by Hettie Ivers
I was willing prey.
His head bent. “Look closer,” he spoke in my ear. “See the gorgeous, brave woman I belong to.”
I’d steadfastly avoided looking too closely at myself in the mirror’s reflection, afraid of what naked, embarrassing inadequacies I’d find glaring back at me in the shadow of Alex’s aesthetic brilliance. When I forced my eyes to obey, the first thing I noticed was that my long, dark hair was completely wild—curly with dampness and disheveled beyond salvaging. Par for the course.
Then my eyes widened in the mirror at their own discovery: they were a bright, glowing, feral green! Not what I had expected. They were almost too foreign to look upon in my otherwise familiar face.
My vision skidded down to rest upon my nipples: two rosy, diamond-hard peaks, topping surprisingly well-formed breasts that didn’t look as small as I’d somehow always taken them to be. My hips were slight, but not without feminine curve, and particularly in contrast to my tapered waist. My legs were thin, but strong and muscled from years of swimming. I might never have a glamazon physique like Alessandra’s, but perhaps my body wasn’t so lacking after all.
Alex’s teeth nipped my earlobe, and my line of sight leapt upward again to where my lips had parted on a gasp. I noted those lips were red and swollen from kissing. And my face was glowing. I looked content. Happy. It occurred to me that I looked … really good. Sexy even.
’Course, it might’ve been due to the fact that I was straddling the supernatural manhood of the century. Then again, possibly … possibly I wasn’t just a clumsy schoolgirl outclassed and overshadowed by a dead-sexy Alpha werelock.
Woman. Alex had called me gorgeous and brave. He’d claimed to belong to me. I’d heard the pride in his voice as he’d said it. But it was his use of “woman” to describe me that gave me pause. My already flushed skin turned a shade darker as my eyes followed the path of his fingers stroking down my navel, traveling so near to the point where our bodies were joined.
Woman. No longer a girl. Realization dawned: I was a woman now.
“My woman,” he purred in my ear. “And yes, you look fucking phenomenal with me inside of you, as your willing prisoner,” he professed, playing with my nipples, gently stroking, then pinching them. I could feel the juices dripping out of me, coating his big shaft as he nibbled my ear. “You have no idea how sexy … how magnetic you are on every possible level …”
My pulse galloped with anticipation. I could feel it. Hear it.
“My woman,” he repeated, his baritone voice sweet as honey pouring over my senses. “And you will look even better with my canines in your throat and your pussy overflowing with my cum.”
My stomach somersaulted. My sex clenched.
“But first, please tell me, do I look like a human high school boy to you?” He raised one brow at me in the mirror. “Hmm?” he prompted, stroking the side of my throat cradled in his palm with his thumb.
I shook my head, my forehead creasing. He pressed a kiss to my temple, still holding my gaze in the mirror.
“Good. Because, you should know, I have every intention of fucking you like a singularly possessed animal.”
My lungs dropped into my lower belly.
“Yet at no point will it involve anything mindless.”
A wave of heat scorched every cell in my body. At the same time, my brain stalled as all of the blood in my system flooded my sex.
I sensed Alex’s wicked smirk before I even saw it in the mirror. “I am no human high school boy, Milena.” His throaty whisper was low and dangerous. “And I assure you, I don’t fuck like one. We clear?”
I jerked my head up and down once, the motion stilted.
He tilted his head askance, assessing me in the mirror. “Not scared of the big bad Alpha wolf in me, are you, princess?”
He was giving me one last out. I shook my head, swallowing against the dryness in my throat.
He grinned, his sharp canines making me all but melt into a pool of my own lust. He winked at me in the mirror, giving my breast one final, approving squeeze before releasing me, sending me forward to the mattress on all fours.
My she-wolf instantly rumbled to life and I arched my ass in the air, desperate to recapture the few inches of his shaft that had escaped me when I’d fallen forward. She wasn’t at all afraid of Alex’s wolf.
And neither was I. Least—not more than just a tiny bit.
Alex’s warm body folded overtop of mine, his fingers brushing the mass of hair from my shoulder so that he could scent and deliver affectionate kisses to the skin he’d exposed.
“Safe,” he promised. “Always. However”—he paused, letting his voice drop to the faintest of whispers, as if he were imparting a great secret, as the drag of his fingertips delivered chills of euphoria along my scalp—“facing a measure of fear can feel nice. Make us feel more alive inside than ever before. So this time, I will have full control.” His nose nuzzled my cheek a moment before he delivered a final kiss and withdrew, going back up onto his knees.
There was no tender searching this time. No fondling. Nothing playful whatsoever about the way he gripped and raised my hips, shoving himself fully inside of me until his thighs slammed up against the back of my own.
An involuntary cry of surprise burst from my lungs at the brute force of it.
He grunted his pleasure.
His warm palm soothed the length of my spine before fingers curled and locked around my shoulder—a nonverbal cue that was at once reassuring and commanding as he eased out slowly, letting me feel every stiff, unforgiving ridge of his manhood as it abandoned my gripping channel until only the blunt tip remained. He paused there. His other hand slid around my hipbone.
Deft fingers slipped between my split, puffy folds to touch me where I was tender, beyond eager—helpless to resist the burgeoning, pounding throb of my desire. And he proceeded to tease me with his fingers while I gushed and fluttered around his fat cockhead, until my mouth babbled senseless pleas and my body wordlessly begged for the fierce fucking I knew—hoped—he was preparing to deliver soon.
I mentally projected to him that I was ready, that I abso-fucking-lutely wasn’t scared.
At long last, he growled in some sort of twisted satisfaction. And then he gave. Gradually pushing forward until his balls pressed up against me where I was spread open and wet.
So wet.
I could’ve wept with gratitude as he filled me. Could’ve praised the Lord’s name when he finally began moving, steadily rocking back and forth, in and out, his pelvis circling, his hands rolling my hips up and down, his body breaking mine in with long, measured strokes in an even rhythm that signaled that he was still in control of himself. That I was still safe with him.
His fingers danced along my wet slit, circled my hard nub, wringing pleas of “harder” and “faster” and “more”—always, always “more”—from my lips until he was fucking me with a ferocity that bordered on punishing.
I bore it with relish, my she-wolf reeling in ecstasy.
He egged me on, daring me to take more, to accept all he had to give, taunting me with well-timed, gentle slaps against my engorged clit until I screamed and clawed at the bedspread, wanting to come so badly it was agonizing.
His feral grunts joined my ongoing cries of veneration as he drove in and out, ramming his length up inside of its new home, his pulsing shaft feeling as if it were somehow becoming impossibly thicker and harder with each thrust—as if it were expanding with life within me.
I felt so stretched. My insides contracted and burned as my body worked to make room—to accept all of him. My sweaty fingers clung to the coverlet bunched beneath my palms. I wasn’t sure how much longer my trembling arm muscles would hold me up. The bedframe shook and creaked.
As deliciously decadent as the intense waves of gratification felt rolling through me, it was also alarming, because I couldn’t understand why they weren’t peaking—why I hadn’t reached orgasm another four or five times already.
Then I remembered what Alex had said, and it occurred to me that he was preventing it, controlling my body’s response and holding off my orgasm. I was soon cursing him in my frustration, which earned a panted chuckle from the devil behind me.
“Wherever did my sweet princess learn such terrible words?”
I begged and bartered with him, uttering phrases that made no sense strung together, forging imaginary deals with him that held no merit, before reverting to cursing him again.
“Are those Portuguese swear words you’re attempting to pronounce? Such a dirty mouth …”
I threw every bad word that I knew at him then.
He growled and yanked me back up against his hard body. With an arm locked diagonally across my chest, and his other hand cupping me firmly by my sex, he proceeded to move me up and down, my knees lifting off of the mattress as he raised me up the length of his big pole, only to bounce and tease me on the fat tip, before jerking me down, hard, balls-deep once more.
I cursed, pleaded, and bargained some more with him as he continued to fuck me this way, playing with my exhausted body, tormenting my poor swollen clit with his evil fingers.
I loved it. I hated it. Loved it.
I held on and braved Alex’s worst. My arms stretched up and behind me to clutch fistfuls of his silky hair, conveying my agony by digging my nails into his scalp and yanking at his roots.
Arousing me further was how fiercely turned on I knew Alex was becoming with each passing second of his little torture game. I knew he was having the time of his life—could tell by the way he grunted and growled, the way his hands grew rougher as they mauled my body, squeezing and molding my flesh to his. I knew the words he snarled in Portuguese had to be filthy. Scandalous.
And I loved it.
He demanded to know if I felt alive inside yet, and briefly I thought about clawing his face off for such an obnoxious question. But I shouted, “Yes!” nonetheless, hoping the answer would finally gain me my hard-earned completion. He reminded me that this was what he’d promised when he’d called me from my coma, and that he was keeping his word.
I remembered it then. Remembered him calling me from this very bedroom in my mind, his voice cutting through the whispers of the ghosts of my past as he’d promised to give me something real—promised to keep me warm and safe and to make me feel more alive inside than I’d ever dreamed of.
I wanted to roll my eyes. I wanted to sob my appreciation. The man was cruel. He was also glorious. Darkly twisted; at once evil and benevolent. And I was crazy for him.
“Offer your throat.” His fingers slapped between my spread thighs, making me cry out.
Raising my chin, I gathered my wild mass of hair at the top of my head in my hands, exposing my neck to Alex. Meeting his hot gaze in the mirror, I let my body go, relaxing my muscles as much as was superhumanly possible in my present state, and tilted my head to the side, demanding that he make good. Begging him to make good. He did.
And holy fuck was it good.
His mouth descended at inhuman speed, teeth clamping down onto my throat without preamble, and it was as if a switch was flipped inside of me. I barely felt the sting of his canines as I came hard without warning—with a blinding savagery I was unprepared for as Alex forced me up and down his cock at a pace so violently fast it should’ve been wrong that it felt so right.
It was a testament to how obscenely wet I was that he was able to slide me up and down so rapidly, so effortlessly, my aching breasts bouncing and jerking with the force of his thrusts.
I screamed as I spasmed around him, squeezing hard, milking him for everything he had as I felt the first burst of his hot cum deep inside of me. It was startling, as I’d not expected I’d actually be able to feel him coming inside of me.
And the full knowledge and weight of what I’d just done—violating the number one rule of every sex education class and lecture about sex that my mother had ever drilled into me—slammed through my lust-filled brain like a sledgehammer.
It should have sobered me, as the product of a single mom. But instead, somehow it turned my deviant mind on even more—knowing I’d done the absolute unthinkable. The forbidden.
Or maybe it was simply the fact that the sensation of Alex unloading himself inside of me was so hot, so primal and arousing, that I began coming all over again.
And he kept releasing, kept unloading until, true to his word, I could feel him overflowing from me. I came until I collapsed.
I was semi-lucid as he ran a warm, damp cloth between my thighs. I only knew that at some point he’d tucked us both into my bed, with my body nestled securely against his, because I remembered the way he softly kissed me goodnight before quietly murmuring to me in Portuguese.
As I nodded off, thoughts of my mother flitted through my semi-consciousness. Had she been watching me from beyond, I knew she wouldn’t have approved of most of the decisions I’d made in the past week. Still, somehow I sensed she’d have understood and forgiven this one.
Because I was happy. Even if it didn’t last. Even if everything she’d warned me about proved true. I knew she would’ve understood.
And I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d ever felt like this herself, ever known someone during her lifetime who had made her feel this alive inside. I had never thought to ask her such a question. It made me a little regretful now that I would never know the answer.
CHAPTER FOUR
I awoke to the smell of fresh coffee, eggs, and bacon, and to the sound of rich, feminine laughter ringing through the house from the kitchen downstairs. I recognized it as a laugh I’d known for most of my life—one of my favorite sounds ever.
My eyes flew wide and I shot upright in bed. Bethany!
I barely stopped myself from racing downstairs buck-naked in my excitement. As I pulled on a pair of sweats and a tee, I heard Alex’s deep rumble of laughter joining in. Omigod. Omigod.
What on earth could they be laughing about? What had Alex told her? More importantly, what had he done to her while I’d been sleeping? Had he threatened her? Invaded her mind?
Why hadn’t either of them awakened me?
I nearly tripped and fell down the stairs in my haste to get to the kitchen to see what was going on and to protect my best friend from my overly suspicious, overly opinionated, overbearing …
Alex.
It hit me that I didn’t know what to call him. After everything that had happened between us the night before, my mind still stumbled over the appropriate label for him in my life. And there was no time to figure that out now.
Having no idea what to expect, and having prepared myself for anything, I was still astounded by the scene that confronted me as I bounded into the kitchen. Alex and Bethany were seated next to one another at my kitchen table, surrounded by stacks of yearbooks, family photo albums, and scrapbooks, idly sipping coffee and chatting as they poured through the entire compilation of photographic evidence of my life.
“Princess!” Alex greeted at the exact same moment Bethany chirped, “Milano!”
My own voice failed me.
“Milano?” Alex scrunched his face up and turned disapproving eyes on my best friend.
“Princess?” Bethany narrowed her eyes at Alex in return.
Awesome.
“Eww, Alex,” she whined. “That’s sexist and condescending, not to mention uber-cheesy.”
“Milano?” Alex balked. “What the hell kind of nickname for my girlfriend is that?”
I was his girlfriend?
“Like the cookie,” Bethany explained, not even a trace of surprise altering her features at the girlfriend label.
He’d just called me his girlfriend! To Bethany, no less.<
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“The Pepperidge Farm cookie,” she clarified with a “duh!” eye-roll when his scowl didn’t falter.
“I am familiar with the cookie,” Alex snapped. “It’s dumb and insulting to liken my Milena to a cheap cookie.”
Oh, good grief!
To her credit, Bethany snorted with amusement and elbowed Alex in the bicep, utterly unfazed by his abruptly sour demeanor. “It was my favorite cookie when I was four, the same year I met Milena,” she relayed with a flip of her long blond hair. “In fact, I thought her name was Milano our entire kindergarten year together. Milena was super-shy, and she never corrected me until first grade. When I asked her why she hadn’t said something sooner, she said she loved Milano cookies, too, and that she liked that I called her Milano. She said I could keep calling her Milano if I wanted to.”
“My baby was shy?” Alex made his sister Lessa’s classic “aw” face.
Wow. This scene couldn’t get any more weird.
“Okay,” Alex determined. “You may continue to use the cookie nickname. For now.”
“Oh, may I?” Bethany mocked. “For now,” she mimicked his deep voice and supercilious tone. “For serious, dude? Baby on top of princess? You and I are so gonna go to blows, Senhor Sexy Pants,” she announced with a laugh.
My hand flew to my mouth. Senhor Sexy Pants? Really, Bethany? Even if she didn’t know who and what Alex was or what he was capable of, surely on some small level she could at least sense his Alpha energy, couldn’t she? Some small hint of the tremendous power and danger that radiated from him?
To my shock, far from being irritated or angered by her disrespectful nickname for him and her complete disregard for any authority he might wield, Alex joined in, and I watched in dumbfounded silence as they both laughed like they were old pals.
Had he drugged her? And she him? Bethany had never liked any of the guys that I’d liked before.
Super. Alex had managed to completely win over my best friend while I’d been sleeping.