Alpha Domination (Alpha Wolf Book 1) Read online

  I’m trembling so badly that, when he calls out, I come with him, my body a quivering climactic mess of fevered cries.

  His forehead rests against the hollow of my shoulder. Sweat slicks our bodies together. Hot breath rushes across my chest, puckering already taut skin. I feel physically and emotionally raw, my limbs and heart wrapped around the man before me.

  Sense begins to peter in. I clutch Nathan, still, to me, trying to push away the intruding thoughts, but they come anyway, reminding me that we’ve just had mind blowing sex in Hattie’s kitchen with her blood all over the floor. An act that he’d rejected any idea of committing once more.

  I kiss Nathan’s neck and stroke his hair. He still has his eyes closed, drawing in steadier and steadier breaths. My heart is clenching. I want to crawl inside his head to hear what he’s thinking, to find out what he feels in the aftermath of this incredible intensity. Instead, like a coward, I murmur his name and kiss his throat, avoiding the pain of certain rejection.

  Slowly, he withdraws, lingering on the moment of our connection, then mutters something about getting cleaned up, leaving me bare breasted and sans underwear on the kitchen counter in a room of chaos and blood.

  I can hear my own pants in the silence.

  “You weren’t going to do that again,” I whisper, half to myself.

  After a few moments collecting myself, I stumble to Hattie’s bedroom where I borrow a blouse and a pair of jeans. My gaze crosses the room, briefly wondering how many times Nathan and Hattie have screwed in there. Did he make love to her like he makes love to me...?

  I catch sight of myself in a sliver of mirror. My lips are puffy and my eyes are bright. I look like a woman in love.

  My heart clenches again.

  I can’t fall for him. I can’t.

  The familiar tearing sound of duct tape draws me back to the catastrophic living space. Nathan is taping the battered brute to a chair, scarlet seeping over silver.

  I hesitate in the doorway. The werewolf spits blood at me, which earns him another slug to the face from Nathan. I edge closer. Nathan yanks the bastard’s chin until they’re eye to eye, warning him that he’s skating on thin ice.

  Dan guffaws through his own blood. “Soft on this bitch, Nathaniel? You can’t keep her. We made her for us.”

  Nathan steps back and I can see the tension ripple in his back.

  “Maybe if you hadn’t been such a pain the ass, Caleb would have let you join our pack.”

  “Caleb is a desperate little mutt with no idea how to really command a pack. He thinks securing you a bitch is a way to gain your loyalty, which just shows what a bottom of the barrel ‘alpha’ he really is.”

  “Still think you’re an alpha, eh?” Dan chuckles, blood and spit dribbling down his chin.

  Nathan’s fists clench and an invisible wave of something washes the room, weakening my knees. An instinctive, submissive whimper curls in Dan’s throat, his eyes fixing on Nathan.

  My hand grasps the door frame, my whole body swaying from the unexpected ripple of power. It dissipates slowly, but not before Nathan cocks his head; his expression unreadable from where I’m standing.

  Something akin to awe unfolds in my gut. It finally strikes me that Nathan doesn’t need a pack to be an alpha; there’s something inside him that commands it without a constant cluster of wolves as proof.

  Shallow breaths wash over me. I grip the door jamb, feeling my knees threaten to buckle. He could have used that power to force me to submit the first night we’d had sex, but he didn’t.

  Had he wanted me to fight him?

  To want him...?

  “Tell me where Caleb has taken my friend,” Nathan commands.

  Dan’s piggy eyes are glinting with fear and his hands are trembling beneath blood and duct tape, but he still spits a solid, “Fuck you.”

  “Fine, we can play it that way. Georgie?”

  I stand to attention, pushing myself away from the door frame. Nathan hasn’t turned to look at me, but I can feel his thoughts stretching my way like a searchlight in the dark.

  “Get me a knife from the drawer.”

  Sweat prickles Dan’s brow as I pass him and head for the kitchen units. I rake around three drawers for Nathan’s request. My hand shakes when I pluck out a serrated meat knife. What is he going to do with it? And do I really want to know?

  I recall the moment back in the woods when Bobby was going to maim Nathaniel. My gaze flickers across to the man that I’ve been screwing and I realise he’s a beast just like them. He watches me with his lips pressed quietly together, mussed hair falling across his brow.

  I wonder if he saw the momentary fear play across my face. He extends a hand towards me, waiting for the knife. I look down at the blade quivering in my grasp.

  “Nathan...?”

  “This piece of shit was going to hurt you, Georgie,” his voice is disarmingly even and reasonable, but there’s a flash of fire in his gaze that makes some part of me tremble. “He and his friends thought they could do what they wanted with you without consequence. There are certain things you don’t do. As a man and as a wolf. And turning a woman for your own sick pleasure is one of them.”

  “What... What are you planning...?”

  “I’m going to find out where Hattie is.”

  I hesitate, glancing at the bloodied werewolf strapped to the chair. “He’s not going to tell you, Nathan.”

  “If you give me that knife, he will.”

  “In your dreams, shit for brains,” Dan snivels through crimson. “Better listen to that sweet pussy, ’cause–”

  Nathan’s fist loosens some of the werewolf’s teeth in a move so fast that I barely have time to flinch. My mouth rounds in a panicked gasp. Dan is dribbling blood and busted crowns.

  As if nothing untoward has happened, Nathan calmly takes the knife from my trembling hands and scoops up a rag from the floor that he stuffs in Dan’s mouth.

  Then the knife tears through the werewolf’s little finger, screeching against bone as Nathan saws raggedly into the flesh.

  Blood pumps into my ears. I take a step back.

  Nathan is yelling for the wolf to tell him where Hattie is, crimson blooming across his knife and the floor as Dan’s body shakes. The rag barely withholds his squeals.

  My stomach flips unhappily and I lurch drunkenly in search of the bathroom, barely making it before I spill my guts into the porcelain throne. Cold sweat matts my brow.

  When I’ve finished emptying my guts, I crawl into a corner by Hattie’s laundry basket, hugging my knees to my chest and trying to ignore the sounds from the other room.

  How many of Dan’s fingers will Nathan remove? What if it’s all of them and he still won’t talk? What will he do to him then?

  An hour later, the beast that is my lover comes searching for me. His eyes sparkle with what I can only think is the thrill of spilled blood, but his lips are drawn. He stands in the doorway of the bathroom, looking down at me crouched in the shadows.

  “Is he...?”

  Nathan rolls a shoulder. “You can’t leave a dog like that alive, Georgie.” He sighs like it’s just another day at the office. My stomach rolls. “You have to send a message unless you want every mutt heading this way to take a cheap shot and steal your territory.”

  “So... you killed him?”

  “I did what I had to do.” The line of his mouth is grim, like he expected me to be more grateful than that. All I can think about is flesh tearing and the way that Nathan seemed so unfazed by it all. “The more wolves left alive that know you exist, the less likely you’ll be able to go back to any kind of normal life.”

  I swallow. He’s resolute that he’s done the right thing, but I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with him killing in my name. Just like I’m not comfortable with his reason for screwing me on the countertop. “What about Hattie?”

  He shrugs again. “You were right. He wouldn’t talk.”

  “So, you killed him anyway?”

&nb
sp; Nathan’s voice is hard and blank. “He knew where this would lead him.” He pauses, then offers me his hand. I look at his outstretched fingers, hesitation washing over me. His hands are clean, but I know they’ve been tainted by blood. “Come on. I need your nose to find her.”

  My gaze moves to his face. Will I become as blasé as he is about killing? Is that what happens when you really merge with your wolf side?

  A blast of hot air rushes past his lips. His expression is calm and patient, but I can see flecks of blood on his cheek. “You know that I would have had to kill him eventually to stop him from coming after you, right?” His eyes are bright, convincing. “Alive, he was a threat. He was always going to be a threat.”

  I hesitate. “You’re going to kill Caleb when you find him, too?”

  “Yes.” Nathan’s eyes gleam. His head cocks knowingly to one side. “Or would you prefer I left him alive?”

  A shiver spills down my spine as I recall my encounter with him in the woods. I shift uncomfortably, glancing once more at Nathan’s outstretched hand.

  Did I really think this was going to end any other way? That Nathan or I could talk them around? And why am I so surprised by the way he’s murdered Dan when I saw him kill another werewolf and then run over the body the same night we had sex for the first time?

  Because that first murder was different. It was self-defence. But this is something else. This was in cold blood. Except...

  I know Nathan is right.

  I know in my heart that Caleb won’t stop coming until he’s got what he wanted.

  “What did you mean about my nose?” I murmur.

  “You found me in the woods by scent, right? Twice?”

  I nod, slowly.

  “So, you’re going to track Dan’s scent for me, seeing as you’re so damned determined to be here, dahlin.”

  On Track

  Nathan puts his leather jacket around my shoulders. Snow speckles the air, landing on my lashes. I can see my breath pluming before us. He squeezes my hand with his warm paw. His other brushes the back hem of his shirt in a surreptitious motion I sense is him checking for his gun.

  “Why can’t you track where he’s been?” I ask, the tension and icy air making my voice brittle.

  I’m still thinking about Dan’s partially dismembered body back in Hattie’s apartment. Nathan had rolled him up in separate bin liners, stating he’d return to clean up later. He’d said it so normally, like it was just another item on his to do list, that it had sent a chill down my spine.

  Nathan’s paw squeezes gently as we pass a human in the street. “There aren’t a lot of us who can find a scent in weather like this,” he replies as if he’s talking about something more mundane. “You must have quite a good sense of smell to have been able to find Hattie’s apartment. And to have found me when I was...”

  He hesitates as if he knows I don’t want to think about him bloodied and beaten in the snow, again.

  “Before. So, we might as well use that if I can’t convince you to stay out of this.”

  My nostrils flare and I signal to Nathan to turn the corner. If I’d stayed back at the cabin, I wouldn’t have realised that Nathan had no qualms about being as savage as the wolf he could become. It should have struck me sooner and, I guess, I’d seen the truth the night we’d made desperate love to each other, but it had taken until now for me to acknowledge that the darkness in him was much more dangerous than the average man.

  “Why should I stay at home when you keep pointing out how much this is all on me?”

  “Home?”

  I glance across to find him frowning and wetting his lips at my slip.

  I swallow. “I meant your dungeon in the woods.”

  Nathan chuckles as we step off the kerb and head over the thinly blanketed asphalt. My heart lightens, recognising the same glitter in his eyes, the same softness, that had crept in when we’d talked beside the open fire. “Home for dungeon is a pretty big slip, Georgie.”

  His mirth dies like embers growing cold and he tugs me to face him with the air of deep seated regret, his expression a tangle of caution and pain. The easy air between us has faded. When I look up at him, I find his jaw stiffened with a serious mask. His eyes glitter, taking in my face, thoughts unfathomable.

  “When this is all over, we go back to our lives, remember?”

  My lips press together. Barbed wire wraps around my heart.

  “You and Carrick,” he continues determinedly, my boyfriend’s name like arsenic on his tongue. “Me. Hattie.”

  I hesitate and nod.

  But as we step away, still following Dan’s faded scent, I realise that even seeing Nathan’s beastly side hasn’t swayed the desperate hope I’m trying to bury. The hope that maybe he might entertain something more between us.

  Once I’ve gotten my house in order...

  “Where now?” he asks as we stop at the mouth of an alleyway. And then the breeze blows towards us, bringing with it a stronger brush of aromas. Something flashes in Nathaniel’s eyes.

  The vague tang of blood.

  Nathan pushes me behind him, taking the lead. We head into the alley, sandwiched between two wooden clad buildings with no open exit. Rubbish is piled up on the left side, overflowing from the dumpster. There’s a door on the right, weathered enough that it almost resembles the shoddy cladding surrounding it.

  Dan’s scent is strong here, but so are Caleb and Hattie’s.

  Worse still, is the disturbing smell of blood.

  I hold my breath as Nathan draws his gun. His gaze washes over me.

  “Don’t bother telling me to stay put,” I whisper, sensing the warning coming.

  “Georgie–”

  “No. Two of us versus him is better odds. You have to admit that.”

  “Fine,” he mutters through gritted teeth, his gaze licking up and down my body. “But you stick behind me.”

  Nathan carefully cracks open the door. I press close behind him, so close I can hear his breathing.

  We creep inside. The room is a musty, back storeroom with an adjoining door. Boxes are stacked up to the ceiling on dark racking. Nathan moves carefully forward and edges open the entrance to the main building. Dust shimmers within thin beams of light in the space beyond.

  It’s a pool hall. And there are three pairs of tables between us and Caleb.

  My heart hammers in my chest as Caleb cracks the safety off his gun and points the barrel to Hattie’s temple, his gaze on us. She’s laid out on the pool table in front of him, her skin ashen and her eyes shuttered, deathly pale against the green felt. Nathan’s breath catches. His gun is trained on Caleb’s heart, already.

  I can barely make out the minute rise and fall of Hattie’s chest.

  “Dan?” Caleb asks as if he knows the answer already.

  “Dead,” Nathan snarls. We edge a table’s depth in, close enough to see what they’ve done to Hattie before Caleb squeezes his gun closer up to her temple.

  “No fucking further, Nathaniel.”

  Hattie’s face is blotchy. Her eyes are black and her lips are cut. There are slashes down her arms, creating a lattice of her pyjama top. They must have broken in when she was in bed. Beneath the bruises, her skin looks anaemic. There’s barely an inch of her clothes that isn’t covered in blood.

  “What is it with you and bitches?” Caleb exclaims. “I mean, Anna was great. But now you’ve got to be goddamn greedy and have two? I assume you were planning on turning this one soon.”

  Nathan bares his teeth.

  “Let’s cut the crap,” Caleb continues. “You have something of mine, and I have something of yours.” His eyes lick down my legs and back up, sending an unwelcome shiver down my spine. “We can trade.”

  “Over my dead–”

  I take a step forward. “We’ll trade, Caleb.”

  Caleb starts snickering as Nathan spins me to face him with his free hand, his gun still pointed on Caleb. His gaze darts between me and our enemy, expression a conflict o
f anger and concern. His hand holds steady on my hip, but I can feel the thunder of the pulse in his wrist.

  “No, we won’t,” he hisses.

  “Hattie is going to die if we don’t get her to a doctor soon,” I insist in whispers.

  “George–”

  “Tick tock, Nathaniel!” Caleb calls from behind me. “My bitch is right. We let a lot of this one’s blood. She can’t have much time left. Wouldn’t want that on your moral whatsit, would we?”

  Nathan’s teeth are grit. He’s breathing hard as he looks at me. My heart is thumping against the inside of my chest. This is either the bravest or stupidest thing I’ve ever done. Worse, I’m doing it consciously when all I really want to do is rush into Nathan’s embrace and feel his lips once more.

  Just in case.

  But I know that Caleb doesn’t intend to kill me. And if I don’t go with him now, Hattie will definitely die. So, what else am I supposed to do?

  “Nathan?” I murmur, wishing with all my heart I could tell him how I feel, instead.

  He pauses as he looks at me.

  “Fine,” he grits with a look of desperation and regret. His gaze snaps to Caleb. “Fine. You can have her in exchange.”

  “Good man. Now come on over here, missy.”

  I turn on my heel and head to Caleb’s side, feeling the loss of Nathan’s hand on my hip like a brand. Caleb snatches me close to him, pressing up against my back as he thrusts the barrel of his gun against my head.

  The scent of his body wraps around me, my adrenaline instinctively kicking in to rocket my heart rate up a few notches. Even the slightest feel of him makes my skin crawl.

  Nathan visibly stiffens, a muscle flickering in his jaw. He tightens his hold on his weapon.

  I glance down at Hattie’s body on the pool table. Her expression is slack.

  I swallow, feeling Caleb’s arm tighten around my waist like a noose. Nathan needs to get Hattie to a hospital as soon as possible. The amount of blood in her apartment and her lack of colouring suggests she’s in incredible danger.

  Despite putting myself at risk, too, I know this is the right decision. If only because it might save her life.