Taming the Alpha

by Mandy M. Roth

  “Let’s just wait until he’s done.” She whispered the words, not wanting to interrupt the spell of the song. “He’s really good. Tell me how you know him after.”

  Great. This night out had been the worst idea ever. I’d tried to forget my humiliation from the night before, and now I was being slapped in the face with it. And I wasn’t even going to be allowed to leave.

  I counted down the seconds until the music ended with gritted teeth, my eyes glued firmly to the chipped siren red polish of my nails as they drummed out an impatient tattoo on the sticky Formica of the table. Though I still had to fight that invisible rope that was tugging me ever quicker into the quicksand that his very presence in the room wrought, I tried to urge Vivi up and out of her chair as quickly as possible.

  Out of her chair, out the door, and out of this situation that boggled my mind, and that I couldn’t understand.

  Thing is, pregnant women don’t move all that fast. Especially not pregnant women who are mere weeks away from spewing forth with their contribution to the world’s population. So I was forced to stay where I was, helping Vivi with her coat, all the time praying that I wouldn’t have to come face to face with my humiliation.

  Because I was praying against it, of course it happened. The tap on my shoulder made my spine stiffen, a steel rod inserted painfully into my tailbone, and the ever so slight widening of Vivi’s eyes, not to mention the waft of pheromones that I swore I could smell, told me exactly who was behind me.

  I turned, surprise, surprise, it was him. I managed a sheepish, if somewhat insincere, grin, which I desperately hoped would be enough to cover the longing that again sucker punched me in the gut.

  What was wrong with me? The man was a cheater, a very much taken cheater, and though I supposed his relationship was none of my business, it would be very, very wrong to give in to the lusty bad angel that had made itself at home on my left shoulder.

  Wouldn’t it?

  That was, if he even wanted me. Which, as he’d made quite clear the night before, he didn’t. The whole magnet/ polarity, lust at first sight was all in my head.

  But God, did I ever want to drop to my knees and swallow his swollen shaft down the curve of my throat. The very thought made me so uncomfortably aroused that I became distracted by the seam of my denim pants as it rubbed against my clit, and I could barely choke out a monosyllabic response to his “Hello”.

  “H-hi.” I thought he’d continue, would say whatever he had come over to say, but he remained silent, instead probing with those pale slate eyes, the eyes that I seemed too helpless to look away from. I cleared my throat, tried to think of something to say that would make the situation all better but couldn’t.

  It was Vivi who saved the day. I owed her an entire Orgasm Cake. Maybe two.

  “Aahhhh.” Yawning with an exaggerated enthusiasm, her eyes twinkling with impishness, she placed her hands on her hugely protruding belly, arching her spine so that it would stick out further. I would have rolled my eyes at her theatrics if I’d been less engrossed in my traitorous hormones. “I’m sorry, Hannah, but I need to get going. I’m a lame date, I know, but the kiddo needs sleep. I’ll call you tomorrow.” With that, she was gone, moving with surprising grace around and through the maze of tables and chairs.

  Moving out the door, and leaving me alone with him. Neck deep in the aforementioned quicksand.

  Nope, no Orgasm Cake for her. I’d eat it all myself.

  “Look, I…” What was there to say? Sorry for propositioning you? I wasn’t. It had been my job, and for once I hadn’t been acting. I’d actually wanted him. I was only sorry, I think, that he hadn’t taken me up on my offer. Or I was sorry that he was very much taken. Or maybe a mix of the two.

  Were there even words for that?

  “You left abruptly last night. I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself.” Huh? I’d all but jumped into his lap, and he wanted to tell me his name? “I’m Adam. Adam Brentine. I play here sometimes. Obviously.” I liked the crinkles that showed around his eyes when he smiled, the slight wrinkling of the lines that came from laughter.

  “Hannah. Hannah Novak.” It took me a minute to compute that, while the last name he’d given me matched the information that I’d been given the night before, the first name didn’t. It reminded me that he belonged to someone else, and that he wasn’t likely to be truthful about much.

  That it would be very smart to get out of here before I did something that I already knew I was going to do if I could, but that I also knew I shouldn’t.

  “Hannah.” The way he rolled the two syllables of my name off of his tongue made me squirm inside my jeans, pulling that seam tight against my most sensitive places again. He caught my eyes with his own, moistened the flush of his lips with the tip of his tongue in a way that made me shiver.

  I shouldn’t. I knew that I shouldn’t and I wasn’t sure how this whole thing had spun out of my control so quickly.

  I shouldn’t. No, no, I wouldn’t.

  “I didn’t get a chance to answer your question last night.” Leaning in just the slightest bit, I felt the warm mist of his breath fan my face as he inserted himself into the pulsing aura of my personal space.

  “My… question?” I cringed as soon as the words exited my mouth; they were high pitched and squeaky, reminiscent of the second performer that evening, the one that had sounded like a cat.

  “Yes.” He moved in closer, the moist heat from his mouth now tickling at the lobe of my ear. I was torn between melting in a pool at his feet and running screaming away into the night.

  “Yes. Your question. The one about fucking.”

  This caught my attention; my eyes flew to his face. I knew that I should walk away, and I knew that I’d regret it if I didn’t. I couldn’t place full blame on my hormones, or chemistry, or any intangible thing like that— I was a grown woman, after all.

  But as I stood, swaying, suspended gently in the lapping waves of whatever it was that pulsed between us, I felt like screaming, “Why not? When is it my turn?”

  I hadn’t felt anything even close to what I was feeling for this man for years, maybe ever. Which is why I raised my eyebrows just a fraction, the slightest muscle twitch that told him to continue.

  He leaned in closer still. “I was wondering if the offer is still open.”

  I closed my eyes, the better to enjoy the euphoria that stomped overtop of the guilt and the common sense. I knew it was stupid, I knew that it probably wasn’t even all that moral. But for once, just once, I wanted to do something that made me feel good. Something just for me. For Hannah.

  And so I found myself nodding, the movement brushing strands of my loose hair over the tops of breasts that had become highly sensitized.

  Yes.

  ***

  I debated with myself throughout the short drive to wherever it was we were going— most likely, I thought, his apartment. Not only was this against every shred of morality that made up who I was, it just wasn’t smart. Smart women didn’t go home to strange places with strange men. Hell, I didn’t even know his real name. Was it Joshua? Was it Adam? Who knew?

  When he unlocked his door, swung open the wooden panel to let me in, and I smelled the already familiar musk of man and of him, I had yet one more thought.

  Who cared?

  Well, I might have argued that one with myself, good and bad angels having a battle royale on the tension stiffened planes of my back, but I was too nervous to be logical.

  It had been years since I’d done this. I had sex, sure, but usually with someone that I’d dated casually, or a friend that needed some action as much as I did. Always a familiar situation, a safe place that I could be comfortable in.

  Never with a stranger. Never with someone that set my every nerve skittering in a violent, demon expunging dance throughout my body.

  “Would you like a drink?” This made me even more nervous than if he’d just grabbed me and gone to town against the front door. I wasn’t sure I curre
ntly had the capability to add conversation of any kind to my repertoire of skills for the evening.

  I nodded once, jerkily, then followed him to the kitchen when he gestured.

  “Beer okay? Sorry, it’s all I’ve got.” He sounded more apologetic than I would have thought, and I wondered fleetingly in he maybe wasn’t feeling as confident as he looked either. Then the illusion was gone and he was handing me a pale green bottle, icy to the touch, which I sipped at nervously while taking in the mossy green walls, the old yet clean appliances, and the slightly wobbly looking vintage table that made up the room.

  Silently, I watched him as he moved around the kitchen. I might have been imagining it, but I was certain that the stew that I imagined the tension in the room as thickened with every passing moment. He downed his beer in a few quick— nervous?— swallows and continued to stare at me.

  I knew, without a doubt, that this was it. My last escape route was closing in. I could run, and everything would be okay.

  Everything would be okay, except I’d still have this burning, shaking, all consuming thing inside of me. The thing whose hunger could only be slaked by staying exactly where I was.

  I wanted to stay.

  “You know, it’s very unnerving when you do that.” I set down my beer bottle, my hands shaking. In response, he took a step towards me, ran a finger through the moisture that had gathered at the mouth of my drink, and dripped the amber beer that clung to it onto my neck.

  Bending, he licked it off.

  He looked so intense, I was slightly worried about being consumed whole.

  My interpretation of his thoughts wasn’t that far off.

  Clasping me around my hips, he lifted me onto the counter. I sucked in a breath as the chill of the Formica hit my ass through the worn denim. I continued to watch him warily, my skin humming where his tongue had been. Burying his face in my hair, he murmured, sweet words, which surprised me.

  He already had me here, hot and willing, after all.

  “You smell like candy. Apple candy. It makes me want to bite you.” And bite me he did, almost hard enough to draw blood, before soothing the wound with his tongue.

  My head began to spin. He proceeded to stroke me around the edges of my light cotton sweater, dipping his fingers under the cloth with no more than a whisper. I wanted more, but he continued that way, just light little touches, until I was gasping out his name—and in the aptly named heat of the moment, it seemed I’d decided that his name was Adam. It was how he’d introduced himself to me, after all, and if his name wasn’t the same as the mark I’d been assigned to pick up the night before, then I could pretend, at least a little bit, that he wasn’t that person any more than I was the red lipsticked siren that I’d tried so hard to portray.

  “Wrap your legs around me.” Wondering vaguely what he would do if I said no, I did as he asked, wrapping my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck. He lifted me off of the counter that had warmed beneath my flesh and carried me down the hall.

  I barely had time to enjoy the moment, to swoon. Then we were in his bedroom, wreathed in the mysterious shadows of the night, and there was nothing that existed except for the two of us.

  Sliding me down the hard-in-all-the-right-places length of his body, stood me at the side of the bed. Ran his fingers over my shoulders.

  “You’re wearing too many clothes.” Slipping the loose neck of my sweater down my shoulders, he followed his touch with kisses. He allowed the sweater to bag down over my hips and fall to the floor, followed by my jeans before I was even aware of what he was doing. But when I reached for his belt buckle he moved my questing fingers back up to his shoulders.

  It seemed that he wanted me naked while he was still fully clothed. The thought did funny and wonderful things to my insides.

  “Lie down on your stomach.” I did, even as I began to shake with anticipation, laying my flushed skin against the cool oasis of his quilt. Straddling me, he leaned over and nipped at my right ear, whispering, “Has anyone ever told you that your ass is shaped like a heart?”

  Oh, God. This was so much better than anything I had ever imagined. Mutely, I shook my head.

  “It’s the hottest thing that I’ve ever seen.” He trailed his mouth down my spine to the hollow of my back, where he nibbled. He then trailed kisses in a trace around the edge of the shapely behind that he had so admired, proving to me that it was, indeed, shaped like a heart. A heart that he then ruthlessly smacked with the flat of his palm.

  I reared up, my right ass cheek stinging from the assault. To even things out, he delivered a spank to my left one, then flipped me over and, raising my hips, buried his face in my cunt. The sounds that I made were unintelligible, half screams and half cries. I had, in the tiniest fraction of a second, moved as far beyond reason and rationale and thought as I could go.

  I had never been so caught up in the physical, and greedy though it may have been, I was hungry for the experience. It did occur to me that I should maybe have been frightened by the intensity and wildness of the encounter, but I knew, deep down in my gut, that he’d only go as far as I wanted him to.

  I knew that I’d let him take me as far as I could go.

  Now biting sharply at my inner thighs and clitoris, he muttered soft words, his mouth full of my flesh.

  “Do you want me to stop?” I shook my head wildly. While he was bringing me pain, it also somehow felt wonderful, and though I couldn’t rationalize the two in my head, I didn’t need to, they meshed so well together— two into one.

  “I asked if you want me to stop.” He bit me harder, this time right on my super sensitive clit. Again, I shook my head, my hips beginning to pump.

  “Answer me!” He smacked me on my hip, then laid his teeth into my neck.

  “No!” I screamed, grinding my naked, wet flesh against the rough denim that covered his straining cock. “God, no. Please. Oh God, please!”

  Instead of giving me the release that I so craved, he sat back on his heels, ceasing all

  touch. My eyes rolled wildly in my head and I thrashed on the bed, trying to bring him back down to me.

  “No more until you’re quiet.” His words were whispered as he ran his hand an inch above my torso, causing me to turn my head and groan into the pillow in an attempt to control myself. Leaning over, he breathed in my ear.

  “How many pairs of pretty panties like these do you own? Do you have lots?” I was hard pressed to tear my eyes away from his face, but found that it aroused me even further when I looked at his hands, found him running the silky black scraps of my thong through his fingers.

  I didn’t respond; my sluggish brain didn’t seem to think that I needed to. A sharp tap on my hip reminded me, though, that he liked me to answer.

  “Y-y-yes.” My mouth was so dry that the word, once choked out of my swollen throat, stuck on my tongue. “Yes, I do.”

  “Now, just where does sweet Hannah wear all of those pretty panties?” He grinned and rubbed my thong against his cheek, which sounds creepy but was, in fact, incredibly hot— he was so confident that it fell a long ways from sleazy, right smack in the middle of hot, hot, hot. Stretching the swatch of cloth, he pulled me into a sitting position and then rested the silk gently over my eyes, hooking a loop over each of my ears.

  Laying me back down, he then proceeded to lick, nibble and massage his way over every single inch of my body, starting at my temples and ending at my toes, avoiding all of my most sensitive spots. Not being able to see, my skin felt more sensitive, my ears heard his breath louder, and I smelled nothing but traces of soap and man and sex.

  Oh. My. God. I had never, ever imagined that the physical could feel so good. Even if I didn’t come, and I was sure that I wouldn’t, I would remember this night for the rest of my life.

  His light flicking touches frustrated me, but every time that I blindly tried to reach for him he held me back, until I was fighting wildly to grab hold of something, anything. Finally I snuck past his guard and g
rabbed hold of his belt.

  “No.” This was said firmly. “This is about you.” I was sure that this wasn’t the entire truth, but by then I just didn’t care. Stubbornly, and with more agility than I had given myself credit for in the past, I managed to get the denim unzipped, found him naked underneath. At the first touch of my lightly questing fingers on his hot skin, he jerked away, his breath hissing out.

  “Careful,” he warned me, reaching down to remove my hand even as he thrust his hips into my touch.

  I didn’t want to be careful. I wanted to make him come. Wanted to prove that he wanted me so much that he would without much more than he’d already had. So, keeping one hand firmly wrapped around the length of his shaft, a long shadow that remained a mystery in the dark, I sat up, pulled off my makeshift blindfold, and ran my fist up and down, up and down.

  He groaned; I murmured in response, enjoying the way he pulsed and thickened in my hand. Down, up. I stroked harder, faster. I wanted to use my other hand as well, to cup his sac, to ring the base of his cock, but I needed it to support my own weight, and couldn’t change positions without letting go of the flesh that I was fast growing addicted to.

  A sticky drop at the very tip of his cock clung to my hand as I continued my relentless movements; I squeezed harder in response. He let out a yelp that let me know I’d squeezed too hard.

  Mortified, I snatched my hand away, drew it in to my chest. “Oh God, I’m so sorry.” Shit, shit, shit.

  Then I was flat on my back, pinned with my thighs open wide.

  “Gotcha.” I swallowed the word, and the kiss, reveling in the novel feel of skin on skin— I wasn’t sure when he’d discarded his shirt, or pushed his pants down around his ankles, so intent in my stroking had I been, but I enjoyed the results regardless. Letting my lips slant under his, answering the inquisitive thrusting of his tongue with my own, I was only vaguely aware of the crunch of foil and the scent of latex before I found myself pinned to the bed, invaded to the hilt with a cock that I had helped to become so huge and hard.