1: Chaos - Pack Alpha (8 page)

Never say that to a strutting stud garou.

Chapter Eleven

He pounced. Leaping furniture. Slapped a hand against the doorjamb of the bedroom before I could even get in there.

“I’ll take that as an invitation.” He kissed me again.

I’m losing myself here, in some little fantasy world. But it really happened like that. I can look back and see that he was dying to get it across to me that he was already in love with me--long before we hooked up.

My hands went up instinctively between us, and pushed as I pried my lips loose. “Back off, Chaos.”

The intensity was getting to me. I hadn’t had a chance to examine what was going on. Or fall back to the realization that I’d had a crush on his broody bad ass for as far as I could remember.

I guess my reaction flipped a switch.

Hands up, he backed off all right. He even said, “I was having a little fun. I forgot who I was dealing with.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Yeah, I was picking the fight, needing some space.

“Exactly what it sounded like.” He wasn’t backing down.

I geared up for a slap in the face. But mostly, I geared up to wrap a shield around my heart. I knew...
I just knew
...he was about to hurt me.

“Go ahead, say it.” I dared him, right up in his face.

“You are one fucking hard ass bitch. You never let anyone in.”

I didn’t miss a beat. “I let
you
in, but I’m sorry about that already.”

He reached out, grabbed me by the shirt, pulled--yeah, it ripped--and he said through gritted teeth, “Maybe I should give you something to really be sorry about?”

We already established that this was my second suicide day in a row. Right?

I said, “Why don’t you, big ass?”

He spun me with that one hand on my shirt, dragged me through the bedroom door and pushed, plopping me backward onto the bed. I never really knew what hit me. I mean, he never hurt me. Just took me by surprise.

Then he climbed up on me, straddled my body. I was hitting at him, I think, a little afraid that my rape dream was coming true. But he didn’t grab my hands or make me stop. He just waited until I got worn out.

Until I let my head fall back and tears come. Until I told him, “I hate you.”

He let me cry. Gaia knows how long he sat on top of me while I did that. A thousand years of floods. A lifetime of men disappointing me.

When the tide finally let up, and I sniffed--my eyes still closed--he said quietly, “I hate you, too.”

That made me look up at him.

He looked sad. Beaten. His shoulders sloped forward. His hands rested on his thighs. And his expression was totally bleak.

That’s when I got it. Everything he’d been trying to show me. Everything we’d been dancing around, and all the things we weren’t looking in the eye.

Well, we looked it in the eye then. But, honestly? I could not bring myself to ask him if he was really saying he loved me, or if he realized that was what I was trying to say to him.

I sniffed, got a clearer vision and asked the obvious question. “So, where do we go from here?”

Strangled, he said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m dying.”

It was a statement about his future, about his present, about everything between us.

“Me too.”

More bleakness filled the gap between us as we searched each other’s face.

He told me, “I don’t wanna be alone anymore,” but he wasn’t looking at my eyes. At my hair, maybe. All around me. Everywhere but my eyes.

I said, “Me either.”

Chaos climbed off of me then, and sat on the edge of the bed, leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees, with his gaze nailed to nothing on the floor, rubbing his hands together. I sat up, real close to him and leaned my cheek against his shoulder. I slipped my arm under his, too, and rested my fingers over his.

He told me, “Leer’s going to kill me.”

My head snapped up. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that.

Chaos turned his face to mine, looked me in the eye then and said, “We both wanted you.”

I couldn’t for the life of me understand why. But he told me.

“You’re the perfect alpha bitch, Tee. You don’t give a shit about anybody but yourself. You’ve got a raging crinos, and a pair of canines that make even the toughest bastards back down.”

Each thing he said felt like a kick in the head. A stomp on my heart.

His respect was all for my façade?

I was such a poser.

Before he could say any more, I said, “You already fucked me, Chaos. No flattery required. You want me to step up? I’ll step up.”

What I was really saying was
tear my heart out a little more, you bastard. I’ll step up for the all out bitch back-attack right now. I hope someone rips my throat out tomorrow. No. Tonight.

Once an alpha male settled on a mate, the bitch fights would break out big-time. Everyone would want to show him how much better than me they were. It was a real turn-on for the males, and guaranteed to make him look even bigger when all the bitches started their catfights. You’d think it would all be going on before he picked somebody. But no, it doesn’t work that way. As long as we’re equals, it’s all cool, just fun. Does that make sense?

My death wish was back on. I asked, “Why don’t I change clothes and you can see just how bitchy I can be?”

I was feeling bitchy.

He surprised me, though, by saying, “I hate this.”

“Yeah. You and me both.”

I got up, stripped. There was no tease to it. No taunt. No...you want some of this?

At my closet, I stared, ass to him, thinking while fighting back tears,
what do I want to die in?

He said, “I don’t want to go out, Tee.”

“You don’t want to show me off?” A razor-edged question if ever there was one. I didn’t look back. I knew he was staring into me. “You know,” I said, sniffing, “This, actually, is the answer to all my prayers.”

Why he’d been worried about me the night before when certain death was on my horizon, I didn’t stop to fathom. And I was pushing out the honesty of his “I hate you, too.”

“Son of a bitch.”

I turned to see him lean forward again, running both hands through his hair, grabbing fistfuls.

“What?” I put my hands on my hips, kind’ve spread my feet.

When he looked up at me, there was a definite soul-wrenching despair there. Like that wasn’t bad enough, he dropped the bottom right out of my heart when he said, “
I’m
a son of a bitch.”

Now, it was Gaia’s honest truth. He
was
a son of a bitch, in more ways than one, but whatever he was talking about was ripping him up. And I could
not
read his mind.

But whatever was doing it
to him
brought out my true feelings
for him
.

I mean, I hesitated, tried to read his expression, tried to read his thoughts, but I didn’t even realize I’d stumbled toward him and fallen to my knees until I was there in front of him, looking up and putting my hands to his cheeks, asking, “What, Chaos?”

Chapter Twelve

I didn’t stop to think that he might be feeling like he double-crossed me. I mean, you only hurt the ones you love, right?

A little desperately, wanting to stop that scaring look of bereavement from marring his handsome face, I started kissing him, telling him over and over again as I kissed his eyes, his temple, and found his lips, “Whatever it is, it’ll be okay.”

“It’ll be okay.”

It was, you know, after that. From that point forward.

We realized that we could face anything together. That we could climb up into each other’s arms, if only for a few minutes at a time, and feel like we weren’t alone. So, it doesn’t really matter what came after that. Or what came before.

What I’m saying is...we had
that.

But I’ll tell you how that day panned out, because I climbed up into his arms, then, and I made love to him.

To my man.

You know, for the first time in my life, I felt like I belonged somewhere completely. He needed me. And he was afraid to lose me.

That’s why he took so long to make his move. He told me that later. He preferred watching me from afar to worrying about me getting hurt because of him.

But you know what pushed him into making a move for me? You think it was the drug thing. The whole deal at the club. But it was Leer. Leer told me once that he knew Chaos would never have let anyone close to him, ever. And he knew he just couldn’t let his brother live like that.

A few minutes of true glory, or a lifetime of loneliness.

So, you be the judge of Chaos and me, and what we had. I didn’t really care how long we had it, just as long as I felt it once, ya know?

Maybe you’ll think it’s sad, that we knew it wouldn’t last for long, but we snatched what we could. But I didn’t look at it like that. And I know Chaos didn’t either.

He loved loving.

You see, that was really new to him. I mean, I already told you that he cared about people. But really loving, losing himself in somebody, somebody that needed him, too, that was all he was in for. He was all about finding the pinnacle, reaching the top, knowing what it was to have it all.

It didn’t matter that he knew Leer would have to go for that too, someday, or that he’d likely be the one to take it away from him. Or that maybe he’d have to be the one to help his brother go for it, too. That was the future.

We were wrapped up in the here and now.

Chaos and me, we reveled, we savored. We tasted every drop of pleasure that two people can share.

It started with the kissing, got frantic from there, as I pushed his clothes from him, laid him back, and climbed on him, riding him with all the passion I had. It didn’t take long to climax. Like I said, he was all about that.

We were both bottling up a lot of frustration.

I collapsed on him after we were done, just getting a breather, you know. He started to say something but I put fingers to his lips, and crawled off of him. I went to the bathroom, got a warm cloth and came back, began washing his manhood. It started as a service. You know, to let him know that I was willing to do for him.

But, true to form, he was tense, propped himself up on his elbows and watched. “You don’t have to do that, Tee. Just lay by me.”

“I want to.” I did.

That’s when he said it. Shocked the hell out of me, mostly because he didn’t have to. But Chaos wasn’t stingy. Once he decided to go for it, he didn’t hold back. He sighed, “Gaia, I love you, Tee.”

So, picture that, would ya? I’m seriously applying my attention to cleaning up his masculinity, and he says that. My head pops up, my eyes bulge, and my bottom lip flapped open in a quickly sucked gasp.

And he laid his head back, looked up at the ceiling and said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

He was sorry he said that?

Freaking stupid ass man.

And I’m an even dumber bitch. I just sat there, with my washcloth and hand around his cock, holding on. It took me a few minutes, but I finally said, with a squeeze, “You shouldn’t tell a woman you love her, and then apologize.” I squeezed again. “I mean,” I pretended to be busy washing him, but I was more aggressively pumping it than anything.

He squeaked, “Hey there.” But he propped himself back up, to look at me again.

So, I got his attention like I wanted. I said, “I never would have pegged you for an apologizer.”

“No?” His gaze strayed to what I was doing to him. Real carefully, he asked, “What would you have pegged me for?”

“A player. Everybody knows the great Chaos is a player.”

Don’t think his body wasn’t reacting to every bit of attention I was giving it. The blood was flowing--through both of us--I can promise you that. And we were both pooling somewhere between our thighs.

He chuckled. “The great Chaos, huh?” He dropped back again. “If only the world knew how
that
was.”

I stopped what I was doing, set the washcloth aside, and leaned up, letting my breasts cradle his equipment. Half leaning over him, I asked, “What do you mean?”

Shaking his head, he contemplated the swirly pattern in my ceiling panels. “Nothing. Only, I’m not that great.”

So, a silence stretched between us again, and I sat there, thinking...how can he not know what a mountain he is? I mean, his freaking cock was a legend in its own right. He was the youngest alpha Pack City had ever had. And....

I bit my lower lip.

Yeah, there was more silence. He wasn’t expecting me to refute it. I know that. I think he was evaluating what he’d done to get where he was, or something.

Here was one of those defining moments. You know, when you really have to step up. When you have to open up.

Part of me wanted to do the obvious, and just argue the point. I’m an argumentative bitch; that would have come real easy for me. In fact, I opened my mouth to say the words, “No. You’re wrong--” but they stuttered on my tongue before even one syllable could get out.

Instead, I put my forehead to him, closed my eyes, and kissed. Yes, his manhood.

It was a reverent thing.

It was also followed by a sigh, and another kiss. And a whispered, “I love you, Chaos. To me, you’re everything.”

The End