, they’re not the kind of guys that you want to meet alone in a dark alley, and they’ve always made it very clear what will happen to her if the money stops flowing in their direction. No one knows how bad things are or the kind of people that her father’s gambling has got her involved in. There was no point in telling anyone, because no one could help her.

  “Where are you going?” Ashton keeps hold of her, as she tries to get up from the bed.

  “To go see if I still have a job.” She wades through the fear and sadness she feels, the feelings that she can’t share with Ashton and smiles at him over shoulder, kissing him softly before she starts getting dressed.

  “You don’t have to go back.” Ashton says the words that she was secretly hoping he would, but simultaneously hoping that he wouldn’t.

  “I do, I really do.” Sofie doesn’t add that the guys she pays off work on a cash-only basis, and they’ll be expecting to see her soon. She pushes the thought out of her mind. One crisis at a time, she tells herself.

  “What are you hiding?” Ashton’s voice pierces through her thoughts. She opens her mouth to reply, to tell him it all because she’s so tired of carrying it all on her own. But before she can, his
cell vibrates insistently on the nightstand.

  “Shouldn’t you get that?” Sofie nods towards the phone, but Ashton makes no move towards it.

  “If it’s important they’ll call back. Don’t avoid the question.” He fixes her with one of his signature stares that makes her feel like he’s looking straight through her, seeing everything.

  His cell starts vibrating again, and Sofie looks knowingly at him. “Looks like it’s important.”

  Ashton sighs in frustration, grabbing the cell and barking a hello. “No, Lindsey it’s seven in the morning, I’m not watching the news.” He flops back onto the bed, clearly wondering why he’d decided to pick up the call.

  Sofie finishes dressing, but pauses when she hears the tone of his voice change.

  “What do you mean?” He sounds shaken. She looks at him questioningly. “It must be a mistake. It’s not possible. Alright, Lindsey we’re turning it on now.” Ashton grabs the remote and turns on the TV, flicking until he reaches the local news channel.