Once An Alpha (The S Files: Paranormal Investigation Agency – Book 1) (10 page)

A scorching need exploded in my core as his hands slid down over my curves and under my black shirt, quickly lifting it over my head. The cool air nipped at my skin and trailed goose bumps across me, and I knew that in that moment, there could have been a whole mob of the most evil Bakewell Springs shifters at the door and I would have felt no fear whatsoever. Only adoration and safety in Lyndon’s arms.

He trailed kisses up and down my throat, gently nipping at my shoulders as he undid the button on my pants. Our clothes were cast aside in a frenzied sweep of hands, our bodies not missing a beat as we moved, finding a rhythm that was ours and ours alone. His hands ran up my abdomen, curling over my breasts, and my lips planted kisses on his throat, fingernails digging into his skin.

Heated bliss pounded through every inch of me as his hard cock pressed against me, sliding through the wetness between my thighs. I moaned as his shaft brushed against my clit again and again, the momentary ecstasy leaving me with a pulsing need deep within.

“David,” I gasped. “Please…”

“Not yet,” he whispered. “I think I’ll make you wait. You did threaten me with a gun, after all.”

I grumbled, and he pulled away from me and buried his head between my legs, his velvet hot tongue dancing across me as he held my legs down and apart. My body writhed and struggled, but he held me in place with his strong arms as his tongue lashed against my clit. Groan after groan escaped my lips, a fiery, aching climax building deep inside of me.

He looked up at me with passion-filled eyes that burned right through me, brows creased with passion as he lowered his head and continued to lap at me. He slowly slid a finger inside of me, gently stroking deep within my pussy. His magical touches sent electricity coursing up and down my spine with every touch against me, and he slid another finger in. He moved the fingers inside of me, pressing against my inner walls, my legs and arms twitching from pleasure as he stretched me out and hit that sensitive spot on the front. I knew he’d been trying to tease me and make me wait, but I was already on the verge of climax.

“Oh god… I’m so close,” I whispered in desperation, my hands tangled in fistfuls of sheets.

“I want you to come. Now,” he ordered.

As he spoke, he drove himself deep inside me without warning, the immediate sensation of fullness instantly sending me over the brink. I moaned with ardent pleasure as my body contracted around his girth, riding waves of heavenly pleasure as he pushed inside me. On his knees, he lifted my hips up to meet his as he slammed himself deep inside of my pussy, my legs wrapped tightly around him.

With every withdrawal and reentry of his cock into me, I gripped my muscles tighter against him. The cold air bit at my nipples, and I cried out as another climax swelled inside of me with every hit of his cock against that sweet spot on my front wall.

Our lovemaking wasn’t just natural, it was absolutely animalistic. My legs draped around his body as he settled his weight over me and took one of my stiff nipples into his mouth, his stubble scratching against the delicate skin of my breast as he teased my nipple with his tongue.

“Fuck,” I moaned. “Do it harder…. please!”

He slid one hand between my legs and massaged my clit as he thrust himself further and harder inside of me.

“Don’t come again until I tell you to,” he murmured, sweat beading on his brow and upper lip. I was trying so hard to not explode again, but just thinking about not being allowed to come yet made me get closer and closer to the edge. He drove his hips against me again and again, alternating his fingers from slow, steady movements against my clit to quick, frantic strokes. My toenails dug into the hard muscles of his back, and I bit hard into my lower lip to keep from screaming out loud and waking up the entire motel block.

“Come, baby,” he ordered, pounding back into my throbbing depths. I cried out as the heat of his orgasm overpowered me, and he pressed his weight down on top of me as we struggled to catch our breath through the heated bliss. My pussy clenched around him as I rode out my orgasm, and his cock jerked within me as he spurted his hot release deep inside.

He pushed a mess of black curls out of my face and gently kissed the tip of my nose before pulling out of me and rolling over to lie next to me. His fingers entwined with mine, and we laid there for what felt like forever, lost in our deep breaths and slowly-steadying heartbeats.

“Wow,” I said, my entire body still humming with pleasure five minutes later. “That never gets any less amazing.”

“Tell me about it,” he said.

We cleaned ourselves up, and I was about to hop in the shower when there was a knock at the door.

“I still don’t have a shirt on,” Lyndon said, hunting around for wherever I’d thrown his clothes. “You get it. But be careful.”

I quietly walked over to the door and looked through the peephole, and then curiously opened the door.

“It’s…
you.
What are you doing here?”

Chapter Twelve

I recognized her from the park the other day. Rachel’s mother, a slim brunette with worry lines creasing her forehead, was standing at my door.

“You’re Rachel’s mother,” I said. She nodded, and I repeated my earlier question. “What are you doing here?”

She glanced nervously over her right shoulder and then her left. “Can I come in?” she asked.

The woman was evidently scared of being seen, so I ushered her inside before peering back out into the motel parking lot to make sure no one had seen her come in. Lyndon sat on the bed, still shirtless, and she didn’t even take a second glance at him. Wow. A red-blooded woman not taking notice of his taut muscles; she must have been really frightened.

“Do you want a drink or anything?” I held out a bottle of water, and she shook her head.

“I’m really sorry to just show up like this,” she said. “My name is Dora Hall. You met my daughter the other day, and you were asking her questions about my grandmother, Heidi Urquhart.”

I nodded. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Hall, but I thought your daughter might be able to help me track down your grandmother. We needed to talk to her as part of our investigation.”

I showed her my badge, and she nodded.

“I know. I thought as much,” she said. “It’s fine. I know you went to see my grandmother.”

“Yes. And we’re both very sorry for your loss,” I said, gesturing for her to sit on a small chair next to the coffee table. I sat across from her, and Lyndon finally located his shirt and joined us.

“I…I don’t know where to begin,” she said, hazel eyes widening. “I came to you because I was fairly sure you were FBI, and I assumed you were investigating all the disappearances around here over the years.”

“That’s right. So what can we do for you, Mrs. Hall?”

Her legs quivered in her seat, and she nervously picked at a fingernail. “Like I said, I’m not sure where to begin. But I can’t trust anyone in this town anymore. I don’t even know if I’m right about any of this; it’s just a suspicion I’ve had for years, and it’s been growing and growing. And then my grandmother just happened to die straight after you went and spoke to her.”

“How do you know about that?” Lyndon asked sharply.

“I ran into Julie from the home at the grocery store. She mentioned that my ‘cousin’ had gone to visit her, and then I remembered you talking to Rachel in the park the other day. So I put two and two together and figured you were some sort of government agents.”

“You’re a shifter, aren’t you?” Lyndon said, narrowing his eyes.

“Yes. And so are you,” she replied coolly. “I can smell your wolf. My husband is a wolf as well.”

“Cat, huh?” he replied with a wry smile.

“Yes,” she said. “I always loved cats, so I chose it as my spirit animal.”

“What did you want to tell us?” I asked, before they went off on some big shifter tangent together.

She reached into her handbag and yanked out a thin pale yellow cardboard folder. Placing it on the coffee table, she looked back up at us.

“I’ve had my suspicions for years now. I think there’s something strange and wrong going on in this town, and I don’t know who I can talk to about it. Sometimes I don’t know if I can even trust my own husband. It’s driving me crazy.”

We leaned back in our chairs, waiting for her to get to the point.

“Ever since I was a kid, I noticed something odd about my Grandma. Whenever we asked her for stories about how she and Grandpa met, she was vague or changed the subject. That in itself isn’t all that weird, but then sometimes her stories would change. Like where she grew up. And sometimes it would take a while for her to respond to her name when we called her. Things like that. Small stuff, but I noticed. And then in high school my friends and I were looking into the case of the hikers that went missing back in the fifties, and I noticed one of them looked a lot like her when she was younger. Darker, curlier hair, but very similar.”

“We noticed the same thing,” I interjected. “Your daughter looks very similar to her. That’s what made me suspect something in the first place.”

“I know it’s crazy,” she continued. “But I got this idea in my head that she was one of the missing hikers. And then I started to dig around a bit more. I looked through old newspaper articles that had pictures of people who’d gone missing, and tried to match them up with people I know, or at least know of.”

Lyndon looked over at me. “Christ, she’s basically been doing our job for us.”

“Anyway, I only came up with a little bit,” she said, opening the yellow folder. “See this woman here?”

We leaned forward and looked at what appeared to be a faded old family photo, taken at some sort of child’s birthday party. Dora pointed to a woman with straight chestnut brown hair.

“See her? She was our neighbor when I was growing up. Her name was Anita. I think she was around the same age as my mother. She’d apparently moved to the town in 1977. Now look at this.”

She leafed through the photos and pulled out a photocopied version of an old newspaper article. It was about a female hiker who’d gone missing in late 1976.

“Aside from the hair and also the glasses, her features are very similar. And I know for a fact that she used to dye her hair. I remember because my mother remarked on it once when she’d just arrived home from the hair salon. She said she saw Anita there getting her blonde roots covered up, and she thought it was strange because so many women
want
to have naturally blonde hair. And there she was covering it up. And as for the glasses; well, she could’ve got contacts. If it was her.”

I nodded slowly. “This is exactly the kind of stuff we’ve been looking for ourselves. Unfortunately, a lot of records seem to have been destroyed. Someone at the police department told us that the town archives were mostly destroyed in a fire a while back.”

She nodded. “Seems very convenient, doesn’t it? Don’t even bother checking with the local newspaper. The only reason they gave me anything from the back issues was because I told them I needed to help my kid out with a school history project. But they don’t know you, so good luck with that… Anyway, there’s more.”

Dora showed us four more women; all in photos that she must have gathered from friends or family. All had apparently moved to town not long after a missing hiker had been reported, and all looked similar to the corresponding missing women.

“Can we talk to any of these women?” I asked.

“Most of them are no longer with us,” she replied. “Anita died of cancer a few years back. Beth Host was in a car accident with her husband and kids, and I’m not sure about Rhiannon Baker. But her…” she pointed at a mousy brunette, in a photo taken at the local park. “This is Callie Winter. She has a son the same age as Rachel, and I took this photo a few years ago at Rach’s seventh birthday party. I was surprised she even showed up. She usually keeps to herself. Nice enough woman, just very shy. The only time anyone ever sees her is when she drops her kids off at school or goes grocery shopping.”

“There’s probably a very good reason she keeps to herself,” Lyndon mused. “Mrs. Hall, you have no idea how much this helps us. But what exactly do you think is going on?”

She hesitated for a moment. “I don’t know. But what I do know is that the birthrate for males in this town is a fair amount higher than females. There’s always been more men in this place than women. So while I know this sounds outrageous, I thought that maybe the missing women were being taken by the shifter population and ‘given’ to unmated males.”

“And the missing men?”

She looked down at her lap. “I don’t know. I’m not sure I even want to know.”

“You’ve done really well,” I said, reaching across and giving her hand an encouraging squeeze. “Really, Mrs. Hall. Thank you.”

“I’m just so scared,” she said. “For myself and my children. If this is something that’s been going on for years, then a lot of people must know. But they aren’t doing anything about it! They’re just letting it happen. It makes me wonder how many people are involved, and what they’d do to protect their secret.”

“We’ve been wondering the same thing ourselves,” Lyndon replied.

She returned the photos to her handbag and stood up. “I really should be going. My husband thinks I just went out to lend a friend some sugar.”

I rose to my feet and led her to the door. “Mrs. Hall, if at any point you feel unsafe, please call us,” I said, scribbling down my cell phone number for her on a Chinese food menu.

She folded the menu and put it in her jacket pocket, and then gave me an anxious smile. “Thank you. If I find out anything else, I’ll call you.”

“Yes, please do that.”

With that she departed, and once the door was closed I turned to Lyndon with an incredulous stare.

“We were right. Some shifters here are kidnapping women and forcing them to mate with them.”

“The operative word being ‘some’,” Lyndon replied. “She’s a shifter, and she clearly has no idea what’s going on. So obviously it’s not a conspiracy known to all.”

“So what do we do?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I’m not sure yet… but I think the first thing we should do tomorrow morning is go and speak to Mrs. Callie Winters.”