Red Hot Alphas: 11 Novels of Sexy, Bad Boy, Alpha Males (Red Hot Boxed Sets Book 2)

by Jo Raven

  But Tryp had never lusted after her virginity. He didn’t want to hurt her, and she fell in love with him all over again.

  Tryp whispered against her ear, “Now, you’re mine. Now you can’t leave me.”

  She held him, wrapped her whole body around him. “I’ve been telling you for months that I won’t.”

  He swung her legs around and carried her into the bedroom, still kissing her. She held his cheeks in her hands, kissing him. He swiveled her somehow and ended up lying on top of her without letting her go, and she held herself tight to him, pressing her stomach and breasts up against him.

  Her body ached for him. Her body knew that she had been denying herself something, something important, and she hungered to touch him and his skin.

  As Tryp hovered above her, his wide shoulders and strong arms blotted out the light from the lamps, but she could breathe through it this time. She’d come out of the fire stronger, forged like steel.

  Tryp broke off the kiss and grabbed her throat with his mouth, gently raking his sharp teeth over her pulse, sending shivers through her.

  She had kind of thought that their first time might be gentle and sweet, but he was acting like he was starving for her, and his ragged breath on her throat and his hands grasping her flesh made her heart pound and her blood rush.

  “You might have to go slow,” she said, breathless and arching against him, so desperate.

  “I’ve been thinking about how to do this for months,” he growled.

  “You said that you wouldn’t do it, before.”

  “Didn’t stop me from thinking about it, and I’ve thought about it a lot.”

  Breaking

  It felt like rage.

  The violence in Tryp’s body swirled like blind rage as he fought not to rip that white silk off of Elfie and dive into her. He had been holding himself back for months because he didn’t want to hurt her, because even the thought of hurting her made him twist with illness, but she wanted him. She had said so. He was driven to attack her and horrified by how she would be hurt by it.

  He couldn’t figure out how to get the white dress off of her. Something woven ran up the back of it, and he pushed himself away from her pliant body with his arms. She arched as he lifted off her, wanting to touch him as much as he wanted her.

  Tryp had already peeled off his suit coat and shoes in the living room, dropping them on the floor, and now he reared up above her, loosening his tie and his shirt collar and grabbing fistfuls of fabric to take all that and his undershirt off over his head. She watched him, her cornflower blue eyes raking his skin and the vibrant tattoos he wore, bright with the desire that coursed through him, too.

  He crawled on top of her again, and she reached for him, her nails scratching his bare shoulders so slightly but it felt like stripes of pleasure already. He kissed her again, invading her mouth with his tongue, and as much as he wanted to make her come during her first time, to play her body to a crescendo like he played a delicate melody on the piano, he wanted to be inside her. He wanted to penetrate every aspect of her and possess her until she cried out his name and became his, only his.

  He backed off and reached around her, flipping her over. She gasped when she landed on her stomach, and he was on her again, wrapping her long, silken hair around his hand to control it, just her hair, even though far more interesting possibilities presented themselves. He breathed on the back of her neck, and she reared up like flames. Perfume—something flowery with vanilla and the delicate scent of woman underneath—filled his nose as her skin neared him. When she reached his mouth, he nipped her shoulder. Her soft whimper made his fists tighten in her hair and on the bedspread beside her arm.

  Ivory ribbons were braided down the back of her dress, and he sat up to pull the bow at the small of her back. Oh, man. He wanted to unlace the whole thing and tie her up with it and make her come until she screamed. He had been thinking about this far too much, usually when he was taking himself in hand to get rid of the pent-up frustration of having a beautiful woman whom he loved in his bed and yet not allowing himself to have her.

  The creamy ribbons took an eternity to slide out of the golden loops. The designer must have been a sadist who hated men. Tryp grabbed the straps over her arms and pulled the whole thing down and off her feet.

  Under the dress, Elfie was wearing a gilded teddy thing with white garters and stockings, and she still had those tall fuck-me heels on. Tryp almost wept because holding himself back was making his whole body quake, and now this. Why couldn’t she have been wearing something lumpy and cotton?

  Elfie looked back over her shoulder at him, her golden hair draping across her smooth skin, and she smiled.

  Tryp broke.

  He backed off the end of the bed, unbuckling his belt and nearly ripping the suit pants in his frenzy to get his clothes off of him. Her body and her scent called him. She was a fire goddess and he was a mere mortal and helpless to resist her.

  Tryp scrambled back onto the bed, clawing at the sheets, desperate for her and yet shouting within his mind not to hurt her. Of all the dozens of ways he had imagined this night, all had been a kind and loving initiation, not this roaring need to brand her as his.

  He was on her, his bare chest and abs and thighs against the thin fabric of the sexy thing, and he nudged her soft thigh, already so hard that his skin was tight. She moaned and pressed back, her tender ass rubbing his dick and the skin on his pelvis.

  She must have no idea what she was doing to him. She must have no idea that the fire for her was consuming him.

  Tryp reached between her legs, intending just to shove the panel there aside, but he found hooks, like bra hooks, and he knew what to do with those. One flick, and she was bare to him. He ran one finger down her center, already so wet, and she moaned. Her thigh quivered under his hand on her bare hip between the lace of her corset thing and her stockings. He stroked her, finding the bump of her clit and running slick circles around it, then tracing languid loops down to her core, dipping his fingertip in, and then circling again, until she started rocking back against his hand, and he slipped in farther, and her tightness around just his finger hitched his breath in his chest.

  He had always been so careful when he satisfied her, but with her hips in the air and her legs spread open, her whole core was exposed to him. Her inner folds were fused at the top.

  If he took her here, like this, it would just be another hard fuck from the dirty rocker, and he didn’t want to be that with her, not with Elfie, yet he couldn’t stop.

  He shoved her hips aside and grabbed her thin arms, flipping her onto her back. She stared at him, her eyes glazed with passion, her lips parted, like she wasn’t sure what was happening to her. She was so pliant, her breath coming in little gasps, that Tryp hated himself. He pulled at the gold lingerie, stripping if off her soft skin. Shoving a knee between her thighs, he held her hands down on the mattress so she couldn’t leave him. Her wedding ring stung his palm. When he kissed her again, deep, their tongues tangling, he let the head of his shaft just rub her, sliding on her wet folds.

  Her fingers curled around his hands, and she arched under him.

  He let go of one of her hands, and she grabbed the back of his neck, holding them together. He reached down between their bodies, sliding his fingers over her clit again, driving her higher while he rested just at her entrance, barely applying pressure, not slipping inside her yet.

  He reached for the nightstand, but she grabbed his arm back. “No.”

  “Condom,” he said, his voice low in his throat and thick with hunger for her.

  “Not the first time. Please. I want to feel you.”

  Tryp was already shaking, but that dug deep into him. Skin to skin, body to body, soul to soul, he had never done it before. With Lynda, a condom had broken.

  He might make Elfie pregnant with his child.

  His body tried to lunge forward, to push himself inside her at that moment, but he coiled back, shaking.

&
nbsp; He stroked Elfie again, his hand trembling with holding back, pressing harder on her clit.

  Her eyes unfocused, feeling his fingers, and her eyelashes fluttered. Elfie’s moan with the catch in her throat shot straight to his groin, and her core pulsed like a mouth sucking on the tip of him.

  Tryp began to push inside her, slowly, still holding himself back and barely clinging to that control, as her heat pulsed around him.

  Her thin membranes parted, their slight resistance almost imperceptible as he stretched her open. Elfie’s eyelids fluttered, and her blue eyes opened.

  Her cry, “Tryfon!” tore at his heart as she grabbed him around his neck, holding him to her.

  He let go of her other hand and wrapped her in his arms, holding her, his face beside hers and pressing their cheeks together, and he didn’t move. Every muscle in his body clenched, wanting to drive into her tightness and heat, but he held himself back.

  Her hips lifted against him, and he pressed into her farther, nearly halfway in now. Her ragged breath in his ear shook him.

  He whispered, “I love you,” even though he wanted to growl You’re mine, mine, mine.

  He pushed farther into her, his whole length inside her, and he moved slowly at first, but he didn’t try to last. He couldn’t have prolonged it if he had wanted to. Her body was so tight around him, those untried muscles clenched on him, skin sliding on skin, that he was on the brink and then he gasped, cradling her in his arms as he lunged into her, unable to hold back anymore as he came deep inside her.

  She was trembling like her core would shake apart, and he wanted to whisper to her, tell her that it was okay, that she would stop shaking in a moment, that he loved her, but his throat clenched so tight that he could barely breathe.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and said all those things to him, that it was okay, that he would stop shaking in a minute, and that she loved him.

  Elfie may have been the virgin, but Tryp was broken open.

  Tiger Bait

  Elfie had never been to Las Vegas before, not as a tourist. She had worked three Killer Valentine concerts there over the two years while the band had risen, so she knew the tunnels, parking garages, flyspace, and the sound and lighting systems of one small bottle-thrower club, a hot-new-act casino venue with a capacity around a thousand, and the MGM Grand Garden Arena last month.

  Seeing it as a guest was entirely different, yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that thousands of people were working their asses off to create this experience and she wasn’t appreciating it enough.

  Tryp was being really weird. Elfie had never really been coddled in her life, but she suspected that coddling was what was happening to her.

  She awoke every morning to Tryp curled around her or holding her hand in his sleep, but after she got out of the shower, the concierge was delivering tickets to something or another or a couple of things, every day.

  Saturday afternoon, Tryp removed all his earrings and wore a baseball hat and a long-sleeved shirt, and they roved the white tiger zoo at the Mirage.

  Beside them, a man was holding a chubby little girl-baby, maybe a year old, a pink bow taped to her bald head, and pointing a tiger out to her. The little girl’s hazel eyes, already baby-huge, had widened as something instinctive in her recognized a predator. She didn’t move in her daddy’s arms, like a bunny frozen in a hawk’s shadow.

  The tiger’s deep golden eyes were trained on the girl through the inch-thick glass, and Elfie could almost see it thinking, Like a human, but bite-sized. Hunger radiated off the big cat, and the end of its tail twitched.

  She turned to Tryp to point out the predator-prey dynamic, but he was staring at the baby girl with nearly the same expression in his dark eyes as the tiger had: want.

  Elfie watched him slowly drag his eyes away from the child and smile at her as if nothing had happened.

  They were lying in bed Sunday morning, watching the news and surfing on Tryp’s laptop, when the first one-star reviews began appearing on “Set Me on the Open Road.” They said terrible, disgusting things, calling Tryp a hypocrite and a liar.

  Tryp called Jonas, who didn’t answer, and so he called Jonas’s office. They were on it, they said. They were prepared for this game of one-star Whack-A-Mole.

  He was quiet after that, and Elfie snuggled up to his back. “Tell me.”

  Tryp said, “I keep thinking about people I knew, especially the boys I knew, who must be out there somewhere. Teancum said that a friend of mine, Cory, was set out a while after I was. I don’t know where he is.”

  “I keep thinking about the handmaidens. It’s been making me feel sick.”

  “We’ve got to do something about it.”

  “Like what? Go back and burn it all down?” Elfie asked.

  “The Feds are going to raid. They’re going to have to. We need to have something set up, a halfway house or something, for when it happens. We can take care of them.”

  “I love you, you know.”

  He stroked her hand. “Xan has people. He knows how to get this kind of stuff done. I’ll ask him how, but we’ve got to get it done soon.”

  “We will.”

  Tryp made love to her slowly, carefully, every night, as if trying to prove to her or himself that he could be gentle. Over the next few nights, her body began to adjust to him, as if she learned how to open herself to him. His murmured encouragement warmed her heart as he coached her, as every night she moved more with him, until one night everything in her sparked and caught fire and she felt him rubbing inside her as she came harder and deeper than ever before.

  On Monday, their honeymoon was over, and they flew to meet the tour in Miami and own up to having eloped.

  Backstage

  After the show that night, the audience had almost finished clearing the arena, which meant that the technicians were twenty minutes into their tear-down after the concert. The Miami venue had proper backstage facilities, so the musos didn’t have to pull a runner after the show, so they were all happy.

  Elfie kind of felt bad about counting Tryp among “the musos.”

  Kind of.

  She was unpacking the spent gerb casings from the tubes bolted into the stage, gray ash dusting her fingertips, when she heard them arguing in the wings.

  Tryp shouted, “It’s my fucking life, and I’m glad I married her! She’s everything I’ve ever dreamed of. She’s kind, and she’s smart, and she’s funny, and if you say a fucking word to her, I will punch your fucking lights out and hold you down so she can cram one of her bombs down your shorts.”

  She couldn’t hear Xan’s response, but his stiff body language suggested that it was biting.

  Elfie edged closer, cleaning the tubes with a bundle of soft red rags.

  Jonas hurried over. “Guys, guys. Xan, you need to finish cooling down. Tryp, what did you do?”

  “We got married,” Tryp said.

  Jonas turned to Xan. “Look, she’s been a good influence on him—”

  “This fucking band is falling apart,” Xan said, his tone rising. “First you, Jonas, taking up with Rhiannon, and now this. We’re on the cusp. We can change the fucking world, but you people are only interested in your damn personal lives. You won’t sacrifice anything for your art. I’m the only one out there, punching and fighting, every fucking night.”

  “The work isn’t the only thing, Xan,” Tryp said. “If you sacrifice yourself on the altar of art, you’ll be dead.”

  “Sounds like a song. Write it down so that we have something to fucking record.” Xan stormed off.

  “Ah, fuck,” Jonas said. “I suppose now isn’t the time to tell him that Rhiannon and I got engaged in New York this weekend.”

  “You did?” Tryp asked.

  “Yeah.” Jonas looked a little sheepish.

  “Congratulations, man!”

  “Yeah, thanks. I’ll go after him. Congratulations to you, too. Seriously, though. Elfie, the roadie?”

  “They don’t like that te
rm,” he said. “She’s a pyrotechnics technician.”

  Elfie looked down at her feet. Yeah, she had to stop calling Tryp a muso.

  “And I didn’t get an invite?” Jonas asked.

  “We eloped,” Tryp said.

  “Probably better that way.” Jonas stared after Xan. “Otherwise, you would have heard about it the whole engagement. I’m bracing myself for that.”

  Test

  In New Jersey, Elfie sneaked out of the downtown hotel and found a convenience store across the street. She bought the thing and sneaked back into the hotel.

  Tryp was still asleep when she got back up to their room, and she locked herself in the bathroom.

  She followed the directions, but she put a washcloth over the stick, hiding it.

  In the bedroom, she sat on the bed and shook his shoulder. “Tryfon, honey?”

  Tryp opened his dark eyes, blinking sleepily, and he smiled. “Hey, Fire Goddess. What’s up?”

  “I need you,” she admitted.

  “You bet. That’s my favorite way to wake up.” He tugged her arm toward himself.

  “That’s not what I mean,” she whispered.

  “Oh, too bad for me. What, then?” His gaze focused as he woke up more. “Elfie, what’s wrong?”

  “I have a thing, in the bathroom.”

  He sat up, more concerned, and he held her upper arms. “What kind of a thing?”

  She looked out the window, over the clustered high-rises of New York across the river. “A pregnancy test.”

  His hands tightened on her shoulders, but his voice held the lightness of wonder. “Elfie, are you pregnant?”

  She kept looking outside. “I don’t know. I feel funny. I’m a couple days late. But that happens sometimes. Stress, you know.”

  “But you think you might be?” He ducked his head, trying to catch her eyes.

  She swallowed hard, nerves mixing with an unaccustomed nausea. “I’m afraid to look.”