Alpha Me Not (13 page)

He insisted on tasting food from her fork. And then had an excuse to feed her choice morsels of his, which, for some odd reason, gave him a rampant boner.

Nature cooperated with his intentions, and though the aroma of the fire-ravaged lot opposite warred with the sweetness of the pea blossoms climbing a trellis to the right of the deck, a gentle breeze carried only the orange-honey aroma of the ruffled petals. Between the fragrance of the food, the perfume of the blossoms, and the vanilla of the candles, the atmosphere proved conducive to romance.

When a bead of wine coated the middle of her lower lip, Joe surrendered, scooted her onto his lap, and slurped the ruby drop.

She looped her arms around his neck and sighed. Her hot breath did a slow samba over his mouth. The smoldering sparks went straight to his groin.

“I’ve been waiting for you to do that all night long.” Her voice had taken on a low, husky tone.

“Anticipation. It’s a heady emotion.” He slipped the first button of her shirt free.

She drew in a deep breath and focused her complete attention on his hand.

He slid his fingers under the soft cotton and encountered bare, satiny skin. Shuttering his eyes to hide the amber flare of primordial, possessive lust, Joe swirled his hand over the firm mound. Trailed a lazy path up the curves, and a slow smile chased his lips when she stopped breathing altogether.

The smell of that sweet spot at the back of her neck, the memory of the taste of the fuzzy clump of hairs there heated the blood coursing through his veins. He nuzzled her nape, outlined the perfect circle of her breast in smaller and smaller increments, taking great pains to avoid any contact with her nipple.

A low growl erupted from her lips. She arched her back.

He lifted his head. “Thirsty?”

For a second she didn’t react, and then she blinked a few times in rapid succession. Her glazed expression sharpened, and her mouth pursed. She shot him what could only be described as an I-know-your-game challenging expression.

“Not in the least. And I’m full. I think it’s time for that dancing lesson.”

“Right you are.” He lifted her to the side. “I’ll clean up. You go put on those stilettos you wore this morning.”

She frowned while she stacked the cutlery on one plate. “Why do you want me to wear three-inch heels?”

He decided to forgo the battle of the dishes and focus on winning the war of wills. “I’m six-three. You’re five-eleven. Ergo three-inch heels equals dancing cheek to cheek.”

Not to mention the other activities made conducive by their being almost equal in height. Oh yeah. Standing fucks, one-legged around-the-waist fucks, and if she could do a standing split, why then, he was definitely king of the world.

Susie grinned and near skipped into the kitchen.

He cleaned up and started the dishwasher before heading to the living room.

Joe selected his favorite playlist on the iPod. He loved big band classics. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the opening strains of “The Way You Look Tonight” sung by a new artist he’d discovered, the Italian-Canadian singer, Michael Bublé.

Normally he was a tried-and-true Sinatra fan, but the young singer had a bruisin’ bluesy voice, and the new digital recording and jazzy full-strength orchestra had wowed him on the first listen. He’d saved this song and this version for the right woman.

The click of heels preceded his mate’s entrance to the dining room. Joe had moved the furniture against the walls and rolled up the carpet. The marble floor was the perfect foil for the modified fox-trot most people called slow dancing and the song’s double-single-double-single timing demanded the more intimate hug-and-sway version. With Susie uptight about any form of dancing, he hoped to ease her into the rhythm and then keep her loose and relaxed.

She took his breath away.

“You look beautiful. Wild, carefree, ready to embrace life with outstretched arms.” He held out his hand.

Color rioted across her cheeks. The thick fringe of her black lashes fluttered. She interlaced her fingers with his.

Unable to resist, he skimmed his lips over her knuckles and reeled her in. Curved an arm about her waist, marveling at the narrow span, and leaned his forehead on hers. “Perfect. Thigh to thigh. Breast to chest. Groin to groin. Sex to sex. But best of all, mouth to mouth. We can kiss for hours without a cricked neck.”

A delightful giggle burst through her lips. “Not the seductive words I’d expected.”

He swayed to the music’s hypnotic beat, slid his hand down to her bottom, and pressed their bodies together. “When I saw you in the cafeteria earlier, the first image that popped into my head was you in those heels butt nekkid.”

“Still not seductive, but more what I had in mind.” She exhaled audibly, her taut nipples clearly visible through the translucent cream fabric. Tangling her fingers in his hair, she leaned into him, shot him a sultry, half-lidded peep, and rubbed her mound over his erection.

His cock throbbed. Age-old beast instincts snatched control. He inserted his leg between hers, keeping the feet pattern closed, forcing her to grind and cradle his erection.

“Joe.” She fisted her hands in his shirt. “Let’s go to your bed.”

Blood surged to his groin, his scrotum tightened, and his balls contracted sharply. Not since his lust-crazed teenage days had he vaulted from raring to spilling in less than nine seconds.

He gritted his teeth and calculated the pi ratio to fifteen decimal places. His pulse slowed as he concentrated, and gradually he pulled back from the edge.

“Soon,” he crooned. “I promised you a dance lesson.”

She tilted her head back, and he grinned at her pouted mouth and disgruntled frown. “I want another kind of lesson.”

“One dance lesson. As many as you like of the other.”

One brow quirked. Her lips curled into a kitten-finishing-the-last-lick-of-cream smile; she wriggled her hips side to side and paused to center her pussy at the base of his arousal. “You know the saying about a bird in the hand? If I were you, I’d get mine while the getting’s good.”

“No distractions, gypsy. You’re creaming again. Getting ready for me. Your cheeks are flushed. That elegant, arrogant nose of yours is quivering like a mare scenting the stallion flanking her rear. I want to take you like a randy stud. Get you on all fours. Lick every inch of your saucy rump. Bury my nose in your juices.”

As he whispered into her ear, grazing the tip with his lips, Joe eased them into the center of the room, not dancing per se, more moving her forward with his pelvis, and subtly grinding her pussy with his cock. He kept a firm hold on her rear, cupping the delicious thigh-ass ridge, savoring the way her muscles bunched.

“One lesson, then you can decide what happens next.”

He rested her left hand on his right cusp and laid their interlaced fingers on his left shoulder in the requisite position for any slow dance. He began the double-single-double-single steps of a beginner’s slow dance and closed his eyes in anticipation of the twirl into the magic of moving with the music as one.

Her whole body tensed. Joe peeked at her. She was focusing on her feet, and her nails dug into his shoulder.

“We’re doing a slow dance. Two steps, then a single, then another two, and then a single again. Here, let’s practice. Loosen up.” He splayed his fingers over her rear. “Listen to the music and follow my lead.”

He guided them into a sliding forward step. She pulled back. Palm to the small of her back, he urged her into another step. She strained away from him and tried to switch to his leading position.

The turn became a lurch-and-stumble side movement.

He planted his feet, knotted one hand in her hair, and locked their gazes. “Relax. Just follow my lead.”

“I don’t know what you’re going to do next.” She squinted, annoyance written plain and simple in the lines creasing her forehead. “Isn’t it supposed to be three steps? You know, one left, one right, and then turn.”

That would have them crashing to the floor in a heap of snarled legs and feet in a heartbeat.

Rigid couldn’t begin to describe her stance or spine. She leveled a narrow-eyed stare at him. “It’s simply never going to work.”

His gut cramped.

“It would be much better if I led.”

Chapter Six

The shrill of panic spiking Susie’s heart rate had the blood thundering in her eardrums.

Joe’s lips moved.

She heard nothing but the roaring in her head.

Part of her craved his dominance. Yearned to yield to him, to surrender her body to his rule, to give him leave to discover the secret fantasies she’d buried, to submit her soul to his care. But the logical Susie, the one who didn’t trust her own instincts, wanted nothing more than to run away. Pretend the last two days had never happened. Get out while the getting was good.

Before she lost her heart.

Before she lost control.

Before she turned into the type of woman she’d sworn to never become. A white wolf woman who needed an alpha to be complete.

Alpha me not.

The phrase was her mantra, her motto, her goal. It had been the reason she’d avoided males of her kind.

“This isn’t going to work,” she repeated.

No alpha for her.

“It will.”

She opened her mouth to blow him away with a slew of ready reasons of why nothing could work between them. His lips captured hers, and his tongue shattered the tiny molecule of rationality still clinging to her gray matter into a black hole.

Gawd, the man could kiss.

He had the talents of a snake charmer, but the hypnotic melody played through his lips, his touch, his inferno of an embrace. He surrounded her, enshrouded her, coated her pores with the potent, primitive pheromones of male supremacy. He engaged all her senses and stomped her waning protests into oblivion.

Not capable of a single coherent thought, not able to formulate a word, she molded her body to his. Knit her fingers through his thick curls, pressed him closer, and followed his lead. Accepting the invitation of his wicked tongue as he waltzed caresses from the roof of her mouth to the two-step exploration of her teeth, he swirled her into the blazing heat of him.

His lips enticed, entranced, with slow suckles and soft nips. His toothed exploration of her jaw had her knees wobbling. When he tongued her ear, she clung to him for support.

He nibbled the lobe gently.

A conflagration centered in her pulsing clit ignited. Her pussy folds slickened, and the creaming intensified under his languid perusal of the rim of her ear. Heated dampness coated the skin at the juncture of her thighs.

She arched her neck in mute resignation, conceding carnal defeat, and shivered in anticipation. Moaning her mounting frustration when he skipped little love bites along the slope of her neck, she grabbed his arms and dug her nails into the steel of his biceps.

His low chortle ratcheted the burn in her clit to a blaze. She squeezed her legs together, jammed her mound over his stiff cock, and growled her objections when he eased his groin away from hers. When he returned to tantalizingly thrust his leg between hers and then retreat, moving in smaller and smaller dizzying twirls, she could do nothing but mirror his movements.

He broke the contact of their fused lips.

“No,” she muttered. She crushed his shirt in her hands, rose the scant inch separating them to hold his bottom lip between her canines, and, compelled by a primordial feminine need to claim, opened her eyes.

His gaze pulled her in, spun her around and around in the thick cobwebs of passion radiating from the glowing amber of his eyes. The dark pupils had contracted into mere slivers. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t see beyond the desperate, primal desire flaring between them.

“Yes,” he commanded, bent to lock his arms under her knees, and bounded to the kitchen, cradling her high against his chest.

She noticed nothing after that, too mesmerized by the spell his eyes wove to dislodge her gaze from his, even after the jarring impact when they bumped into the foot of his bed. Before her attention could wander, he latched on to her nipple and suckled hard, wetting the blouse. The turbulent sensations, the fire of his tongue and teeth, the chill of the soaked fabric, the rough nubs of the material, all conspired to liquefy her bones.

He slid her down his body, and her feet hit the floor. She collapsed against him, legs no longer able to hold up her torso, and had no doubt of his support.

Joe locked her to him. His powerful arms enveloped her body.

“I have you.” The promise melted any remnants of resistance left in her core.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, you do.”

The admission dried all the saliva in her mouth. She stared at him, uncertain; fear clawed her throat raw.

“I have you. No one will ever harm you while I live.”

“Joe—”

Touching a finger to her lips, he murmured, “Trust the moment.”

She clung to his words.

Trust the moment.

One moment at a time she could do.

What she thought must have shown on her face, for his mouth curved into a smile so tender all the pent-up anxiety oozed from the knotted muscles in her shoulders and back.

After arranging her in the middle of the mattress, he shucked his shirt but left on his pants.

The bulge of his erection fascinated her. Her fingertips tingled. She hungered to touch him, to memorize the feel and shape of him, to breathe in his musky scent so deep and so long that from then on her each and every inhale would be branded with him.

He undressed her.

Slipped her sleeves down—inch by inch—to her elbow. His lips replaced the cotton and grazed her flesh with hot, moist, openmouthed kisses. She reached for him. “Joe. Please. I need you.”

She burned for him. The tips of her ears, her turgid nipples, a pit low in her belly. Her toes flexed and curled, and every body part smoldered and sparked.

“Soon. Soon.” He worked the sleeve free of her arm and bared a breast.

“Soon won’t come soon enough,” she wailed.

“You should know I’m adding five minutes every time you interrupt me.”