I Am The Alpha (7 page)

“As soon as I check the bathroom for windows it’s all yours, wait here.”

“Like I can go anywhere,” I muttered and jerked ineffectually at the cuff holding my wrist to the door. He took my bag and another bag or two from the trunk up to the room. I huffed out a sigh the longer and longer he took, growing impatient with waiting. When he came back down he had a bag he replaced in the trunk of the car, wore fresh clothes and his hair was wet. Asshole.

He got into the car and leaned across me to unlock my cuff, he smelled clean, like men’s soap and I swore there was nothing better than the smell of freshly showered man, which put me into an even fouler mood that I could and would even think along such lines about him, after everything so far.

“Come on, got fresh towels and things waiting for you,” he said and came around as I got out of the car.

“Didn’t have any place to chain you up there,” he said softly, “Sorry for the wait, Sugar.” I nodded, I mean should I really be surprised?

The inside of the room was a single queen bed, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by that either, except the sight of it made my mouth suddenly dry. The main light source was a dimly lit bedside lamp and what light poured from the bathroom.

“Laid your stuff out, go ahead. When you get out I want to change your bandages and have a look at those cuts.”

“Sir, yes Sir,” I mocked and gave him a snappy little salute. He snorted and laughed a little. I shut myself into the bathroom. My nightgown hung on the hook set in the back of the door. I didn’t know if I liked that but I was almost too tired to argue. Truthfully, I’d about given up. He was going to do whatever he was going to do and damned if I could stop him. I mean, he’d proven that already so yeah. William in a decent mood was better than William the Asshole so I could live with the nightgown.

I pulled back the curtain to start the shower and froze. My body wash, I mean the same exact stuff I used, shampoo and all was neatly lined up waiting for me. I felt this odd and bizarre mixture of both touched and chilled. I glanced at the sink and yep, there was my usual lotion too. It scared me how well he’d had me researched if he knew these minute and intimate details.

I sat on the closed lid of the toilet and scrubbed my face with my hands. I sat for a good few minutes while the bathroom filled with steam before I carefully began pulling and picking at the bandages, taking them off, swearing softly and hissing every few seconds. A light knock fell on the door.

“You okay?” he asked, a quiet note of concern in his voice.

“I’m fine! It just… I just hurt,” I said irritably.

“Take your time,” he called out.

I took a long and luxurious shower and tried valiantly to beat back the lingering question,
would it be my last?
To keep it from ruining the whole experience, I mean, when things were this bad it was good to focus on the little things, right?

Finally, I was as clean as I would ever be. I’d gotten all the dirt out from under my nails and I was a prune and I guess it was time to face the music to a certain extent. I wrapped my hair in a towel and carefully patted myself dry with another. Swiping a hand through the steam on the mirror, I took stock of myself.

I was deeply bruised from just under my breasts to just below my navel. I had bruising around my wrists here and there too. My feet were battered, pathetically so, and I was pale, almost ghostly, my wet hair framing my face like spun garnet. I picked up the new hair brush with the tags still attached to the handle and pulled at them, discarding the paper bits in the trash.

I used the hair dryer on the wall that the hotel provided and took my time brushing and drying my hair. If I slept on it wet it would be untamable and I was just vain enough that if I had the time to do something about that, I would. Finally I couldn’t stall exiting the bathroom any longer. I slipped on my nightgown, wished it covered more and gathered my dirty things, clutching them over my chest before I let myself out into the room.

William was standing just the other side of the bathroom door, as if he’d been waiting the whole time. He took my things from me and said, “Go sit, let me have a look at those feet.”

He’d set the first aid stuff he’d need out on the bed with an almost military precision bordering on straight up OCD and I went over and sat down next to it, putting my feet up and leaning back against the headboard. William shoved my dirty things away and packed up the bathroom while I watched from the bed. He piled everything neatly by the door and turned to look at me.

“Stay here, I’m taking this shit down to the car, you try to run and I’ll…” he trailed off and I heaved out an irritated sigh.

“Save it, please? I’ve learned my lesson,” I said somberly and he searched my face, nodding.

“Good,” he said before he went out, closing the door firmly behind him. He’d left some clothing out on the table, had gone through my things apparently and selected what I was going to wear, tomorrow. Awesome. Just freaking great. I pressed my fingertips into my eyes and lowered them just as he returned.

He looked after my feet, dabbing antibiotic ointment on the cuts and using fat rectangular Band-Aids on them. The good kind. The ones made out of cloth with the super adhesive. He’d probably bought them along with my shampoo.

“Take this,” he said and held out a half of one of the pills from the day before. God yes, it may not be a whole one, which knocked me on my ass the day before, but I would do just about anything to sleep, to forget, even just for a little while. I took it, washed it down with the proffered bottle of water and turned on my side, away from him. Curling up, curling in on myself. He settled behind me on his back and I just couldn’t help myself.

“Not afraid I’ll bolt in the middle of the night?” I asked. He sighed and turned onto his side, one of his arms curving around my middle, he dragged me back into the curve of his body, except he was right over the bruising so I yelped. He immediately stilled.

“Sorry. Is that better?” he asked, his breath puffing warm against the back of my shoulder, along the curve of my neck. My breath stilled in my lungs.

“No,” I was such a liar. There was something comforting about this, which was just so sick and twisted, I knew that. I mean I really knew that.
He’d kidnapped me!

“Sleep, Chloe,” William murmured and my eyes closed, the drug kicking in, though not as brutal as the day before. I closed my eyes and warm, held fast by my captor, I slept.

Chapter 7

William

It’s interesting what the body will do while the mind is unaware. Some people walk, talk, or eat in their sleep. Some even have sex in their sleep. But while your conscious mind is dead to the world, your unconscious mind can, and will, find ways to tell you what’s what.

When I woke, in the very early hours of the morning, it was to the feeling of something soft and warm pressed against me. I didn’t open my eyes at first. I was still far from rested. I’d had almost no sleep the night before, choosing to drive as much as possible while Chloe still slept. I’d figured the more ground I managed to cover while she was unconscious, was just that many fewer miles that I would have to fight with her which had been a plus, but not without its own cost because
fuck
was I tired…

Maybe I could just keep her hopped up on pain killers until we got there?
I thought to myself idly, but no, that would never work. I dismissed the idea and turned my half coherent thoughts to the first realization I’d noted upon rising into a state of semi-consciousness… Something soft and warm was pressed against me. What could that be? The scent of peaches that seemed to be a part of her told me the answer easily enough. Chloe. The smell of her was everywhere, surrounding me like a delicate cloud.

At six feet even I was considerably longer than her, and with her body pulled back against me, the top of her head just reached my chin and the gentle curve of her ass was pressed firmly against my groin.

Ah
.

That was nice, and what I really should have noted first upon waking. With the realization there was no stopping the immediate physical reaction of my body as my cock slowly stirred to life. Painfully so, as it tried to straighten against the confining material of my jeans. She stirred in her sleep and shifted her weight, unknowingly grinding her ass harder against me and I bit back a groan.

She’s the enemy, dumb ass,
I thought.

She’s the daughter of the enemy,
came the counter argument, unbidden from some further portion of my mind
. You know damn well you want her. You know what you’d love to do with her. So why fight it?

Because she’s still the enemy! Her family hunts and kills our kind!

Right. Keep telling yourself that. In the meantime you might want to get your hand off her tit before she wakes up.

Great. I was totally losing an argument with myself and had no idea which side was the angel versus which was the devil on my respective shoulders. I went to roll onto my back away from her, only to find my hand held fast and I blinked, surprised to realize that in my sleep my right hand had somehow worked its way under her thin lace and satin of her nightgown and the warm weight of her breast was cupped comfortably in my hand. I could feel the nub of her nipple pressed into my palm and the partial erection I had been working on suppressing? Yeah it exploded into a full blown hard on that had me wincing.

She had neglected to wear anything beneath the gown, perhaps out of habit? More likely because I hadn’t thought to put anything out for her. I didn’t think she was comfortable enough with me at this point to simply sleep in such a state of undress but…
Maybe she didn’t think she had a choice, you’ve given her so many this far. Dumb. Ass.

Fuck me and fuck this fucking nightgown! The entire garment had been pushed up by my arm to just below her breasts, leaving her completely naked from her chest, all the way down the length of her body. I admired her long, slim legs, for half a second too long before I remembered I needed to untangle myself.

My cock twitched in my pants and I fidgeted against the painful feeling until I had myself comfortably situated, pain
there
necessitated my
immediate
attention. When I stopped dealing with that, she moved again, pushing her ass back hard and the length of my dick landed naturally between the cheeks of her ass. I froze. All I would need to do was unzip my pants and I could so easily find her opening, slip into her, plunge to the hilt inside her…

Pulling
away
suddenly became an exercise of supreme will, but I managed it. I carefully worked my hand out of the top of her clothes and tried to pull her gown down without waking her but everything I tried caused her to stir in her sleep. I could just imagine the reaction if she woke to me pulling at her sleepwear so I finally just rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling with her gown still bunched around her waist. Oh well, it was still better than it’d been.

I found the idea of sleep bordering on the impossible after that. The foggy lethargy I had felt when I first woke was gone, swept away as if by hurricane force winds and the only thoughts that could occupy my mind were memories of her breast in my hand and her ass pressed against me while the scent of peaches filled my senses.

I’d had an idea of what to expect when I first came looking for Chloe Young. An image built in my head based on the information I had read on her. The real thing was very different than I had expected, however. The fact that she appeared to know nothing of what her father did might have had something to do with that. I tried to ignore it. I’d been taught to ignore it, trained to ignore things like that. An enemy was an enemy and enemies were to be eliminated. Now I found myself caring for her injuries?

I mean, logically if she were injured she couldn’t make attempts to run. But, logically, if she were injured worse, or if her feet became infected she could slow us down. I scoffed at myself quietly. I could try to rationalize, could try to justify it all I wanted but there was no denying the facts.

I didn’t help care for her feet because it was the practical thing to do. I didn’t help care for her feet to build a trust so she wouldn’t try to run off on me again. I didn’t buy her shoes and toiletries for any reason other than I was starting to
like
her, and I have a great deal of difficulty being an asshole toward people that I actually liked. There were so few of those in the world already, I couldn’t afford to push them away by being a total dick.

Chloe had a backbone, she didn’t take my shit, but she was a smart girl too. She figured something out, she didn’t back down. Didn’t shy away. Even after her attempt to bolt I could still see her trying to figure out a way to resist, to get away. I could also tell that she wasn’t willing to put anyone else in harm’s way to further her own agenda of achieving freedom. It was the diametric opposite of her father. I mean, I’m not going to lie, it was hard to believe that Chloe was the daughter of that ridged old bastard. Maybe she took after her mother? We didn’t have anything on
her
except when and how she’d died…

Whether it was the erection I was still fighting to calm, the smell of her filling my nose, or the lingering effects of sleep deprivation, I couldn’t tell you. But when the knock came at the door, interrupting my idle thoughts, I didn’t take a moment to think. I didn’t question, I didn’t wonder:
Who the fuck would be knocking on the door of our motel room at half past three in the goddamned morning?
No, I just got up to go answer it.

I moved off the bed a little too quickly, which startled Chloe awake. I noted her hurriedly pulling down her nightgown out of the corner of my eye before I grabbed the doorknob, threw back the deadbolt and pulled the door to our room open.

Sloppy. Very sloppy. So incredibly goddamned sloppy!

The fist that slammed into my face was roughly the size of a cinderblock and pretty much felt the same with all the weight and force behind it. I mean, it belonged to three hundred pounds of bone and muscle all fueled by a hardcore animalistic rage. My nose shattered, blood spattering my front and I’m pretty sure two of my front teeth were knocked loose. My head snapped back so hard that I felt and heard several loud pops in my neck and pain radiated out across my nerve endings, through my shoulders and down my arms. The kind of pain that communicated in no uncertain terms that I was well and truly fucked.