by Hettie Ivers
“You bought the McMurrays’ house at a premium? Oh, my God, they’ve lived in that old house forever!” And done nothing during that entire time to maintain it. “Why would you do that?”
He regarded me as if I were batty. “Because you persist in saying you want to live in Santa Cruz. You literally just said it again not a moment ago.”
“Yes, but Alex, you can’t just do that,” I tried to reason the obvious. “You can’t just buy a home that’s not for sale because it’s next door to mine.”
He seemed perplexed. “Obviously, I can. I’ve done it. I also bought your neighbor’s house on the opposite side. By tomorrow I’ll have closed on the one directly across the street.”
“So wha—what then?” I sputtered. “You’re just going to buy out every one of my neighbors and relocate your pack to Santa Cruz? Alex, that’s … that’s stalker behavior is what that is.”
“No, it’s not. I’ve no intention of creeping around or lurking in the shadows spying on you, Milena. I’m telling you outright here and now that I plan to move with you back to Santa Cruz. It just so happens I travel with a bit of an entourage.” He waved an airy hand, before finishing under his breath, “Who will occupy your neighborhood with me and keep watch over you at all times.”
“But that’s exactly stalker behavior! Have you even visited Santa Cruz before? How do you know you’ll even like it there? You can’t just move somewhere for someone you’ve just met. You barely know me!”
“Milena …” He raised his free palm in silent warning, and in the dimly lit cellar the gentle smile that curled his lips somehow managed to make him look even more forbidding as he reminded me, “you tried to make that point once already this evening. As I recall, you failed miserably the first time. Let’s not attempt two for two, as I’ve a mind to do a lot more than finger fuck and spank some sense into you right now.” His eyes raked my form in a manner that both aroused and terrified me.
Perhaps Alessandra was right and Alex was more unpredictable and dangerous than ever in his present state of mind? I stole a step backward, and then another, angling my body in the direction of the steep, uneven staircase I’d descended from.
“I’m sorry. Maybe I … I should go? Sorry …”
His head cocked to the side. Like a wolf sizing up its prey.
“Why so apologetic, princess?”
“No reason.” I snuck another step toward the staircase.
“Why so nervous? Am I making your nervous?”
“No.”
“You know better than to lie to me.”
“S-sorry—”
“And you know better than to try and flee from me.”
Fuck. He was using his scary calm voice. It was anything but soothing. If only I’d listened to Alessandra, I could be safe under a blanket, eating cookies and watching episodes of Avenida Brasil with Lupe. Instead, I was in a spooky wine dungeon—facing off with Alex’s more sinister side.
“I’m … not. I know … I’m sorry …”
“I’d never hurt you, Milena.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Sure ’bout that?”
I gulped air into my lungs and nodded resolutely. “Yes.”
“Would you care for a drink?” he offered.
“No, thanks.”
“But you’ll have one. Won’t you?”
“Okay … s-sure.”
“Sit.” His eyes motioned to the wine barrel he’d recently vacated. “Your fidgeting is making my wolf anxious.”
I began to apologize, but stopped myself when Alex cast a baleful look over his shoulder at me as he turned to procure my beverage. Cautiously, I idled back over and took a seat on the wine barrel, as instructed.
Watching the smooth, large muscles flex and ripple across Alex’s broad back and shoulders as he poured me a glass of DRC pinot noir somehow did very little to calm my nerves. And when he finally extended a full glass of red wine to me in offering, I could only stare blankly at it.
“Um … I don’t suppose you have any club soda down here?”
“No.”
“Maybe I could just run upstairs to the kitchen—”
“Not with this wine.”
“Okay.” I accepted the glass from his outstretched hand without further argument. I took a brave swig of the sour, fermented drink, but couldn’t avoid pulling a disgusted face in spite of my best effort.
“That is so awful,” I said, holding it back out to him.
He appeared mystified by my response. Which made no sense, since I was certain my reactions to wine remained consistent. “That wine is fifty years older than you are,” he told me, as if that fact alone might sell me on the awful taste of it.
“And that’s supposed to entice me to drink it?”
“Mm … Allow me to help you?” He set his own wine down behind him on the table before stepping forward so that he was directly in front of me, his sheer size dwarfing me from my seated position atop the barrel.
His cut abdominals stared me squarely in the face, yet somehow my eyes were immediately drawn downward, along with my nose, to the waistband of his shorts, where the scent of his supreme maleness taunted my inner wolf.
A firm hand engulfed my own around my wineglass as the long, nimble fingers of his opposite hand gently held the side of my face and chin. I’d become instantly hot all over—effortlessly aroused merely from his proximity and smell, so the touch of his fingers on my face and hand were more than enough to set my vaginal walls aflutter with excitement as he guided my nose down to the rim of my glass and advised me to inhale.
“Deeply,” he coached in that rich baritone voice that brooked no refusal. “All the way into your lower belly. Good. Again. And now, again … slower … yes … now hold it. Good. Once more … deep and slow. Just like that … yes …”
I was too overwhelmed and befuddled to question or dispute his directives, and so I sat frozen in place with Alex’s groin inches below my face, his fingers caressing my cheek as I breathed deeply enough to capture the fragrance of seriously old grapes mingled with the faint scent of wood and earth, melded with the musk of fresh arousal—both Alex’s and my own—until the combined aroma grew so potent I swore I could taste it on my tongue.
Until I was so captivated by it I wanted to taste it on my tongue.
I didn’t object when eventually Alex tilted my face up and brought the glass to my lips. As our eyes met, he told me to sip. I did. And I held the small sip in my mouth, drowning in the abyss of his black irises above, delighting in the sensation of his fingertips stroking my jawline, as I savored the flavor of the wine on my tongue, just the way he’d instructed me to.
“Now swallow.”
I swallowed. And I didn’t pull a face.
“Better?” he asked, his thumb rubbing traces of wine into my bottom lip.
I allowed Alex to tip the wine glass to my lips several more times, until it was half empty and my head was buzzing, my body sizzling.
I was at once so deliciously relaxed, and yet aflame with desire, that by the time Alex stepped away from me and rather stoically inquired, “Why are you here?” I was helpless to conceal my disappointment at what I took for his imminent dismissal.
“I don’t want to go now,” I all but pouted.
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“But you want me to?”
“I want a lot of things, Milena. Let’s start with what you want and why you’re here—in a dark, scary cellar deep in the bowels of the earth, drinking wine with the very monster you were warned to stay away from for the remainder of the night.”
I bit my lip and tasted wine. And Alex. “I don’t know.”
“You’re a pitiful liar.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Is it possible you have another burning question for me about impending real estate transactions or the like that couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”
“Um … sort of?”
&n
bsp; “Ask.”
Oh, hell, none of my remaining questions were easy ones. He’d retrieved his own glass of super old wine and was casually leaning with a hand upon the table while imbibing and waiting for me to speak. I knew I should ask about the meeting with Raul and Gabriel, but there was another nagging question at the forefront of my mind.
“Alessandra said that you … ah … that you … knew Kai’s mate, Maribel. Before she was Kai’s mate?”
“Yes. I did. Is that the entire question?”
“No.”
“Proceed.”
“Were you … close?”
He pursed his lips. “Are you asking if I knew Maribel … in a biblical sense?”
“I … yes. Did you?”
“I did.”
“Like … a lot?”
His lips twitched faintly. “Yes.”
“I meant, did you like it?” I wanted to slap myself. “I mean … did she?” I turned two shades of idiot red. “I mean … did you like … err … love her? Did you love her?” I finally force-spat the words out.
He was thoughtful a moment, kinder eyes studying me before answering, “Yes. Very much.”
I nodded like a bobblehead and focused on breathing in and out through the pain suddenly crushing my chest. In and out.
Fuck, that hurt. In and out.
When breathing brought neither the relief nor the fortitude I’d hoped for, I guzzled the rest of my wine, then blurted, “So that’s why you hate Kai? For taking Maribel away from you?”
“I don’t hate Kai.”
“You don’t hate him for taking Maribel away from you?”
“He didn’t take Maribel from me. Maribel and I had already parted ways romantically before she and Kai met.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.”
Huh. Well, that was … better. Maybe? “What was she like?”
He shrugged, a sad, nostalgic smile slowly forming on his face. “I suppose she was virtually perfect in every way, really.”
Oh, for the love of God! Seriously? This was so much worse than hearing it from his sister!
“Was … was she very beautiful?” I needed to just stop.
“Exceptionally.”
Fuck. I should’ve stopped. “Smart?”
“Beyond. Most classified her as genius.”
Goddamnit!
“More wine?”
“No, thank you.”
“Humor me?” he appealed. “You’re going to need it.”
“Why?”
He didn’t deign to answer as he pried the empty glass from my bloodless fingers.
“How did she die?” Clearly the wine had loosened my tongue, and obliterated any remnants of tact I’d ever possessed.
Alex’s back was slightly turned to me as he refilled my wine, so when he didn’t answer, I repeated the question, well beyond the point of caring about being considered insensitive or gauche in my quest for intel on the mythically perfect Maribel. But even after he’d returned to me with a fresh glass of pinot, he still hadn’t acknowledged my query, prompting me to press, “Old age?”
“Ask a different question.”
“Was it an accident?”
“No.”
“Is it a secret?” I was being awful, but I felt powerless to stop my string of heartless word vomit where Maribel was concerned.
“Milena …” His tone held a clear warning for me to drop the topic.
“Is it an unresolved incident? Or … or is it just that you … don’t like to talk about it?” Because you’re still in love with her?
“She died defending her Alpha.”
Oh. And there it was. I was a terrible person.
“When you say Alpha, do you mean—?”
He nodded. Just once.
I was officially a bitch. And not merely because I’d been envying and thinking ill of a dead woman, but because now that she’d been proven a veritable saint, I liked her memory even less.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, feeling like a jackass. Again, he simply nodded.
We sipped our wine in silence for a spell after that, and I grew increasingly uncomfortable as I pretended to analyze what I could see of the dirt floor in Alex’s dark, dank, underground wine tomb. Apparently, discomfort plus undiluted, really old wine made me ballsy as hell.
“Do you wish you’d never laid eyes on me?”
When he scowled in reaction, I nearly recoiled physically from the harshness of it. “Why would you ask that?”
“Well, umm … because you look pretty miserable right now. And I don’t … don’t think my presence here has been all that good for you. And let’s face it, you weren’t exactly thrilled the first time you saw me,” I pointed out with no small measure of sarcasm. Or resentment.
“Not true, Milena. It’s complicated. And my feelings at the time were … complicated.”
Complicated. Right. “You were disappointed, weren’t you?”
He ran agitated fingers through his short hair.
“That’s a yes!” I charged, leveling my wine glass and pointer finger at him in accusation.
“Fuck, Milena—”
“You were! Because I was nothing spectacular, nothing exceptional—”
“You don’t understand—”
“Because you were always hoping your mate would be someone extraordinary, weren’t you? Someone perfect like Maribel—”
“Fuck! You were nothing like anything I was expecting you to be, okay?” I was sure the earth had shaken beneath my wine barrel seat at his thinly suppressed rage.
But I was angry, too. Hurt. Most of all I was afraid that I was about to lose something I’d never wanted in the first place. So somehow I decided it was as good a time as any to insert my foot in my mouth all the way by asking my most difficult burning question yet. “And were you expecting me that night?”
His eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Did you send Felix and his men to get me?”
His nostrils flared. “What the bloody hell are you talking about?”
Shit. It hurt having him look at me like that. I focused on breathing—in and out. In and out. There was no stopping or retracting it now.
“Was Felix operating under your orders to kidnap me?” I didn’t pause or mince words, just expelled them all in a rush of fading oxygen and swiftly failing nerve. But then I followed it up with a markedly more timid and apologetic, “I just … I really need to know the truth, Alex.”
The silence that followed was deafening as I watched so many layers of anger and hurt roiling in his eyes. I wanted to look away. I wanted to apologize. I wanted to turn back time and never have asked it. Because the answer was clear. The truth was there in his eyes. He didn’t need to say a thing. But he did.
“Go. Get out.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
His words were soft, delivered with a distinct breadth of calm that was beyond petrifying. I found that I couldn’t move.
“Now,” he added, his tone still eerily placid.
I didn’t move.
“Please don’t make me remove you, Milena.”
Finally, I found the wherewithal to slide from the barrel onto my trembling legs. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to my bare feet rooted to the cold, damp earth. “I didn’t … really think you had … I just … I had to ask it. To be certain. Can you please try and understand that? I’m sorry.”
“I understand. Please understand that I need to be alone right now.”
I nodded, but didn’t move; didn’t look up from my feet. I didn’t want to go—even though I was scared of what might happen if I stayed.
“Tell me, how long have you been wondering that? About Felix?”
His question caught me off guard, and in my excitement at the prospect that he might actually be willing to engage with me again, rather than simply demand I leave, I answered quickly and truthfully, “Since two days ago.”
“Ah,” he exhaled. “How interesting. Well, then, the next time your brother gets past Al’s u
seless shield and manages to rattle and upset you to the point of inconsolable bawling with his web of deceit and relentless emotional manipulation, perhaps you should seek comfort from someone who you are absolutely certain never sent ruthless criminals to kidnap you.”
My eyes went wide as I raised them to Alex’s.
“Really?” His brow arched at my shocked countenance. “I realize you don’t think much of me, but surely you knew I was capable of adding two plus two and drawing obvious conclusions when you came running to me in the middle of the night, professing to have had a nightmare and sobbing your heart out over how you couldn’t give up on your brother, regardless of how much he’d changed?”
“I … it was …” I winced. My heart felt like it had been wounded. And the worst part was I couldn’t tell anymore if the injury originated from my pain or Alex’s. “I’m so sorry—”
“I believe we’ve both apologized enough for one night.” He forced a strained smile that almost managed to look amiable. “Please, just go upstairs? I’ll send Lessa to take you back to Al’s house.”
“But I just—”
“Milena, we can hash this out another time, all right?”
I managed ten sluggish steps in the direction of the staircase before I realized I was still holding my wine glass. I stopped and turned. Alex’s back was to me, and he appeared to be engrossed in the task of searching through the labels on the many densely stacked, tall shelves of racked wine bottles.
“Yes?” he finally grated in annoyance, not bothering to turn around.
“Um … I still have my wine glass.” I held the nearly empty stemware up as evidence, even though he persisted in giving me his back. “Should … should I leave it down here? Or take it upstairs to the—”
The glass vanished from my grip before I’d finished my question. Just. Vanished. Alex never turned around or addressed me. He kept exploring the shelves—disregarding my presence.
I didn’t like it. Not one bit. To hell with caution.
“What?” he finally erupted again when another whole minute had gone by and I still hadn’t moved a muscle. “What is it now? Why are you still here?”