The image of herself writhing around on her office floor, begging him to take her, hit like a tsunami, even as she emitted another spray of heat into the warm water, which only seemed to exacerbate her condition. It was too much, to want him like this, despite knowing she was little more than a consolation prize, a deal struck after his plans to marry for love didn’t work out. That was when Alisha Ataneq, who had stood up to the Lupine Council for a scholarship, who had abdicated her title, who had told Rafe where he could stuff his edicts, all without tears, began crying uncontrollably.
The water splashed, and he was in the tub with her, pajama bottoms and all, pulling her into his arms. “You are my queen,” he said out loud. “You never have to be embarrassed.”
“I didn’t behave in a way very befitting of a queen,” she said, sniffling into his shoulder.
“You’re my queen, so however you behave is automatically befitting,” he said.
“But the only reason I’m your queen is because my father offered you an alliance. It’s like Julius Caesar breaking off his engagement to a plebian girl so he could marry a patrician.”
He put a finger on her lip. “Alisha, with all due respect to your doctorate in history, there’s one thing you need to understand going forward: I’m not pulling a Julius Caesar. I want you. And that’s why you’re my queen.”
Her wolf cheered at the news that she wasn’t merely a pawn and clamored forward to mate with Rafe again. “Yes, but…”
“I want you,” Rafe repeated inside her head, so fervently that she couldn’t help but believe him. “I want you.”
Her human fell back then, and her wolf came forward, but just as she was about to let it take over, she heard Rafe’s voice inside her head. “Stay with me, Alisha.”
Water swirled against her as he parted her with the hood of his cock. “Stay with me,” he said again, keeping her human tethered even as he gave her wolf exactly what it wanted, pushing into her until he was buried inside her all the way to the hilt. She braced herself for him to sink his teeth into her shoulder, that painful but somehow pleasurable bite was one of the few things she remembered clearly from the past three days.
But he didn’t bite her. And he didn’t take his eyes off of her as he started moving inside her, creating ripples in the water as he rolled his hips into hers with long, deliberate strokes.
“I want you,” he said, keeping his hazel eyes steady on hers. “I want all of you.”
And he got all of her. Despite the embarrassment and the crying and the intelligence that should have put her above such things, her human locked in, hypnotized by his luminous eyes, by his toast-colored skin. By the way he easily kept them both upright, bracing one arm like a steel beam against the back of the tub, while the other kept her pinned tight against his body, making it so she couldn’t fall backwards, no matter how hard he stroked into her.
She began frantically bouncing up and down, desperate to feel the pulsing knot at its base go hard inside of her. Soon she fell out of rhythm with him, and she cried out when he crushed her to him with both arms, making it so she couldn’t unconsciously work herself on his dick.
“Nuh-uh, stay with me, baby.”
“Rafe,” she moaned out loud. Her human scratched at his wet back, just as frustrated as her wolf.
“I like your wolf, Alisha,” he said as he began slowly moving inside of her again. Revving her back up with a casualness that belied the cloud of heat surrounding them. “But I want all of you.”
As a sweet, delicious orgasm coursed lazily over her entire body, Alisha couldn’t help but admire how much control his human had over his wolf. But then he said, “And Alisha, my wolf wants all of you, too.”
That was when he started moving just as frantically as she had before. The water splashed angrily around them as he bit down on her shoulder and drove himself into her, and Alisha realized Rafe was showing her something a properly trained alpha was never supposed to let his queen see: his wolf, fully unfettered by the human inside of him.
His teeth tightened on her shoulder and he exploded inside of her with a muffled howl, his knot swelling and locking him into her pussy, like a final note in a dramatic opera. Then he lifted his head, his eyes glittering with triumph. “We’re mated. Finally. Officially. You and me, Alisha.”
He looked so happy she couldn’t help but smile back, despite the fact that they’d both been heavily manipulated by her unconscionable father.
She’d deal with her father later. Rafe Nightwolf wanted her now. And in that moment, his wanting her was all that mattered.
11
Thirty minutes later the King of Colorado made Alisha an omelet.
“I’m still shocked you cook,” she said, watching him crack six eggs into her never-used frying pan with the ease of a trained chef.
“This is nothing. If I wasn’t rushing to get something in your stomach before your next heat cycle, I could go out, shoot a rabbit, and make us a four course meal using the ingredients in your fridge and maybe some of those plants from the herb garden I’m smelling in your next door neighbors window.” He threw her a wry smile. “Six years with Chloe. I picked up a few things up.”
She grimaced. “Well, I hope my dad let you know I couldn’t cook when he gave me to you. I can barely toast bread. I’m definitely not Chloe.”
He gave her a quiet, intense look. “I know you’re not Chloe.”
And Alisha shifted in her chair. “So about that book I was going to write.”
He turned off the stove.
“Alisha,” he said inside her head. “I know you’ve somehow decided I’m the big bad wolf in the Chloe situation, but this is our first mating, a sacred ritual according to both the Eskimos and the Cheyenne. Can we save the arguments until after our mating is complete?”
Part of Alisha wanted to say no. She had questions, urgent ones, like where would they live? When would she be able to finish up her post-doc work? And how was he going to deal with the fact that she had no intention of abandoning her Chloe research? And that was before they even got into child rearing philosophies. Alisha didn’t want their children to end up in arranged matings, and she needed some assurances from Rafe.
But the other part of Alisha had to acknowledge Rafe looked really cute in her never-used Angela Davis apron, and she was hungry, and her wolf was definitely not in the mood to argue with her mate.
“So,” she said out loud. “How about them Broncos?”
And his answering smile, like sunshine during an Alaska gloom, was enough to quell any fears she had about the future of their relationship—at least for a little while.
They did manage to eat before her next heat cycle, and they even relocated from the table to the couch where they engaged in a discussion about Alaska and Colorado’s long history of being business allies in both the human and wolf communities, before moving on to several other topics that didn’t involve Rafe’s ex-fiancée or the book Alisha planned to write about her.
As it turned out, Rafe watched the military channel a lot, and like most historians, Alisha knew a lot about war. So to her surprise, unlike when she had been a precocious college student and he’d been the reserved alpha prince, they actually had stuff to talk about. As they compared the Sioux and Cheyenne tribes history of battle with that of the Zulus, she found herself thinking she hadn’t had a conversation this good, since—well, since her last conversation with Chloe. And, she was actually a little disappointed when she got hit with another heat cycle.
Rafe must have been disappointed, too. He cupped her face and said, “Tell me more about Shaka Zulu tomorrow morning?”
“Sure,” she said, a little surprised he’d made the request. As terse and rigid as he had seemed when he’d been engaged to Chloe, she never would have guessed this side of Rafe existed—warm and considerate, and seemingly interested in her for reasons beyond who her father was.
He slowly untied the vintage silk kimono she’d put on after their last mating and removed it from h
er body, gently and without drama. Next he took off his own clothes in the same way. Easy, breezy, like they were regular humans, not werewolves, one of whom would literally die if she wasn’t mated.
His eyes met hers, and she could see the message of “stay with me” in them even though he didn’t say the words out loud or inside her head.
So she did. And when he placed her knees over his shoulders and spread her open, lapping up her heat, and dragging his tongue over her clit in a way that made her back arch, she collared her wolf and didn’t let her take over again, no matter how much she wanted to.
Though she did say to him inside his head, “I don’t think I can take this much longer without releasing my wolf.”
He didn’t answer, just kept lapping at her, so she repeated herself, this time out loud. He finally left her clit with a soft chuckle, lowering her legs to rest around his waist as he made his way up her body. Then he kissed her for the very first time, and it was glorious. She could taste her heat on his tongue, so heady it intoxicated her, and she wondered how he could have tasted her like that for so long without releasing his wolf.
But he held on to his beast, palming the outside of her thigh as he pushed into her with so much care, she felt like the most delicate of flowers as opposed to a five-foot-ten she-wolf with a plus-sized attitude to go along with her plus-sized wardrobe.
“You can go harder,” she said inside his head, after he began carefully moving inside of her. “I won’t break.”
“You’re sore.”
“I don’t care.” And she looked at him, bold as brass.
His eyes darkened for a moment, and she could tell he was tangling with his wolf, struggling not to unleash it inside of her. But in the end, he didn’t increase his pace. He rode her like a gentle wave, like the Gulf of Alaska on a summer day. Then he made her burn, stoking the embers within her, until her body was on fire for him. She found herself rolling into his thrusts, her breasts arched against his chest, until she came with one sweet, agonizing burst of pure pleasure.
And even after that, he continued to hold on to his wolf. He simply smiled at her and gave her a sweet kiss before knotting inside her and quietly releasing his seed.
They didn’t say anything to each other, out loud or telepathically. Just settled in, him positioning himself, so she wasn’t bearing the full burden of his weight. Then they fell asleep, locked down below and also up high, in each other’s arms.
However, when she woke a few hours later, she found herself alone on the couch. Also, the heavy sensation inside her loins, the constant tugging feeling that had accompanied her every waking moment for the last three days, was gone, too. She felt fine now. Worked over, like she’d just spent the last few days in a dryer, but her old self nonetheless, her human firmly in charge and her wolf buried deep inside of her, until the next full moon or the next time she got in an argument with somebody.
But where was Rafe?
The sound of the shower switching on in the next room answered that question. Great idea, she thought. She couldn’t wait to take one of her own. Fresh heat was incredibly intoxicating, but this old heat she was now lying in made her feel like a walking brothel. Maybe, she would join him…
But then she spotted a large interoffice envelope on top of the five boxes she had just finished packing when her heat came on. The boxes must have been brought over from her office, when her father’s people had relocated her and Rafe. But Alisha hadn’t packed any envelopes, she was almost sure of it.
She opened it with a scholar’s need to know and pulled out a photocopy of Ibn Fadlan’s original journal pages, written in the tenth century traveler’s neat Arabic hand. There was also a handwritten note from Matt, scrawled with what looked like haste on a piece of notebook paper.
Alisha, I’m writing this while waiting for your father’s guards to arrive, but if you’re reading this, you are most likely already mated to Rafe Nightwolf. I’ve come to admire you over the course of our friendship, and I feel sick to my stomach that I was a party in this scheme. I’m hoping an explanation of my acts will help you understand and perhaps forgive what I did.
When your father came to me, he was very persuasive. He told me he’d unwisely pledged your sister Janelle to a wolf he didn’t believe would be best suited to takeover the kingship of Alaska. He made it seem like the future of your state pack was on the line if I didn’t go along with Rafe’s plan to ensure you married him, which would make him a two-state king when your father chose him as a successor in five years.
Alisha broke off at this point in the letter. What did he mean by “Rafe’s plan?” Hadn’t the protocol that had kept her unmated until Rafe showed up been her father’s plan alone? And what was this about Rafe becoming a two-state king? The deal had already been struck that Mag would be her father’s second. Was her father planning to go back on the deal? And would Rafe really betray his best friend like that? She read on, hoping Matt would provide her with more answers.
I’ll also admit the history nut inside me was curious to see this scenario play out, since, as you know, it’s been over a century since we’ve had a two-state kingship. But watching you suffer like this, I can now see my actions were greedy and I’ve hurt you irreparably. I tried to call it off before Rafe got on the plane. There is a professor here, one who is not gay, who I think you could be compatible with—at this point it’s been hours and I’m gravely concerned for your life. But when I called your father and tried to get him to call off the guards outside your door so I could get the professor to you, King Tikaani told me in no uncertain terms Rafe would kill me if I arranged for another to mate with you—kill me and kill whoever you mated before him. I’m concerned your father will consider my request an act of betrayal and have me removed from your office soon. This is why I’m writing this letter as fast as I can. Hopefully, I can successfully hide it with your packed boxes, and it will eventually find its way to you.
Alisha, please understand I did not do this for a small amount of money. Rafe Nightwolf paid me a fortune to ensure you became his mate, even though you made it clear you did not want to. He is as ambitious as Ivan the Terrible and as ruthless as Sun Tzu, and he’ll do anything to get his way. Even if I could think of a way to get you out of here before the guards came, I doubt there would be anywhere you could go to escape his machinations. If I hadn’t agreed to his plan, he would have found someone else, but I’m still sorry I agreed to do this. You are an intelligent and passionate person who I’ve come to respect. You don’t deserve this. I doubt he’ll let you continue your research into what happened to Chloe Adams, so I wanted you to have these manuscript pages. Hopefully they’ll give you some solace in the years to come.
With deepest apologies,
Matt
Alisha didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath for the entirety of the letter, until it all came out of her in one big, agonized gush.
No, her wolf cried out inside of her, not wanting to believe what she’d just read, that Rafe, not her father, had been behind the plan to mate her, that he had been manipulating her future to suit his needs since February. That all the things he’d said about wanting her, about liking her, about looking forward to their lives together—she couldn’t bring herself to accept that all his sweet words had been lies.
She crumpled the note up in her hand and tried to come up with a plausible explanation for why Matt would lie to her about Rafe. But then, as if in answer to her fervent wish to deny everything she’d just read, there came the sound of heavy vibration.
It was Rafe’s phone, going off in her bedroom. She found it lying on the nightstand where he’d set it down before getting in the shower, with a black box on the front screen that read “Text message from Uncle Tikaani” followed by the words: “Chloe book handled. My guy on Lupine Council will make sure not approved for study. Let #hardheaded blame me for this, too. #weddingpresent #tamingoftheshrew”
Normally, Alisha was amused by her father’s love of hashtags, b
ut in this case… the phone fell out of her hands and landed with a dull thud on the carpeted floor, along with her heart.
12
Twas two weeks before Christmas, and Rafe was killing off his fifth tumbler of Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey. He might as well have been drinking it straight from the bottle as fast as he was downing it. Would have done just that if he weren’t currently at the Wolf Springs Resort bar. He’d killed off his own stash of Stranahan back at his kingdom house this morning after receiving the report that Alisha still hadn’t been found, despite having crossed over the Canadian-Washington State border over forty-eight hours ago. So it had been necessary to come down to the hotel’s bar and drink with the humans.
He’d been fascinated by Alisha shrewd intelligence just a few days ago, the fact that her vast knowledge of history made her sharp as a tack in other areas, as well. But she’d been too smart to rent a car or make any large transactions or do any of the other things that might have made it easier for his people to find her. Now he was cursing her cleverness while drinking himself into a coma.
She’d been gone two days, and it felt like she’d cleaned out his heart and the rest of his internal organs when she disappeared. Like he was little more than an empty vessel, with nothing left but a liver to process the copious amounts of alcohol he had to drink to keep from going crazy without her.
Every time he closed his eyes or let his mind rest even a little, that last night played out in his head. He could still smell her heat in his nose, feel the weight of her body in his arms and the tug of her pussy milking his dick as she settled into him with a peaceful sigh that told him she was finally his, that she had finally accepted him completely as her mate, both her human and her wolf. That moment had been enough to make his heart burst all over again with the long delayed happiness she had given him with the gift of her acquiescence.
Wolf and Prejudice (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 2) Page 9