Fate of the Alpha: The Complete Bundle (26 page)

G
race was lost
.

She must be lost, or she would never find herself in the interrogation room, wrists pinned above her head, panting with lust over a guy she didn’t like but seemed to love.

And she wouldn’t like this feeling of helplessness. She certainly wouldn’t relish feeling like a butterfly pinned to a board.

Would she?

Julian didn’t give her a chance to worry about it. His left hand held her wrists, but his right slid down her cheek, caressed her neck, then lower still to pop open the top button of her uniform, then the second.

He caught his breath as the tops of her breasts were revealed. She looked down at his golden head and wished she could tousle that boyish hair, but when she tried to slip a hand out of his hold, he only pressed her wrists harder into the wall.

“Be good,” he admonished her.

She wondered what she was supposed to say back, but he didn’t wait for her to answer. He was already opening the remaining buttons and sliding her shirt out from her pants. She must look so wanton, half naked with her gun belt still on.

Oh god, her service weapon.

“Julian, please,” she whispered.

He looked up and his expression was almost guilty.

“Julian, I need to remove my gun belt,” she told him urgently.

He released her right away. Her hands shook as she tried to take off the weapon just as she did every day. At last it was free and she draped it over a chair.

She stared at it for a moment. Taking off her weapon didn’t absolve her of her duty. What was she doing?

She turned back to find Julian unbuttoning his Oxford, and her doubts vanished.

Like magic.

The overhead light threw his smooth chest and chiseled abdominal muscles into harsh relief. She took a step forward, unsure if she wanted to touch those muscles with her hands or drip them with honey and lick it off.

She didn’t get a chance to do either. Julian had her hands over her head again before she could decide. And she didn’t even want to fight him.

“Good girl,” he whispered in her ear again.

He tugged at her pants with his right hand. They were soon around her ankles.

“Be still,” he said.

Suddenly she was holding her own hands to the wall, as he caressed her cheeks, her shoulders.

Then he pulled her hairband out and her hair fell around her shoulders in soft ticklish waves.

“Look at me,” Julian said.

She obeyed him without question. His eyes were bluer than blue. The frank hunger in his gaze made her insides tighten.

Suddenly she was flying.

In her haze, it took a moment to realize that he had lifted her onto the table. He laid her down tenderly, easing her heated body onto the cool wood. Then he stretched out next to her, leaning up on his elbow and placing one hand possessively on the table’s surface next to her head.

“Do you want this?” he asked her.

But she could tell from his eyes that he already knew exactly what she wanted. Her whole body burned for him. Steam rose from the wood of the table where her skin touched it. She was sure he could feel the desire crashing off her.

She nodded, not trusting herself to open her mouth without begging.

“Not just this,” he gestured to their bodies. “Do you want
this?”
he asked, placing his hand on her heart.
“
Because it can’t be casual for me. And it won’t be easy for either of us.”

Her heart stuttered. How could it be anything but casual for him? He was only in Tarker’s Hollow temporarily, to catch bad guys. He was basically a soldier, answering to an Order.

But he didn’t look like he was trying to trick her. He looked... vulnerable. And somewhere deep inside she knew he was telling the truth.

“Grace Kwan-Cortez, I will treasure you, protect you, comfort you and love you with all my heart, for all your life,” he said softly in his deep voice.

Something sweet burst in her chest and she found herself crying. The tears slid out of the corners of her eyes.

“No, darling, no, don’t be sad,” he whispered, leaning in to kiss the tears from her cheeks.

“Please,” she breathed.

“Yes, my angel?” he asked, looking into her eyes.

Instead of answering she lifted her head to kiss him. He tasted like her tears.

Instantly, her body hummed with life. Each hair on her head seemed to ache for Julian’s touch.

He broke their kiss long enough to look up and wave a hand in the air.

“
Sera
,” he said.

An ornate old-fashioned padlock formed on the door.

“
Hortus cresco
,” he murmured.

The flowers in the framed nature plates on the walls around the table began to grow out of their frames and cover the floor with mossy vines and muted pastel flowers. They smelled like the potpourri sachets in Abuela’s sock drawer.

It was incredible.

He was incredible.

“That’s better,” he whispered, nuzzling her neck and stroking her belly.

She arched up to him in spite of herself. She wanted him more than anything, needed him to possess her.

“Be still,” he said again. This time, the darkness in his voice told her he was losing control over his desire.

Grace deliberately slowed her breathing and stared up at the ceiling. This was the room where she had watched the parking meter change dry, and tried to keep a straight face while questioning teenagers who were caught hitching rides on the fire truck. The mossy fingers of the magical flower vines had swiftly climbed the walls and reached toward the ceiling, but she knew very well that she was still at the police station, lying on the table.

To her surprise, she was at peace with this realization. There was nowhere she had ever felt more herself than in this place. And it seemed right that the first time she would make love, really make love, that it would happen in her true home and not the rented flat on Elm Avenue.

Julian’s lips brushed across her midriff, and all thought escaped her. She let out her breath in a ragged sigh and it took every fiber of her will not to lift her hips to him.

He hooked his fingers around the elastic of her thong and pulled it off her in one smooth movement. His hands roamed her thighs, smoothing her bare flesh. He nuzzled her hips and she tried not to cry out. They had only begun, how could she already feel this despair that he would never be inside her.

Grace could feel herself swelling in anticipation. When Julian slid a hand into her curls, she held her breath.

“Ohhh,” he groaned when his finger dragged against her wet and swollen flesh.

He buried his face in her neck again, kissing and biting at her wildly, without moving his hand.

Grace closed her eyes and bit her lip until she tasted blood, willing herself not to grind against his fingers.

“Please,” she heard herself whisper brokenly.

Instantly he was on her mouth, licking and worrying her lip. It stung a little, but when he rubbed his hand against her again she didn’t feel it anymore. Her whole world concentrated on that small place between her legs.

She was so wet, she was sure the table would soon be slippery with the evidence of her lust. Her sex was so hungry, so empty.

She could feel Julian hard against her hip. But the last time she had reached for him he’d punished her.

Grace moaned helplessly.

Julian’s hand disappeared.

She opened her eyes to see him slide the unbuttoned shirt off his shoulders. He spun her so that he was between her legs.

When he crawled toward her, she had to shut her eyes.

His tongue touched the base of her vagina and the pleasure was so intense she saw stars behind her eyelids.

He growled with pleasure and began to lap at her enthusiastically.

Grace’s control over herself was lost and she lifted her hips to meet his mouth.

His arm pressed against her hips, pinning her to the table.

And his tongue, oh, his ruthless, clever tongue. Julian caressed and teased her. Adjusting his rhythm to avoid giving her relief, he would lick up to her clitoris, then suckle it lightly and move downward again.

Hours could have passed or merely moments. Grace was frozen in time, praying for him to have mercy on her.

Julian eased a teasing finger against her without penetrating.

She could feel herself opening, her sex begging him.

Slowly, so slowly, he pressed inward and again she saw stars as he found the magical place inside her and kneaded it gently.

There was a low sound, growing louder. Grace realized belatedly that it was her own keening.

“Fuck,” Julian whispered.

Then she felt his mouth on her clitoris again. He flicked his tongue back and forth then suckled hard.

Grace came frantically, tightening like a vice on his finger, shamelessly crushing herself against his mouth. The pleasure seemed to consume her, and her life flashed before her eyes.

She was tottering down Harvard Avenue looking up at the treetops meeting overhead. The co-president of the Chess Club was pinning a tiger-lily corsage on her for prom. She was shooting her service weapon at the police academy. She was digging a bullet out of her best friend’s shoulder. She was meeting a man in the garden of an abandoned house. She was falling in love.

When she opened her eyes, Julian was looking down at her. His lips were parted, as though he were trying to experience it all with her.

She reached for him, with her hands, with her heart, with her very soul.

He fell into her arms and covered her face with tiny kisses.

“Please,” she whispered for the third time.

This time he obeyed. In a flash he was on his feet, stepping out of the rest of his clothes. He removed his watch and laid it on the chair with her gun belt.

“
Disponat vobis
,” he said to the table.

Grace felt it shift beneath her, but didn’t tremble. One moment she was lying on the hard wood surface, the next she was cradled in impossibly soft bedding.

“
Succendunt ignem
,” he told the overhead light.

Instead of a halogen bulb in a fixture, Grace was suddenly looking up at a flickering gas lantern.

“Is this okay?” he asked her. His voice was tight with need.

She smiled and held her arms out to him again.

He leapt into the nest of bedding and caged her head with his hands. His eyes were so blue now that it was hard for her to concentrate on what he said next.

“You’ve been a very good girl,” he whispered. “I’m going to make love to you now, but you need to be still so I can make it good for you, darling one. Can you do that for me, Grace?”

She nodded up at him, slowly.

“Beloved,” he murmured, dipping his head to kiss her.

She could feel him, hot and so hard against her. He caught his breath and then pressed himself inside her, so slowly Grace thought she would die.

Once he was fully seated, he stilled for a moment.

Grace relaxed to accommodate him. As soon as the feeling went from stretching to aching with need, Julian eased nearly all the way out and then back in.

“Oh,” she whimpered against his mouth.

He drew back to look at her, all the while making love to her with exquisite slowness.

The lamplight from above made a halo around his golden hair and Grace thought she might have heard birds singing in the forest of magical flowers. She felt weightless with happiness and wished she could freeze this moment. Afterward, surely nothing could ever seem sweet again.

But need soon darkened Julian’s features, and all at once he was thrusting into her wildly.

Her body responded instantly and she couldn’t stop her hips from lifting up to him, goading him. Her nipples were so taut they ached with her burning skin.

Julian slid a hand down to tease her with a long finger.

Suddenly, Grace was coming apart again. She could feel herself milking and squeezing Julian’s cock, as her poor pussy tried to convulse while stretched around his impressive girth.

He groaned helplessly and she felt him grow harder still. He exploded inside her in a wave of pleasure that seemed to go on forever.

When it was over, he nuzzled her neck, then lay beside her with his leg thrown possessively over her hips. Stroking her hair, he gazed at her, his blue eyes crinkled in a warm smile.

Grace couldn’t help smiling back.

“I love you,” he told her.

She opened her mouth, but he laid a finger across her lips.

“Go to sleep now,” he said.

“But—” she whispered.

“Go to sleep. I’ll wake you when it’s time. Just let me hold you,” he said firmly.

Grace wanted to protest, but he was so warm and the nest was so soft. She decided to rest for just a moment.

E
rik opened
the door to the Copper Creek Community Library. The brightness inside contrasted with the damp afternoon outside. He was struck again by the warmth of the place.

“Erik,” Bonnie cried, her heels pounding the pumpkin colored pine floor as she launched herself at him.

“Hey, Bonnie,” he said, trying not to notice her breasts bouncing under her sky blue sweater.

“I found out what the symbols mean,” she said excitedly.

He figured he’d let her go first. After what he had to say, hers was going to seem anticlimactic.

They walked over to the tables with the old fashioned aqua iMacs.

Bonnie indicated that Erik should sit, so he pulled out a chair. He was astonished to see that by some miracle she had managed to pull up a picture of one of the symbols from the internet.

“How the heck did you get this thing online?” he asked.

“Dial up,” she said with a half smile. “And determination.”

“No kidding,” Erik replied.

Bonnie smiled and leaned forward over his shoulder to point at the picture, a set of inward facing arrows.

“So, the arrows mean danger. And they were holding that Pac-Man looking thing sideways. That’s actually an owl. An owl is supposed to be a harbinger of death. I don’t know why Jacob would have had this, though,” she said, shaking her head and sending her auburn tresses in motion.

“I do,” Erik said, gesturing to the chair beside his.

Her green eyes went wide and she sat, smoothing her skirt demurely over her knees in yet another mannerism that reminded Erik of Ainsley.

“I was at the mine today,” he began. “They ran a camera down the shaft.”

He paused. What he had to say next was almost unbelievable. It hit him that she might
not
believe him. And it wasn’t like he had any proof.

“What did you see?” she prodded.

“The miners found an underground cavern,” he said. “Those symbols were written on the walls,”

Bonnie nodded, slowly.

“That’s very strange,” she said, “but it makes sense. Jake Miller was not a man who would have borrowed books like that for fun.”

“There’s more,” Erik paused again, unsure how to continue.

Bonnie cocked her head, waiting.

Better to just get it all out there. He took a breath and told her everything.

“There were men in the cavern. They were dead. It was horrible. Some of them had been... decapitated. And there was no blood. And there was a grate, shaped like one of the symbols. And there was something
alive
behind it,” he finished quickly.

He looked over at Bonnie. She was frozen, her face inscrutable.

He was a stranger, and what he’d told her was just plain crazy. For the hundredth time, he cursed the lack of his wolf to help him get a better reading on her.

“We need to go see Teresa Simkins,” Bonnie said. “
Now
.”