Curse of the Alpha: The Complete Bundle (13 page)

J
ulian looked
at the books on the bench next to him.

“You enjoyed a little Dostoyevsky with your breakfast this morning?”

Ainsley giggled again.

Julian pulled back the pages of
Crime and Punishment
with his thumb and let them go until he came to what he was looking for. Then he paged through carefully and stopped.

“This one makes me think of you, Ainsley: ‘We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.’”

Whoa.

“That’s very romantic,” Ainsley began carefully.

“No! Hold that thought!”

He grabbed
The Brothers Karamazov
and thumbed and paged through quickly.

“‘Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than to find, as quickly as possible, someone to worship.’”

“Oh.”

Julian put the book down.

“’Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.’”

The last quote hung in the air. Suddenly Ainsley didn’t feel like giggling anymore.

“I’ve never met anyone like you, Ainsley,” Julian breathed. “I know we just met but you’re already so important to me. Promise me that no matter what happens you won’t forget that.”

“What do you mean?”

A dark look crossed his face like a storm cloud, then vanished.

Instead of answering, he took her hand and kissed each knuckle.

His lips were so gentle. Her skin tingled and she felt a wave of giddiness. She leaned forward and ran her fingers through his hair.

He groaned and pulled her other hand into his hair. His arms went around her waist and he kissed her like there was no tomorrow.

His hair was silken between her fingers and his kiss was doing crazy things to the rest of her body. There was urgency between them now that she hadn’t felt last night.

He drew back from their kiss and pulled her up. Once again she found herself being led by the hand at top speed. She was beginning to feel like Alice in
Through the Looking Glass
. But unlike Alice, she knew just where she was headed.

Her girlhood bed seemed to embrace her as Julian tossed her on her back. The room spun a little as he stripped off his clothes. She tried to lift herself on her elbows to undress but he was on her in an instant.

“Uh-uh.” He shook his head playfully. “I’ll take care of you, Ainsley. You relax, sweetheart. Is this okay?”

“Yes, please.”

He smiled and lifted her up enough to unzip her new dress. It slid down her shoulders. He lowered her and lifted her hips to slide the dress off.

The evening air felt cool on her skin and she could feel her nipples stiffen and push against the lacy cups of her bra.

Julian sat back on his heels and took her in. He looked like a hungry man looking at a feast.

“Ainsley.”

She reached for him and he fell on her, kissing her cheeks, her neck, the tops of her breasts. In a moment he had peeled off her bra and panties and she was as naked as he was.

Her whole body felt like it was floating on a wave of delicate pleasure. She was almost overwhelmed.

She caught her fingers in his hair again. He gasped as she dragged him up to her face.

He took her lips in his own and sunk his tongue deep in her mouth, while sliding his cock against her already moist opening without penetrating her.

Her insides clenched and she cried out, grinding her hips up against him.

She could feel his smile against her lips as he dragged his cock across her again.

Her whole body ached for him to possess her. Her pussy yawned open for him and soon his stiffened member was slick with her desire.

He groaned in defeat.

She almost cried with relief as he eased himself into her.

He cradled her face in his hands and his blue eyes held hers as he found his way home. The pleasure of their joining was almost eclipsed by the intensity of his gaze. He looked happy and sad at the same time.

Ainsley felt a tug at her heart – though whether it was love or compassion she couldn’t say.

The whole thing felt like a dream. He whispered her name and she closed her eyes and melted around him immediately. It was a gentle climax- slow, easy and sweet as honey.

As soon as she opened her eyes, his jaw tensed and he came, calling her name again as he searched her eyes in desperate concentration.

She was asleep almost as soon as he rolled next to her. Her last memory was of his arms cradling her as she drifted off.

A
insley awoke in a haze
. Light bled through the sheers in her room. Her head was pounding.

Something happened last night. What was it?

Julian.

Ainsley lay back and stretched. She could feel to either side of the double bed, he wasn’t in there with her.

Her first thought was that maybe he had been the one to sneak home this time. But she could sense him somewhere in the house.

She sat up again and swung her feet to the floor, then had to stop and steady herself. She was lightheaded.

How much wine had she drunk?

Her wolf’s chemistry normally metabolized alcohol almost as fast as she could drink it.

Suddenly her wolf was alive inside her like she had called it.

Before she could think, she was crouched low to the floor. Soundlessly, she slunk to the door and into the hallway. She threw her head back and inhaled deeply.

He was close.

She closed her eyes and listened. His heart pounded away at a dull pace down the hall into her father’s study.

The wolf pushed at her bones and clawed at her skin, but somehow Ainsley held her back.

She padded softly down the hallway, unsure why she was sneaking around her own house, but knowing in her core that it was necessary.

A ghastly blue light was coming out of the doorway of the study. Ainsley thought of the electric blue glow of Julian’s eyes in her dream.

Her wolf shuddered and her scalp prickled in sympathy.

Still she crept forward. She could see Julian’s frame silhouetted in the azure glow. He was whispering something.

She let go enough to let her wolf hear him. He repeated a phrase. Not English.

“Invenies quod perierat.”

A glowing blue arrow floated in front of him, spinning lazily inside a circle.

Her wolf sensed a great wrongness. It pulled her straight into the room.

She crouched for cover and slid backward to avoid knocking over a stack of books. Her hip slammed into the chest from the third floor with a resounding thud.

No.

The strange thing in the air swung around to point at her. It looked like a compass settling on north.

Julian spun and stared.

“You?”

Ainsley didn’t stop to think about how he had betrayed her. She didn’t think about the thousands of hours of acute agony over a lifetime of resisting her wolf at every full moon. She didn’t think about her parents or past.

She let the burden of thought and control fall to her feet and shatter into a million pieces.

The wolf nudged her consciousness, offering, urging.

Ainsley assented.

Take me. Take over. Do what you were made to do.

Her body was in a rapture of anticipation. Every cell tingled and began to rearrange.

She was going to shift.

And then she was going to kill Julian.

T
he ecstasy
of transformation suffused Ainsley’s body.

Tremors of pleasure and anticipation flickered through her. Her wolf coiled itself tightly. Its release would be earth shattering.

“Subsisto lupo mutatis!” Julian lifted his hand and a lightning bolt of ghastly blue light shot from his fingertips, striking Ainsley so hard, she bounced off the walnut door like a rag doll.

Pain blossomed in the back of her head, but it was dwarfed by the agony unleashed by the evil blue light. It snaked through her body and constricted her chest. Her blood ran cold and she struggled for breath as though she had been dunked in an icy river.

Her transformation stopped dead. Her wolf ceased to howl. It wasn’t gone completely, just…hiding, from whatever this was.

Julian stared at her, frozen in horror.

Push
said a voice in her head.

With everything she had, Ainsley pushed against the light. At first nothing happened. The pain only intensified.

Push
the voice repeated, more urgently.

She gathered the rest of her strength around her and pushed again.

Something broke free inside her and the light left her body with the force of a bullet. Her whole being sung with exhilaration.

The light hit Julian square in the chest, slamming him back into the leaded glass window of the study, which exploded immediately. She had time to take in his shocked expression as his body was flung violently into the space above the rhododendrons out front.

Ainsley skidded across the floor. Most of the glass had gone out the window with Julian, but enough had fallen inside to find its way into her bare feet. She crouched in the broken window and peered into the yard below.

The rhododendrons were still shaking from Julian’s landing.

But he was gone.

She remained hunched down at the window, grasping the frame for support.

What just happened?

What had they done to each other?

Ainsley let her body slide to the floor. Blood trickled from tiny wounds on her hands and feet. She ached all over.

The beautiful glass window was ruined and her father’s study was trashed again. No matter what she did in this awful town, it didn’t matter. Everything she touched went to hell.

Why couldn’t things just be normal for a little while?

She curled up on her side.

She would allow herself to cry for two full minutes. Then she would sit up, pick the glass out of her hands and feet, and clean up the study again.

Then she would do whatever she had to do to get out of Tarker’s Hollow, quickly.

T
he screen door snapped shut
.

Ainsley’s eyes popped open.

Erik’s masculine aroma wafted up the stairs before she even heard his footsteps.

“Ainsley!” he cried in a hoarse voice.

Ainsley squeezed her eyes shut. Out of the frying pan into the fire.

He thundered into the room cursing softly under his breath.

“What happened?”

She opened her eyes reluctantly to find him crouching by her side.

“Are you okay?”

His eyes scanned her body, and he cursed again when he saw the blood on her hands and feet.

“I’m fine.”

Ainsley tried to sit up but a sliver of glass in her palm sent an electric shock of pain up her arm.

“You’re not fine. Goddamn it, Ainsley, why are you so stubborn?”

He scooped her up in his arms and carried her down the hall to her room.

“Don’t put me there.”

“Why not?”

“Because my grandmother made that quilt and I don’t want blood on it.”

He ripped the quilt off the bed and lowered her gently to the sheet.

“I’ll buy you new sheets. Just lie down and try not to move.”

He stomped out of the room.

Ainsley grabbed her cell phone from the bedside table and texted furiously.

Grace, it’s Ainsley. Can you come over please? I need you.

After a moment her phone buzzed.

B right there!

Erik came in quickly enough to send a breeze of intoxicating scent ahead of him. In spite of everything she felt a surge of excitement.

He was carrying a first aid kit.

Oh God.

No, it was a good thing.

She couldn’t draw his alpha if he was pulling glass out of her, right? All she had to do was make it until Grace got here. And not give him the satisfaction of screaming while he worked on her.

She noted with approval that he had a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a pile of old towels under his arm. He looked down at her with a gigantic scowl.

“I’ll get the glass out,” he said. “Then you can shift and heal the rest.”

“This will heal if I shift?”

“Jesus, Ainsley. Do you know anything about being a wolf?”

“I…I don’t want to shift right now.”

“Fine. We’re starting with your feet,” he growled.

Without waiting for her consent, he lifted her left foot and placed it down on a towel. He poured alcohol onto a piece of cotton and began to slowly and carefully clean each toe.

The alcohol stung a little, but mostly his touch tickled, until he hit a piece of glass. She winced but managed not to cry out.

“Okay, look away, Ainsley,” he said gently.

She averted her gaze from the scene of the crime, but the sight of the study torn apart made her feel even worse. Instead, she concentrated on his gorgeous left bicep. It flexed as he held her ankle down, sending an eddy of luscious scent to her nose.

The pain was annoying but bearable. He worked silently until her whole foot was clean and all the glass was gone.

“You’re lucky. There’s no major damage.”

He bandaged the foot and patted her ankle.

Then he placed her right foot on the towel and began the process all over again.

Ainsley could hear the birds in the garden and the sound of Erik’s heart booming at a steady pace. It was soothing. His hands were warm and gentle.

“How did you learn to do first aid?”

He stopped and looked down at her.

“I work on a construction site.”

Ainsley reddened. Of course.

He began to work on her left hand.

“So, do you want to tell me what happened?”

How could she? Ainsley didn’t know herself what happened. And the last person she wanted to tell was Erik Jensen. Besides which, he already probably knew half of it.

She snuck a glance at his eyes but he was focused on her hand.

“Well, I guess you already know how I spent the evening.”

He nodded curtly.

“I was looking for something in my dad’s study this morning and I slipped and broke the window,” she finished weakly.

He continued to clean and bandage her hand until she was pretty much convinced he had taken the bait.

Thank God.

“Ainsley, you’re very important. And you smell like a fucking peach. But that doesn’t mean I have to pretend to believe you when you lie to me.”

He paused.

Ainsley was too stunned to respond.

“Now I know it’s none of my business, but I want to know what that guy wants with you.”

“What the hell, Erik?” Anger replaced her shock and loosened her tied tongue.

“Seriously,” Erik said. “Why is he all over you the minute you get here?”

As if it was completely inconceivable that a man might simply find her attractive enough to pursue.

“I don’t know. But at least I know it’s not because he’s some power hungry
animal
like the rest of you!”

Fucking Erik Fucking Jensen. Why did he have to insult her? It was all the worse that after what just happened, Erik was
right
.

“Why did you come here anyway?” she asked, taking the conversation in another, less painful direction. “You were here, like, the second it happened.”

At least he had the decency to look embarrassed.

“I was patrolling, Ainsley.” The accusing tone was gone from his voice. “And now I’ll bet you’re beginning to understand why.”

“Who asked you to patrol? Are you spying on me?”

He breathed out slowly and then took her right hand in his and began to clean it and search for glass splinters. It didn’t tickle. But it teased at a part of her that snuffled and scratched to be let out of its cage.

“I patrol because I need to know you’re safe.”

“Why?” Ainsley demanded.

Instead of answering her he looked down at her.

His luminous eyes were tortured. The planes of his jaws were clenched tight with unsaid words. He held her hand so gently, but she could feel waves of passion coursing through him and into her.

She was trapped in his gaze for a long moment.

He turned his body toward her and leaned in slowly.

The screen door banged downstairs.