Hot Alphas

by Lora Leigh

  “Oh, no, you can’t visit Book Nook without stopping at Literary Wine.” She nodded toward the bar attached to the shop.

  “There’s a wine bar in a bookstore? This neighborhood just gets better and better.”

  Noah’s hand fell from her back as they moved to stand in line. With the break in conversation and without his touch, awkwardness began to itch at her skin. It was soon replaced with clusters of goose bumps when he pulled her into his arms, the bag of sticky buns dangling at their side.

  “This may not be the most appropriate place for this,” he said softly, his mouth inches from hers, “but I haven’t stopped thinking about that kiss since Saturday night. So forgive my forwardness—I just can’t help myself.”

  Before she could respond or protest—yeah, like she’d object—Noah took her lips in his. It was as sweet as their first kiss, but decidedly less tentative, and also hungrier. His tongue slid easily into her mouth and stroked along her own, making her stomach clench and her thighs twitch and her mind fill with naughty fantasies.

  It was brief, but by the time he pulled away she’d been thoroughly swept away. Her stomach held a swarm of butterflies that she thought was maybe more like a swarm of bees the way they made her innards buzz with lust. There was definitely sexual tension between her and Noah, and though she was not one to jump in bed without a fair amount of wooing, Jay had a feeling their physical relationship would likely escalate quickly—woo or not.

  In fact, she was ready to lean in and kiss him again, but it was their turn to order.

  Several minutes later, and after she’d stuffed a handful of extra napkins into her purse, Jay and Noah were walking through the aisles of Book Nook sipping Cab Sav from clear plastic cups with straws.

  “This. Is. Awesome.”

  Jay smiled at Noah’s sentiment. This shop was one of her favorite spots in town. It was another checkmark in the Noah-is-amazing column, a column which was becoming so full she was beginning to think it was the only one that existed. “I’m glad you approve. Books and wine. What else can you ask for?”

  “Good company. Though calling you good company is the understatement of the century.”

  Her cheeks felt warm and Jay was sure it was more than the wine producing that dizzying effect. So far they’d only run into each other a few times outside and chatted casually. She wished he would ask her out for something more formal.

  Then she remembered she was a woman of the modern generation—she could ask him out. And she would. After a few more sips of wine.

  They walked down the newspaper aisles, her eyes scanning the headlines halfheartedly. USA Today and New York Times both displayed articles about the economy. The Boston Globe’s front page showcased a rise of drug-related crimes right in the Back Bay area, the neighborhood they lived in. Then came the magazines—stories about celebrities’ weddings and divorces and babies and weight loss trends graced the covers. By the time she reached the tabloids at the end of the row, she’d finished her wine, and her courage had been bolstered.

  “So,” she said as they turned in unison toward the bestselling fiction section, “do you have plans for the evening?”

  “Just work,” Noah answered absentmindedly, picking up the latest bestselling crime thriller. He scowled at the back description. “People actually buy this shit?” he muttered under his breath.

  The popular book he was holding was particularly offensive to anyone with even a minimal background in English. But Jay was more interested in the former part of Noah’s statement. She realized she still did not know what her new neighbor did for a living. He’d blown her off when she’d asked before, but now he’d opened the door.

  “Work?” She trailed her hand across a stack of a recent young-adult breakout novel, trying to appear casual. “What was it you do again?”

  Noah threw the book down and shot her a glance, his brows furrowed as if he had no idea what she was talking about. “Oh, I meant work around the apartment.” He turned his focus to the next row of books. “I’m still not all the way settled. Boxes everywhere. It’s keeping me pretty busy.”

  Unpacking did generally take a bit of time to complete. Still. Why did Jay feel like his answer was a cover-up? Did he not want to talk about his job? Every time it had come up, he’d deflected. Which was awfully curious. Also mysterious. And Jay didn’t do well with unsolved mysteries.

  She put the date-asking on hold, and followed where her curiosity led her. “Moving is a bitch. Did you get to take some vacation time at least?”

  “Uh-huh.” He didn’t even look at her.

  Completely evasive.

  She bit her lip and considered. Maybe he really was out of work, living on unemployment. Though the apartments they lived in were not generally affordable to those on welfare. Or maybe he did something embarrassing. She’d heard that garbage men made good money. But certainly someone who worked all day around trash wouldn’t smell as yummy as Noah Harrison, would they?

  She was overthinking this. If he didn’t want to tell her, he didn’t want to tell her. She had to respect his privacy. Even if it meant ignoring her inner Nancy Drew. Maybe just one little Googling later would be okay though.

  They turned down another aisle and Jay spotted a trash can. Holding out her bag of baked goods toward Noah’s empty plastic cup, she said, “Trade you.”

  “You want me to hold your buns?” he asked with a delicious smile.

  She managed to hold his gaze as she played in return. “Don’t you know? I’ve been trying to get your hands on my buns all afternoon.”

  He chuckled as he took her bag, placing his cup in her outstretched hand. She turned toward the trash can and he called after her. “Hey, Jay?” He waited for her to peer questioningly over her shoulder. “Nice buns.”

  It was her turn to laugh. God, this guy was good. Delicious and flirty and downright sexy. And he got books! Such a plus. He was into her; there was no arguing that. He seemed to respect her intelligence and independence yet there was no denying he had a romantic streak. Could Noah Harrison possibly be everything she’d been looking for?

  Too soon to tell, she decided as she tossed the cups in the trash, but she was definitely optimistic for the first time in months.

  When she turned back toward him, she found he was still watching her. He’d been staring at her behind, she realized, but again, it wasn’t in an offensive way. He was appreciating her much in the same way she appreciated him. His strong runner thighs, his chest that she could tell was cut even through his clothes, the sexy bulge of his biceps …

  “Why, Jaylene, are you objectifying me?” he teased.

  She blushed. She hadn’t meant to appreciate him right at that moment, and not so obviously. At least he’d had the decency to do it behind her back.

  Trying to hide the depth of her embarrassment, she turned to the nearest bookshelf and found a random book to pretend to read while she recovered.

  “Speaking of objectification…” Noah’s voice was challenging and startlingly close, coming just over her shoulder. Damn, the man stepped quietly. “I thought you didn’t read those.”

  “What?” She looked at the book she was holding. A Woman’s Education. “Oh.” Of all the books she could have picked up she managed to choose the most humiliating one possible—an erotic romance. Really?

  Except, she didn’t have to let this throw her. She was a big girl. She could pull up her big-girl panties and turn this around. “This is a romance? I hadn’t realized that’s what I’d picked up. The covers are so vague these days with equally vague author names to match, as if everyone who reads them is in hiding.” This one, written by N. Matthew, had a dark blue background with an ornate hand mirror. It told her nothing. How was anyone supposed to know what it was about?

  Noah stepped to her side where she could see him and leaned an arm on the shelf. “The vague covers make them less obvious. Some people are embarrassed to read them in public otherwise.”

  She shook her head and tsk’d
. “So everyone really is in hiding. That’s terrible. They should be embarrassing. They’re a detriment to the women’s movement. Its ideas perpetuated by books like this that set us back to the fifties.”

  He stared her down with disapproving eyes. “There you go with the judging again. Are you sure they’re detrimental?”

  She hated the disappointment that sat within his words. But wasn’t it equally disappointing that he was challenging her on this in the first place? She shot back in kind. “Have you read them?”

  “Have you?”

  “Of course not!” The idea made her squeamish much like looking at a Hustler magazine. She wasn’t a prude, but the current trend in romance novels and typical pornography both fell into a category of culture that showed women as subordinate and mere receptacles for a man’s use.

  “Then how do you know what they’re like?”

  “I…” Seriously? Everyone knew what they were like. Right? Because that’s what she’d been told from her women’s studies professors in college. Because that’s what every article in her Feminine Perspective periodical said. Because there was many a discussion at Total Equality Now meetings about the very subject.

  But all of those reasons were based on secondhand information, and she was smart enough to know that she shouldn’t simply adopt popular opinion without a bit of research.

  Well, she had an opportunity to research now. She flipped the book open to the middle and scanned a page. “Here,” she said, pointing a finger at a paragraph that instantly caught her eye. “Listen to this:

  I snake my arm around her waist and hug her to me, my pulsing cock pressing against her hip. “Can you feel that, chickadee? You do that to me. And because you are responsible, you’re going to take care of me now. On your knees.” I push her shoulder and she immediately drops to the ground. “Good girl,” I praise her. She’s a very good girl.

  Unwittingly, Jaylene skimmed the next couple of paragraphs that proceeded to describe a very graphic, very male-dominated blow job then shut the book, replacing it on the shelf with a huff, and not entirely out of disgust. In fact, she didn’t really feel any disgust at all. Which was odd. Especially because what she did feel was turned on. Which maybe wasn’t quite that odd because Noah was still standing in very close proximity to her. Too close, maybe, considering how hot her blood was now running beneath her skin. She took a hopefully unnoticeable step away.

  “So?” Noah asked.

  “It was…” She swallowed, gathering her thoughts. Concentrate on it critically. Remove emotion. “You heard it. It was demeaning.”

  She turned away from the shelf, away from his penetrating eyes—no, not penetrating, she did not want to think about penetration at the moment, especially not with Noah in the equation—and started walking back down the aisle, hoping that distancing herself from the object of discussion would also distance her from the discussion itself.

  Noah followed after her. “Demeaning how?”

  So the conversation was to continue then. She couldn’t entirely be upset about that. It was what she’d liked about Noah from the get-go. That he wasn’t afraid to debate a point, and God knew she loved a great debate.

  This particular debate, though, bristled her, and she didn’t for the life of her know why. She felt strongly enough about her side of the argument. So what was it then?

  “Demeaning how?” Noah repeated as he fell in step beside her.

  Oh, yes. He’d asked her that and she’d yet to answer. She let her mind go back to the words she’d read—the hot alpha hero and his simple sexy commands …

  No, not sexy. Sexist. “Good girl? Like she’s a dog?” She hoped her voice sounded disgusted instead of intrigued.

  Noah shook his head vehemently. “Not like she’s a dog. Like what she does pleases the narrator. Isn’t that what sex is about? Pleasing one another?”

  “Not at the disgrace of one of the parties.” They’d made their way to the shop’s doors now. Jaylene pressed through, noting that though he was on the wrong side of their dispute, at least he did not try to hold the door open for her. Another point in the Noah-is-awesome column. Too bad he was also finally collecting some points in the not-so-awesome column as well. Seemed it existed after all.

  He waited until they were outside and heading back toward Beacon Street before he started in again. “Why is it disgraceful to her? In that story, I mean. Because she wanted to please him? Because she willingly submitted to him in her sex life? That isn’t how people have to act in the real world, Jaylene. That’s the bedroom.” He was worked up, obviously passionate about his viewpoint. “Not all the rules apply.”

  Now that she could argue, and with solid conviction. She didn’t even need the comfort of hiding her eyes behind her dark sunglasses, though she wore them anyway. “But that’s exactly where they should apply. Otherwise husbands could still rape their wives simply because they’re married, and the only orgasms achieved would be by men.”

  Oh, God, please don’t let Noah be one of those orgasm hoarders—the men who still believed that the G-spot was nothing but a rumor.

  Noah waved his hand in the air dismissively. “Yes, yes, I’m not discounting any of that. There have been valid injustices done to women in and outside the bedroom, and they still occur around the world. I know. I get it. I support and admire those who fight to end that type of oppression. I even contribute to a women’s rights organization that works globally.”

  Jay smiled at that as she mentally ticked another mark in the pro-Noah column. With as equal-rights minded that he seemed, it was interesting, actually, how convicted he was on this one topic.

  He let out an audible stream of air. When he spoke again he was calmer. “But if it’s consensual … if a man and a woman agree that they enjoy dropping their usual culturally acceptable gender roles in favor of something they both find pleasing in their sexual relationship, they shouldn’t have to feel guilty about it or judged by people like you.”

  “Why is this so personal to you?” It wasn’t like he participated in the production of erotic romance novels. And he’d said outright that he didn’t read them.… She froze in her tracks and gasped as it hit her. “Oh, my God! You’re into that stuff, aren’t you?”

  He stopped a step ahead of her, turning back to say, “I’m not really a reader of—”

  She cut him off. “Not the reading. The sex. Dominant behavior. You like your partners submissive. I’m right, aren’t I?”

  He didn’t respond, which was in itself an answer.

  “I am right!” She practically clapped at her successful deduction. Okay, she did clap. But only once.

  Then …

  Oh, shit.

  The thrill of victory evaporated as she realized the deeper implications of her discovery—Noah was into dominant sex. The kind of sex that undermined all the female progression that had occurred in the last half century. The kind of sex that made a woman nothing more than a man’s servant. The kind of sex that she would never willingly participate in because as attractive and hot as much of it sounded, it went against her core values.

  And that meant that she and Noah could never have sex. And that was really very sad.

  She started walking again and he fell in with her. He was quiet and she appreciated that he was giving her time to process, but his lack of contribution only led her to think the worst.

  Maybe she didn’t have a precise enough picture. “So are you into all of it?” she asked. “The whips and chains and bondage and pain?”

  “I’m not a sadist,” he answered. “Or a masochist for that matter, though I like to deliver a nice spank now and then.”

  “Oh.” It was so barbaric. So why did the idea of being spanked by Noah make her panties slippery?

  “And I like tying up.”

  She shivered.

  “And blindfolds.”

  Her mouth went moist.

  “But mostly I just like to be in charge.”

  “Right. The boss.” Just like a
lot of the men in the patriarchal society she lived in. Like the men who earned higher wages than women for the same level of education and experience. Like the men who didn’t take no as no. Wait—wages—what if he did porn? Shit. She’d consider that one later.

  Right now, it didn’t matter if bossiness was the extent of Noah’s interests—it was enough to be wrong for her.

  He met her gaze full on, decidedly bumping up the intimacy of the conversation. “Look, dominance doesn’t have to be scary. We could…” He paused, likely realizing the assumption he’d made. “I mean, I could maybe try to tone it down. If it’s not what my partner is into.”

  It was sweet what he was offering—to put his own preferences aside in order for them to be together, but what good would that do? She’d sleep with him and then probably fall for him even harder and she’d get attached and maybe he’d get attached to her, too, all the while the friction of what he’d given up would gnaw and eat at him and eventually his resentment would destroy everything good between them. It was akin to building a relationship on a lie. It didn’t work to even attempt it.

  “Jaylene…” The ache in his voice said that he not only recognized her thought process but that he shared in her disappointment.

  “It’s fine,” she said. Though her eyes were a little watery now. Thank God for the sunglasses. Stupid, that she should feel like this over someone she hardly knew.

  Noah switched the buns bag to his outside hand and laced his now free fingers through hers. She let him. It was a good-bye of sorts. There could never be anything between them. Not anything more than this. Jay was well aware that compromise had to occur within relationships, but putting her feminist beliefs to bed, so to speak, wasn’t a compromise—it was a breach of integrity.

  Despite the warm day and the heat that ignited from the touch of his skin against hers—and yes, her hand was clammy—Jay felt the cold front of loneliness sneaking in. Perhaps this was why so many of her friends were single. Or lesbians. Because the men willing to accept them were few and far between.

  At the moment, she didn’t care if the man of her dreams was impossible to find. She was too distraught that the man wouldn’t be Noah. So stupid. She didn’t even know what he did for a living. The suspicion of porn flitted through her mind again, but she batted it away. It didn’t matter now.