Shifters Gone Alpha (33 page)

Chapter Four.

So have him
. A little voice in my head spoke.
Have him and you get to enjoy all that male beauty. Plus you can stay and do your work and the others outside will leave you alone
.

“You’re right.” I met his gaze head on. “I do want you. God knows why. This is hardly a normal situation, but you’re beautiful. And your voice! You could put George Clooney to shame with it.”

“Who is this George you speak of? Has he touched you?” His eyes flashed as he spoke and his jaw clenched.

“Whoa there, Mr. Neanderthal. Don’t get your knickers in a twist. No, of course, he hasn’t touched me.” I nearly added,
I should be so lucky,
but the man in front of me vibrated with tension, so I didn’t push my luck.

“Good. I don’t like the idea of other men touching you.”

“I’m not a virgin.” I wrinkled my nose. “I’ve had sex. If you want some sort of virginal waif, you might need to invent a time machine.”

“I know you are not a virgin. But I don’t wish to hear of your men. It makes me want to do violence.”

I took an instinctive step back and he reached out. His fingers trailed down my arm. “Not to you. I don’t want to hurt you, but the men who have touched you... To think of them makes my skin…tight. Makes me…tense.”

The way he searched for his words touched me. Then reality slammed into me. It hit me full on with icy shards of terror. What the hell was I doing? Standing here, actually contemplating having sex with the thing in front of me. Because it was a thing and not a man. Oh, it might look human, but the beautiful, primal male in front of me wasn’t human. My instincts told me as much, and I needed to hold the fact front and center every second of our interaction.

He frowned and his eyes darkened. “What are you so afraid of?”

“How do you know I’m scared?”

“Your scent, your heart rate. They changed.”

“What
are
you?”

He didn’t answer me. Instead, his hand moved slowly back up my arm. Every millimeter of skin his fingers touched became hypersensitive and goose bumps broke out along my flesh. When he neared my shoulder, he took a strand of my hair between two fingers. He rubbed it and smiled then uttered a word I didn’t recognize.

“
Rua
.” He smiled again and brought the lock of hair to his face, looking intently at it as he moved the silken tresses between his fingers. Slowly, he leaned in and took a hesitant sniff. Only this time he didn’t smile; this time he groaned and said the word again.

“What does
rua
mean?” I asked.

“Red.” He smiled, a wide, confident, hungry grin that ate up all the air in my lungs. “It means red.”

“You seem to be avoiding answering my question.” I pulled back and he let go of my hair, something flickering in his eyes. I couldn’t read the emotion and it unnerved me.

“Maybe I should simply show you. I could tell you, but your kind doesn’t believe things unless they see them. Not things outside your normal experience, anyway. But then again, you might faint clean away or become hysterical. Human females tend to do these things.”

“Erm, your ideas of human females seem to come from Gothic literature. I suppose your own women would never do such things?” I yearned to reach out and trace the strong, shadowed line of his jaw. To feel those full lips against my fingers. As I stared, he swiped his pink tongue over the lips I so coveted, and my insides clenched in response.

“Our females are strong, but they are rarer than human women. For some reason, we don’t produce as many females as males. And many were killed in times gone by. Humans who knew of us…to cull our numbers, they hunted our females in the past. It means many of our males are left without a mate. They can become dangerous.”

“Are you without a mate?” I hated to think of him having a mate, which I imagined meant a girlfriend, even though I understood such emotions were ridiculous. I didn’t even know him.

“Of
course
! A mated male wouldn’t be sniffing around other females. Not even
empathines
. I would find it easy to take a mate, though.” He puffed out his broad chest.

Yeah. I bet he would!

“Because of my status in the pack, I am regarded as excellent mate material.”

“Pack?” What an odd choice of words. My mind whirred, and I thought back to the wolf I’d seen earlier. Slowly the pieces clicked together, into a fantastical jigsaw of possibility. “You’re the…the
wolf.
The one I saw earlier.”

“He is a part of me, yes. I can change my form at will.”

My mother used to like telling me that curiosity killed the cat. But I’ve often found having an inquiring, scientific mind to be an advantage. Right now, it saved me from the hysteria this wolf-man expected and instead filled me with a need to learn more.

“Can you take any other form?”

“No. My wolf is part of me; we are one. I can be as you see me now, as the wolf you saw earlier, or a hybrid of the two.”

“Wow! A real life, honest to goodness, werewolf.”

“Yes. Except, we don’t howl at the full moon and can control when and where we change. Every culture has different names for us. Werewolf is the Northern European term. Others call us skin-walkers,
loup-garou
, shifters. There are more names for us than I care to recall.”

The biologist in me overrode any remaining fear, along with my disbelief and my last shred of common sense.

“I want to see you. Change for me. Show me your wolf again.”

“You liked my wolf?” He seemed hesitant for the first time. Unsure somehow.

“It was the most beautiful animal I’ve ever seen.”

He nodded toward the corner, and I turned to see Sandy still lying in her basket, utterly focused on the male in front of me.

“Sometimes they attack.”

“Sandy, kitchen.” I pointed at the door, and she got up with a put-upon sigh and waddled to the door, which I opened and then closed softly behind her. “She can’t get in here now. You won’t hurt me, will you?”

His face fell. “No. I am in full control. My wolf isn’t some slathering beast like your kind reads about in those Gothic novels you spoke of earlier.”

“Call me Brooke,” I said. “I’m sick of getting referred to as a
kind
. You must have a name?”

“Drew. You can call me Drew.”

In one, fluid motion, he shrugged off his shirt. He whipped his T-shirt over his head. His body appeared, and my gaze crawled all over it, eating up the sight of so much beautiful skin. He was flawless. As the cloth dropped to the floor, he stood, pectorals flexing, skin shimmering over powerful muscles. A fine dusting of hair covered his chest, and a trail led down to his jeans.

Those jeans were next to go. Deft fingers popped the buttons open and shucked the worn denim down over lean hips. He wore nothing underneath, and as his most intimate parts were revealed to me, I couldn’t look away.

Just as his height and build were larger than most males, his cock hung down heavy and thick. It twitched when I continued to drink him in and began to thicken in front of my eyes.

Oh, but I wanted to touch. I yearned to sink to my knees and take that fattening piece of flesh into my mouth, taste it, and suckle it until it rose to full hardness. I wanted to lick up the long length of him. Moisture surged between my legs, and I cursed not wearing any panties to bed.

A deep inhale had me jerking my head up. Drew stared at me, his face drawn and harsh.

“Your body, it prepares itself for me.”

I couldn’t answer. Didn’t know what the hell to say. He wasn’t wrong. I’d never been so turned on. He moved toward me, only to stop about a foot away. Never taking his eyes from mine, he reached down and ran his hand up the inside of my right thigh. Feather light fingers brushed over my core, so light the caress felt more like air than anything real touching me. He exhaled in a rush of breath and pulled his hand away.

“So wet, so ready.” He brought his fingers to his mouth and licked them, flicking his pink tongue out to taste my essence.

“Let me see your wolf?” I stepped back, away from his grasp, and sat down heavily on the bed. My limbs felt weighted down, sluggish, and the air in the room suddenly seemed too thick to breathe. But I wouldn’t be sidetracked. I wanted him, but the scientist in me needed to see the wolf first.

“I won’t change fully. There’s a hormone we give off, and I don’t want those outside to get any more wound up than they are. When an alpha changes, it can make others want to change too, and trust me, we don’t want them out there in wolf form.”

Light fell on the planes and angles of his body, highlighting his heavy build and solid muscles. Odd ripples began to move over his flesh, and his arms elongated right in front of me. His legs cracked and flexed, and they too began to change and grow. Full lips parted to reveal long canines. Most startling of all were his eyes. The slate blue began to bleed out around the edges and blades of ice blue pushed their way in. The intense color reminded me of the glaciers I’d seen in the Arctic.

He didn’t move toward me and, remarkably, I didn’t feel afraid of him. Even though I was looking at something preternatural, something primal and powerful, it didn’t scare me.

His body rippled and shimmered again, and a strikingly handsome male stood before me once more. Only totally nude. And heavily aroused.

“You weren’t scared. You didn’t fear me,” he rasped, raw and edgy.

“No. I didn’t fear you.” I repeated his strange phrase back to him. “You were…beautiful.”

He growled, actually growled, low and deep in his chest and took one step forward. “You are true
empathine
. You see our beauty. You see what I am and still want me in the same way I want you.”

I did want him. In the worst way. More than I’d ever wanted any other man in my life. And why wouldn’t I? He stood there, tall, powerfully built, handsome, and straining for me. No red-blooded woman would have found him easy to refuse. And I’d been a long time without the company of a man. Ever since my last boyfriend had dumped me for daring to gain a few more pounds, I’d kind of sworn off men.
Except he’s not a man
, that insistent voice reminded me again.

A line popped into my head as I looked at his big, brawny body. Something from a childhood story long forgotten. Something about a wolf in disguise with big eyes and big teeth, and a girl being eaten. The edge of danger, the size of him, it only served to fuel my desire, not to quench it or moderate it, as surely it would if I were remotely sane.

Another step closer, and I could catch his scent. Warm and spicy, he reminded me of the way the house smelled at Christmas. Either he used really good aftershave or his pheromones were off the charts.

“Your smell, it drives me insane.” His thoughts mirrored my own. Smiling, he licked his lips, never looking away from my face. Those lines from the childhood tale of warning danced around my head again.

“You’re not going to eat me, are you?” I blurted the words out before I could stop myself.

He threw his head back and roared with laughter. “Eat you. No.” Then his eyes darkened and the smile turned predatory. “I do want to taste you though.”

I nearly came there and then, sitting on my bed, legs together and arms folded in my lap. A real prim and proper lady...on the outside, at least. My thoughts weren’t proper at all. My mind played out scenarios of him doing all sorts of wicked things.

He sank to his knees in front of me, and I suddenly couldn’t think at all. Gentle hands removed my own from my lap, placing them to either side of my legs. With one quick, fevered glance at my face, he focused all his attention between my legs. My face burned when he parted my thighs, his hands riding my nightdress up as he moved me open, displaying me.

For a long moment, he simply stared, a low groan rumbling out of his throat. “So beautiful. Your hair here, it is
rua
too. Red,” he sighed, “
My
red.”

As he pushed my thighs farther apart, the cool air of the room danced over my exposed skin. I’d never been more grateful for keeping things trim down there as my flesh greedily greeted the warm gust of moist air from his breath. I didn’t like anything more than a landing strip to get in the way and had kept up my grooming routine, despite not having a man in my life for a good long while.

I trembled, awaiting his touch. Wanting the first moment his mouth would make contact with my yearning flesh. We hadn’t even kissed, and yet here we were, with him about to take me in the most intimate way. He nuzzled the inside of my thigh, soft little butterfly kisses landing for a moment and then taking off again to alight somewhere else. While he kissed and nibbled his way toward my center, I wantonly parted my legs farther, needing him to hurry, needing him at my core.

And then he was there. His tongue sliding right up the crease, hot and wet and intense. I shuddered and let out a moan. He matched it with a groan and grabbed my butt cheeks to pull me onto his face. All his finesse of earlier deserted him, and he really
did
eat me. He licked and sucked at me as if his life depended on it. I cried out with the potency of it.