Wolf and Prejudice (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 2) (11 page)

“No,” she called back, even as she felt her heat release at just the sound of his voice. The smell of her arousal filled the room like a canister of tear gas, and she squeezed her nostrils shut, clamping her hand over her nose.

Outside the door, she heard him curse. “Alisha, I can smell you. You need me. Let me in.”

“No.” But her refusal sounded weak, even to her ears. She buried her nose in her knees and for only the second time ever, tried to reign in her wolf, as opposed to unleashing it on anyone who pissed her off.

However, it was all for naught. The door had a human lock and Rafe had inhuman strength. There was a crash when the door hit the wall, then the bathroom’s lights came on overhead. Rafe came to stand over her, now dressed in a pair of flannel pajama bottoms that did little to hide the massive erection underneath them. She shrank away from him, turning her face to the wall, so the sight of him wouldn’t trigger her wolf.

“Alisha…” she heard him say behind her. Then the sound of the bath’s knob being turned, and a few seconds later, warm water, began to rise around her huddled body.

“You’re probably sore,” Rafe said, above her. “You should take another bath.”

“How long?” she asked, keeping her face to the wall. “How long was I like that?”

“Three days,” he said. He poured Epsom salt into the bath for her. “It would have been less, but it took me a while to realize you were on what my town doctor called ‘wolf pilot.’”

Shame coursed through her and she asked him, “There are so many wolves you could have mated with. Why me? To get back at me for writing my book about Chloe? Is this some kind of punishment?”

The water switched off and his voice sounded grim when he answered, “No. I don’t consider mating with you for life ‘some kind of punishment.’ If it was, I’d be a very stupid king.”

She felt him bend down next to her, and she jerked away, not wanting to give in to him even though she knew on a practical level she would literally die if she didn’t join with him. Her nervous system was pumping an inordinate amount of adrenaline through her body in anticipation of being mated. If she didn’t have sex with Rafe, her heart would give out—the science of the current situation was cold and hard and not on her side in this. But she couldn’t bear to look at him right now, much less…

“It’s okay,” he said behind her. She heard the sound of him swishing something in the bath water, then he pressed a warm washcloth against her back. She didn’t realize just how badly she’d overworked her poor muscles until he started massaging them, kneading them with the small towel.

“My mom used to do this for me after full moon nights when I was a puppy,” he told her. “I’d let my wolf take control and run myself ragged, not thinking that my human would have to pay for it later.”

The massage felt so good, she lowered her knees, uncurling her body, so as to better enjoy his ministrations. But then the cloth moved to her breasts…

And she froze, wanting to knock his hand away and shield her body, which was so much larger than Chloe’s, from his sight. Rafe’s body… memories of her wolf complimenting him on it made her cringe. Rafe was all hard, lean muscle, like Louis-Ernest Barrias’s statue of Spartacus come to life—he clearly worked out on the regular. Whereas she was more like an African fertility sculpture, all breasts and hips and thighs—same medium but miles apart.

“I’ve seen every inch of your body over the last few days and it’s looked beautiful from every angle.”
The words appeared in her head as water from the cloth dripped down onto her dark aureolas.
“I know you’re embarrassed right now. I can feel it coming off you, and I want you to stop. You don’t have anything to be embarrassed about.”

Somehow it was easier to receive words from him this way, as a voice in her head, as opposed to the flesh and bone werewolf behind her.
“My father arranged this, didn’t he?”
she said in his head.
“After Chloe left with the Viking, you came here, and my father practically gave me to you. You don’t think I should be embarrassed about that? And then I…”

The image of herself writhing around on her office floor, begging him to take her, hit like a tsunami, even as she emitted another spray of heat into the warm water, which only seemed to exacerbate her condition. It was too much, to want him like this, despite knowing she was little more than a consolation prize, a deal struck after his plans to marry for love didn’t work out. That was when Alisha Ataneq, who had stood up to the Lupine Council for a scholarship, who had abdicated her title, who had told Rafe where he could stuff his edicts, all without tears, began crying uncontrollably.

The water splashed, and he was in the tub with her, pajama bottoms and all, pulling her into his arms. “You are my queen,” he said out loud. “You never have to be embarrassed.”

“I didn’t behave in a way very befitting of a queen,” she said, sniffling into his shoulder.

“You’re my queen, so however you behave is automatically befitting,” he said.

“But the only reason I’m your queen is because my father offered you an alliance. It’s like Julius Caesar breaking off his engagement to a plebian girl so he could marry a patrician.”

He put a finger on her lip. “Alisha, with all due respect to your doctorate in history, there’s one thing you need to understand going forward: I’m not pulling a Julius Caesar. I want you. And
that’s
why you’re my queen.”

Her wolf cheered at the news that she wasn’t merely a pawn and clamored forward to mate with Rafe again. “Yes, but…”

“
I want you
,” Rafe repeated inside her head, so fervently that she couldn’t help but believe him. “
I want you
.”

Her human fell back then, and her wolf came forward, but just as she was about to let it take over, she heard Rafe’s voice inside her head.
“Stay with me, Alisha.”

Water swirled against her as he parted her with the hood of his cock.
“Stay with me,”
he said again, keeping her human tethered even as he gave her wolf exactly what it wanted, pushing into her until he was buried inside her all the way to the hilt. She braced herself for him to sink his teeth into her shoulder, that painful but somehow pleasurable bite was one of the few things she remembered clearly from the past three days.

But he didn’t bite her. And he didn’t take his eyes off of her as he started moving inside her, creating ripples in the water as he rolled his hips into hers with long, deliberate strokes.

“I want you,”
he said, keeping his hazel eyes steady on hers.
“I want all of you.”

And he got all of her. Despite the embarrassment and the crying and the intelligence that should have put her above such things, her human locked in, hypnotized by his luminous eyes, by his toast-colored skin. By the way he easily kept them both upright, bracing one arm like a steel beam against the back of the tub, while the other kept her pinned tight against his body, making it so she couldn’t fall backwards, no matter how hard he stroked into her.

She began frantically bouncing up and down, desperate to feel the pulsing knot at its base go hard inside of her. Soon she fell out of rhythm with him, and she cried out when he crushed her to him with both arms, making it so she couldn’t unconsciously work herself on his dick.

“Nuh-uh, stay with me, baby
.”

“Rafe,” she moaned out loud. Her human scratched at his wet back, just as frustrated as her wolf.

“I like your wolf, Alisha,” he said as he began slowly moving inside of her again. Revving her back up with a casualness that belied the cloud of heat surrounding them. “But I want all of you.”

As a sweet, delicious orgasm coursed lazily over her entire body, Alisha couldn’t help but admire how much control his human had over his wolf. But then he said, “And Alisha, my wolf wants all of you, too.”

That was when he started moving just as frantically as she had before. The water splashed angrily around them as he bit down on her shoulder and drove himself into her, and Alisha realized Rafe was showing her something a properly trained alpha was never supposed to let his queen see: his wolf, fully unfettered by the human inside of him.

His teeth tightened on her shoulder and he exploded inside of her with a muffled howl, his knot swelling and locking him into her pussy, like a final note in a dramatic opera. Then he lifted his head, his eyes glittering with triumph. “We’re mated. Finally. Officially. You and me, Alisha.”

He looked so happy she couldn’t help but smile back, despite the fact that they’d both been heavily manipulated by her unconscionable father.

She’d deal with her father later. Rafe Nightwolf wanted her now. And in that moment, his wanting her was all that mattered.

11

T
hirty
minutes later the King of Colorado made Alisha an omelet.

“I’m still shocked you cook,” she said, watching him crack six eggs into her never-used frying pan with the ease of a trained chef.

“This is nothing. If I wasn’t rushing to get something in your stomach before your next heat cycle, I could go out, shoot a rabbit, and make us a four course meal using the ingredients in your fridge and maybe some of those plants from the herb garden I’m smelling in your next door neighbors window.” He threw her a wry smile. “Six years with Chloe. I picked up a few things up.”

She grimaced. “Well, I hope my dad let you know I couldn’t cook when he gave me to you. I can barely toast bread. I’m definitely not Chloe.”

He gave her a quiet, intense look. “I know you’re not Chloe.”

And Alisha shifted in her chair. “So about that book I was going to write.”

He turned off the stove.

“
Alisha,
” he said inside her head.
“I know you’ve somehow decided I’m the big bad wolf in the Chloe situation, but this is our first mating, a sacred ritual according to both the Eskimos and the Cheyenne. Can we save the arguments until after our mating is complete?”

Part of Alisha wanted to say no. She had questions, urgent ones, like where would they live? When would she be able to finish up her post-doc work? And how was he going to deal with the fact that she had no intention of abandoning her Chloe research? And that was before they even got into child rearing philosophies. Alisha didn’t want their children to end up in arranged matings, and she needed some assurances from Rafe.

But the other part of Alisha had to acknowledge Rafe looked really cute in her never-used Angela Davis apron, and she was hungry, and her wolf was definitely not in the mood to argue with her mate.

“So,” she said out loud. “How about them Broncos?”

And his answering smile, like sunshine during an Alaska gloom, was enough to quell any fears she had about the future of their relationship—at least for a little while.

They did manage to eat before her next heat cycle, and they even relocated from the table to the couch where they engaged in a discussion about Alaska and Colorado’s long history of being business allies in both the human and wolf communities, before moving on to several other topics that didn’t involve Rafe’s ex-fiancée or the book Alisha planned to write about her.

As it turned out, Rafe watched the military channel a lot, and like most historians, Alisha knew a lot about war. So to her surprise, unlike when she had been a precocious college student and he’d been the reserved alpha prince, they actually had stuff to talk about. As they compared the Sioux and Cheyenne tribes history of battle with that of the Zulus, she found herself thinking she hadn’t had a conversation this good, since—well, since her last conversation with Chloe. And, she was actually a little disappointed when she got hit with another heat cycle.

Rafe must have been disappointed, too. He cupped her face and said, “Tell me more about Shaka Zulu tomorrow morning?”

“Sure,” she said, a little surprised he’d made the request. As terse and rigid as he had seemed when he’d been engaged to Chloe, she never would have guessed this side of Rafe existed—warm and considerate, and seemingly interested in her for reasons beyond who her father was.

He slowly untied the vintage silk kimono she’d put on after their last mating and removed it from her body, gently and without drama. Next he took off his own clothes in the same way. Easy, breezy, like they were regular humans, not werewolves, one of whom would literally die if she wasn’t mated.

His eyes met hers, and she could see the message of “stay with me” in them even though he didn’t say the words out loud or inside her head.

So she did. And when he placed her knees over his shoulders and spread her open, lapping up her heat, and dragging his tongue over her clit in a way that made her back arch, she collared her wolf and didn’t let her take over again, no matter how much she wanted to.

Though she did say to him inside his head,
“I don’t think I can take this much longer without releasing my wolf.”

He didn’t answer, just kept lapping at her, so she repeated herself, this time out loud. He finally left her clit with a soft chuckle, lowering her legs to rest around his waist as he made his way up her body. Then he kissed her for the very first time, and it was glorious. She could taste her heat on his tongue, so heady it intoxicated her, and she wondered how he could have tasted her like that for so long without releasing his wolf.

But he held on to his beast, palming the outside of her thigh as he pushed into her with so much care, she felt like the most delicate of flowers as opposed to a five-foot-ten she-wolf with a plus-sized attitude to go along with her plus-sized wardrobe.

“You can go harder,”
she said inside his head, after he began carefully moving inside of her.
“I won’t break.”

“You’re sore.”

“I don’t care.”
And she looked at him, bold as brass.

His eyes darkened for a moment, and she could tell he was tangling with his wolf, struggling not to unleash it inside of her. But in the end, he didn’t increase his pace. He rode her like a gentle wave, like the Gulf of Alaska on a summer day. Then he made her burn, stoking the embers within her, until her body was on fire for him. She found herself rolling into his thrusts, her breasts arched against his chest, until she came with one sweet, agonizing burst of pure pleasure.