7 Degrees of Alpha (a collection of seven new BWWM, Alpha Male Romances) (23 page)

to be continued …

Text the keyword “femistry” to 25827 to receive a text message alert of this release.

Loving an Alpha Male

SK LESSLY

Control: the power to influence or direct people’s behavior or the course of events. It is indicative to such words as power, command, dominance, and leadership.

Hello,

Let me introduce myself. My name is Andrew Pierce, known to everyone as A.P. I’m a corporate attorney on the fast-track to becoming partner at the Law Firm of Goldstein, Parker, & Foster. My tamed hair is blonde, and my eyes are blue. I stand above six feet with pure muscle covering my entire body. I exude confidence, strength, aggressiveness, power and most of all, control. Shit, if I’m to be honest here… I am the
epitome
of fucking control.

Most people strive to have control, but they don’t know the first thing about it. They use it as a means to harm, destroy or dominate. For me, control is like breathing. It’s my lifeline. I must have control. I must be
in
control. It’s not about my sick twisted need to dominate that’s ingrained in me no matter what. No, control for me is simple, it’s a matter of life or death.

I’ve worked all of my life to master the art of control and believe me, it wasn’t easy. I have been tested, measured, and judged, but I never allow myself to succumb to the loss of control. So imagine my damn surprise, my panic, when for the first time in forever my control falters.  Shit, it happened so fast that I couldn’t stop it. My breathing became erratic, and my heart beat raced so fast that I wasn’t sure if I would be able to…
control
it.

I thought this was it, and I looked around my surroundings, frantically looking for the source of my lapse, waiting to destroy the threat, when my eyes fell on…
heaven
. This beautiful, stunning, magnificent woman before me stole my breath away. She was the reason why my control faltered. This was dangerous for a man like me, losing control like this. I knew what I must do; however, I still couldn’t move. It was that moment when I realized that for the first time in my life, I was fucked.

*THIS IS A SNIPPET OF A FUTURE RELEASE*

He felt her familiar warm and gentle touch flow through his golden, thick locks. It traveled along his scalp, sending a sensation that started from the tips of her fingers down through every nerve ending in his body. He then felt her soft lips. They lightly touched his right temple, then his ear, sending his senses into hyper drive. A whisper suddenly tickled the side of his face, pleading for him to come out of the darkness. The hypnotic scent of her essence brought him the much needed peace as his brain registered the familiarity of her voice. As he felt the haze that held him captive slowly dissipate, it was then that he felt the limp body underneath him.

Rough hands grabbed him under his arms and drug him until the smell of freshly cut grass overwhelmed him. A knee to his back branded him to the cold earth, but he didn’t fight. It was as if his body was detached from his brain. He couldn’t register what was happening to him. The unexpected cold metallic feel of steel against his heated skin released more of the deadly haze he was in, enough for him to focus on the lifeless body before him.

What the hell is going on?
he asked himself.

He couldn’t remember shit.

He didn’t understand what was happening or why it was happening. Did he know the man lying before him? The man’s lifeless body- a victim of someone’s wrath- laid there unmoving, his chest barely expanding. He couldn’t see the man’s face; it was covered in blood.

He sucked his teeth.
Whoever fucked him up was pissed as hell.

His thoughts and the sound of a woman’s insistent pleas were keys to unlocking his prison, everything flooded back to him, including why he was there. “Let him go! He didn’t do anything wrong! He was protecting me, protecting himself. You have to believe me! Please, God! You’re wasting time! Please!”

He felt his body go ridged and his instincts kicked in as the cries he heard brought him completely into the light. Her words finally hit its mark, piercing him through his rage-induced haze.

He could feel her fear, her anguish, and it was ripping into him. He struggled to take in a breath as a soft whisper finally labored through his lips. “Nyla…”

Months Earlier…

“Nyla, your boyfriend is here,” Dee Dee called out as she peeked out of the heavy revolving kitchen doors.

Nyla, who had just emerged from the walk-in refrigerator in the back of the kitchen, looked in the direction of the front of Rocky’s Diner. With her hands full of produce, Nyla couldn’t help the smile that creased her face as she thought about “her boyfriend.” 

Well, he really isn’t my boyfriend,
she corrected herself. 

He was, however, the biggest crush she had ever had in her life; the star of every fantasy she had since he first arrived about a month ago.

“Is he by himself? How does he look?” she asked her friend and fellow waitress with a slight quiver in her voice.

Dee Dee laughed. “Girl, you know I don’t go that way. I like my meat dark, as well as my men, but I will say he’s kinda hot for a white guy.”

Nyla looked at Dee Dee and shook her head.  Diane “Dee Dee” Church and Nyla grew up as different as night and day.  Dee Dee was pale with black hair that hung to the middle of her back. She grew up in the less than favorable part of the city with drugs and gangs all around her.  She was tough, with street smarts embedded in her, as well as the skills to stay alive in the war zone that was her neighborhood. Nyla Montgomery, on the other hand, was born and raised in the suburbs of the city.  Her complexion was brown, and her black hair was shortly worn in a signature pixie style, tapered on the sides and back and extra-long on the top, tumbling over her forehead. Nyla had never fought for anything in her life but maintaining good grades. She didn’t have a preference in the men she dated; she only preferred that they weren’t assholes. She had never experienced the tough choices that life presented others, but she was getting a crash course as of late.

“Is he by himself?” Nyla asked Dee Dee again.

Dee Dee suddenly frowned and shook her head. “Ah, no, suga. Sorry, he’s with Snow White.”

The smile that had creased Nyla’s face a moment earlier suddenly died. She placed the produce down on the kitchen counter next to Rock and moved to the door of the kitchen. She took a few deep breaths to gather herself before she stepped from behind the doors. She always hesitated before she headed toward him. It was the time she needed to remind herself that he would never be hers—he belonged to someone else.

That “someone else” happened to be the woman that had been accompanying him to the diner for weeks. “Snow White” was what Dee Dee started calling her the moment they saw her.  She was almost perfect in Nyla’s eyes.  Her black hair was perfectly combed, her skin was perfectly tanned, and her looks were as all else, perfect. The only thing keeping Snow White from complete perfection was the disgusted look on her face that was always present the moment they walked into the diner.

  Nyla hated Snow White and everything she stood for. Nyla believed that women like Snow White did everything that they could to tear down women like herself; putting their status in everyone’s faces, feeling as though their
privilege
gave them the right of passage and everyone around them should feel fortunate just to be in their presence. She also represented everything Nyla wasn’t; the kind of woman that had no problem getting and keeping the kind of man that sat across from her. There was one thing that Nyla would love to thank her for, however; she’d heard her say his name…A.P.

A.P.

She didn’t have a clue what the initials stood for, but she felt that knowing his name seemed to bring them closer together. She’d quietly learned so much about him by just watching him. She noticed the little things, like how deep his clean-shaven handsome face frowned when he got frustrated, how his eyes grew a dark shade of blue when he was angry. The sound of a man’s voice was something Nyla never thought would get her hot and bothered, but the sound of
his
voice, that authoritative way he asked for his omelet, always made her insides grow moist.

Anything she could find to bring her close to him, she paid attention to.  She knew nothing about who he was, where he lived, or what he did for a living. Right now, her attraction was purely physical, from his broad chest, to his large hands and long fingers, to his square chin, and striking blue eyes. She was in awe of him. His lips were so inviting and sensual that no matter what she tried to do, she couldn’t keep her eyes off them. She wondered how they would feel against her neck and against her own lips.

The woman he was with didn’t deserve him. Nyla not only knew this, but she felt it. The woman was superficial and Nyla knew that wasn’t what A.P. deserved.  He deserved to be cherished and desired beyond measure.  He deserved to be taken care of, held, and touched in all the right places. 

She shook her head and closed her eyes.

Get off of fantasyland, Nyla,
she berated herself.
There’s no way he will ever fall for a woman like you.

No matter how much she longed for him, she felt in her heart that she just wasn’t his type.

When she emerged from the kitchen and her eyes settled on him, she smiled.

Damn, he is so good looking.

Today A.P. wore a simple, dark navy suit with a crisp white shirt and no tie.  His shirt was open at the top, and she could just make out his tamed chest hairs. Her heart started to beat out of control. Nyla leaned on the counter and just watched him.  How he sat erect in his chair reading his newspaper-
Who does that anymore?
  His wavy, blonde hair sat neatly in place. His cologne filled the dining room and drove her crazy. But, the moment
she
spoke to him and he looked up at her, giving this woman all of his attention, the daydream died for Nyla. Nyla was forced to swallow the bitter taste of reality as she made her way to the table.

He could never be hers.

Andrew Pierce, or A.P. to everyone he knew, had sensed her presence before she emerged from the back of the diner.  It continued to amaze him how much she affected him, and how he could sense her without seeing her. What he felt would sometimes seep profoundly into his core, overwhelming him, and it began one morning some weeks ago when he first walked into Rock’s Diner. That particular morning, Andrew was in search of a place that sold great coffee, somewhere other than the overpriced coffee chain, Starbucks. He remembered overhearing someone from his office mentioning a diner that sat on Peco and Dressler that opened early in the morning and sold great coffee, which was fresh all the time.  When he pulled his Black Infinity Q50S into the parking lot at 7am, he started not to get out.  He loved his coffee but shit, he didn’t want to smell like grease for the entire day.  The place looked as if someone used a time machine to travel back to the fifties, extricated the popular diner into their small remote town with only two-hundred people, and settled it here. It looked so authentic from the outside and completely out of place for this artsy neighborhood, but looking in the window, the place seemed packed.

“Okay, just go in quickly, ask for a cup to go, and get out,” he coached himself.

He unfolded himself out of his car and headed for the steps of the diner. When he opened the door to Rock’s Diner and stepped inside, just as he thought, he felt his arteries clog up from the sheer smell of grease.  He hadn’t had anything fried in years, and as his heart became constricted by just the smell of the heavily greased foods, he knew he needed to continue that healthy habit.

Stay the course A.P.,
he encouraged himself.

He looked around the diner and smirked. It was as he noticed from the outside; packed. This place was as authentic inside as it was outside. The booths and tables were the authentic diner-style, straight from the fifties with vinyl-covered benches and chairs. There was a bar-style counter stretching just about the length of the place with bolted down rounded vinyl-covered stools, situated underneath the counter. The tables that were strategically placed around the room had chairs with chrome legs and chrome strips, which accented both the tables and the front counter.

Regardless of the aged look and seemingly caked on grease that looked to cover the walls and windows of this place, no one seemed to care.

As Andrew surveyed the room, he noticed that the breakfast counter that stretched the length of the diner seemed to be the place to go to be in and out.  He looked at his watch. He had a meeting in about forty-five minutes.

I can make it if I…

The rest of Andrew’s thoughts suddenly fell away as a familiar feeling unexpectedly came over him. It was something that he hadn’t felt in years. No, he was wrong. What he now felt was nothing he had ever felt before in his life. He quickly searched his surroundings, looking for a source of this sudden surge of emotion, wishing for the impossible, when his eyes fell on her. His heart seemingly stopped in mid-beat. He gripped the door handle next to him, trying his best to get a hold of the visceral urges that were suddenly threatening to take over. Could she be the reason he was feeling this way?

The sensation that was overpowering him was becoming too much for him. He could feel the aggression in his eyes, burning him to his core. He closed them quickly.

Fuck, this can’t be happening. Not here!

It wasn’t until he felt a profound and dominant rumble building within the pits of his soul that he realized just how out of control he was getting. Something was pulling his inner being out; it was calling to him, taunting him, pushing him. Fuck, he was beginning to slip back into complete darkness, something that he hadn’t done in a very long time.

A growl that suddenly fell from his lips tumbled him back into the light. He removed his hand from the dented door handle behind him. He hadn’t felt like this since…

His breath hitched in his throat, at the implication of what he was thinking, as he blinked a few times, trying desperately to gather himself. She was the cause of what was happening to him, which was clear. He was being pulled toward her; with a salacious and dominating force so strong, it rendered him helpless.

He attempted to look away from her, hoping that his heart would start to beat, that the blood would stop pulsing frantically in his ears, and that the sudden urge to claim this woman would subside, but neither happened. He was battling the engrained desire to claim her right here in this diner.

Fuck, he couldn’t breathe.

His heart had been comfortably on ice for a very long time, and he had not intended for it to thaw.  He rather liked feeling that way.  It worked for him in the courtroom, in the office and since he was a cold-hearted asshole, he had been able to be by himself without reproach.  However, as he watched her move around the diner, speaking to a few customers as she glided, he felt his heart warm a bit. 

This cannot be happening
!

He was just about to turn around and leave before he found himself relinquished of all self-control when her eyes finally met his. He held her there, unable to take his eyes from her sweet, hazel ones.  She was undeniably beautiful. Her skin was the color of the Dove chocolate nuggets that he kept in his desk drawer at work and at home. She radiated through the grime and dismal weight of this place, bringing about peace and welcoming so strong that he wondered if it was her that had this place filled with people, rather than the food.

She was graceful, with just the simple things that she did, such as walking, waving or just taking someone’s order. He was stunned at how much she exuded life and a tenderness that captivated everyone around her with just her smile. He could see how rich and deep her eyes were without even being close. She was exotic to him, with high cheekbones and a bow tie shaped mouth that made him daydream about how they would look wrapped around him, touching him.

He felt his face frown slightly; confusion laced his mind as he tried to figure out why she was invoking these feelings from him, why he couldn’t stop looking at her, why he wanted desperately to have her. He felt like he was under some type of spell.

Disbelief choked him swiftly.

No, this can’t be what I think it is,
he tried to convince himself.
Could it?

Could what he’d been told all those years ago be true?

Before he could admit to himself the possibilities, she broke the spell between them. 

Get yourself together, Pierce
, he coached himself as he pulled a deep breath into his lungs, doing his best to treat this moment as any other encounter he had with a human being. 

Wait a minute. Is that a hint of chocolate I smell? Shit…

The waitress came closer to him and eyed him cautiously. Andrew placed his hands in his pants pockets just to have something to do with them, as he greeted her. “Coffee to go, black, two sugars, no cream.”

She seemed startled slightly by his tone and stepped back from him.

Shit!
he repeated in his mind while figuratively kicking his own ass.

He knew his bluntness could be construed as him being a heartless bastard. He had to fix it quickly before she walked away or, by the frown that developed on her angelic face, cussed his ass out.

He placed his hands up quickly. “I apologize for my abruptness.”

Wait, what?
His eyebrows shot up in disbelief. He’d never apologized for shit he said or did and yet here he was.... 

Andrew moved closer to her, willing her not to turn and run from him. “Let me try that again. I would really appreciate it if I could have a cup of coffee to go. My morning has gone to shit already because I left the house without getting my fix. Please have pity on me and accept my apology.”

He felt the side of his mouth curl, a motion that his mouth rarely did, and held his breath.

The waitress studied him before she smiled shyly saying, “I guess I can understand that.”

Ho-ly fuck! Her voice.

“So, am I forgiven for my rudeness?” he prodded, realizing he was still holding his breath, his anticipation becoming too much…

This is bullshit!

In that moment, her smile brightened before his eyes. She then tilted her head slightly and shyly looked up at him.

“Yes, you’re forgiven.”

Andrew found himself studying her again. He couldn’t help it. He watched the innocence, the vulnerability, and the longing convey through her eyes. He could see right through to her soul; she was so open. Her sweetness was just a touch away; he saw and sensed that she had no clue how sexy or how beautiful she was. That thought alone not only made his dick hard as a boulder but also made him want her even more. 

Realizing that he had been standing before her, watching her for too damn long, he cleared his throat.

“Thanks,” was the only reply he managed to get out of his garbled mind.

He’d never been at a loss for words.  However, standing in front of this woman, all he could think about was taking her body on every table, every chair and wall of this place, grease and all. He wanted her smiles to be his. He wanted her touch and her taste to belong to him. He wanted to claim her, dominate her in every pleasurable way. He wanted to hear her cry out his name in ecstasy, feel her pussy tighten along his dick, feel her grip his back as he lost control and pounded into her relentlessly over and over and…

“Shit,”
he drawled out silently as he ran his hand through his hair.

What was she doing to him?

The remarkable smile that quickly emerged along her features managed to make his dick threaten to bust through the front of his slacks and claim her itself. He shoved his hands back inside of his pants pockets to make sure she didn’t see just how she was affecting him physically. He couldn’t stop what she was doing to him, and if he was honest with himself, he didn’t want to either.

The waitress, oblivious to what was happening before her spoke softly, “Okay, well if you wish to have a seat at the counter behind me, I’ll get you what you’re craving for.”

Andrew nodded his reply and watched as she turned to head for the coffee machine behind the counter. The hunger that he had for this waitress was something that he wouldn’t be able to ignore. This was going to be new territory for him. He had never dated outside of his race, but that didn’t bother him. He didn’t care about the color of any woman’s skin; he cared about what made them special. He cared about having that life-altering connection shared between two people.

There had been one woman in his life that he felt he had a special connection with. They were together for three years, until one day they weren’t. Her departure was sudden, which left him bitter, closed off and empty. He believed he would never have that type of connection with another woman. Yet, here he was, never wanting this penetrating yearning for this chocolate goddess to go away. What he needed to do, however, was to get a hold of his growing desires to possess her. He must tread lightly. In no way could he fuck this up. His soul had to have her.

Without fucking question…She. Was. His.