Alpha Domination (Alpha Wolf Book 1) Page 9

  A muscle in his jaw flexes, but, beneath the mask of pale skin and the cuts and bruises he’s sustained, it isn’t half as intimidating as he thinks it is.

  My hand comes to rest on his thigh. He glances down at the touch. Recognition that he’s surrounded crosses his face.

  Hattie instructs me to hold his thigh still so she can set the bone properly. Briefly, I wonder how many times she’s done this for him. Is she his go to in times of injury? Has he dislocated many bones before?

  He’s already gritting his teeth and glaring down at the offending limb.

  I follow Hattie’s lead. I have no idea about bones or wounds or anything else medical related, but maybe I’d better start learning. It’s not as if I’m going to be able to go to a hospital again, in the future, with my new condition. She starts counting down from five, but signals to me on three and we set his leg back in place on two.

  The surprise and pain cause him to yell and immediately pass out, but I catch him just before he hits the ground. His hair settles darkly against the pillow and I smooth it from his brow. Hattie’s eyes narrow on the action. I immediately regret it.

  She stoops to pick up the bowl of water and takes it to the kitchen to empty. I glance at his slack expression and move to follow Hattie, picking up the bottle of whiskey on the way. The bottle slots away into the cupboard. Hattie dumps the water from the bowl into the basin.

  “So, when did you sleep together?” she asks as nonchalantly as if she’s talking about the weather.

  My jaw drops. There’s a noise in my throat, but no words come out. She shakes her head at the confirmation.

  “Don’t hurt him.”

  “I... I’m sorry,” I stutter. “I know you and him–”

  A sort of half laugh escapes her lips. She rings out the face cloth, not looking at me. “Nathaniel and I... He likes to get drunk to take the edge off. And when he gets drunk... sometimes he mistakes me for my sister. And I just... I just let him.”

  I glance over towards the fire. He’s still out cold.

  “And after a couple of times... Well, it’s nice to have somebody want you, you know?”

  Her eyes flicker up to mine and I nod. The way we made love was more intense than anything I’ve experienced before. It was like he’d managed to reach the deepest, most intimate part of me. A part I thought I’d already shared, but not like this. Not so naked and wanton that he could see every vulnerable inch of me. That had never happened before.

  And it was terrifying...

  Yet part of me craved someone... him... seeing those secret places again. I swallow thickly and wonder if Hattie and I are both just using Nathan for our own selfish reasons.

  “And I got... greedy. He loved Anna and I just wanted some of that, so I’d put something in his drink.”

  Anna...

  There’s that half laugh again. “But I guess that won’t be happening any time soon.”

  I feel like someone has stabbed me in the chest.

  “What happened to Anna?” I ask, my fingers clenching around the edge of the counter.

  Hattie stills. After a moment’s hesitation, she answers and I feel like I should have guessed. “She died. Along with the rest of their pack...”

  There’s a pause and I find myself staring across the room at him. Things are starting to make sense. No wonder he closed off so angrily when I mentioned his pack. I’d hit a still open wound with glaring accuracy. I turn to Hattie, but she steps away, closing me off, too.

  “It’s late. I’m going home for my bed. Keep an eye on him and don’t let him try to walk until at least late morning.” A strained smile stretches her lips. “Remind him that he heals fast, not instantly.”

  And then she’s gone, her car lights washing over the cabin and disappearing through the blizzard and beyond the trees.

  I kneel down at Nathan’s side and swap the towel for a blanket, trying to warm him some more. He doesn’t stir, but I can see that the colours of the bruises on his face have lifted somewhat. Purples and blues are making way for raspberry and yellow. The cuts on his mouth and cheekbones are no longer swollen, too. Relief flickers in my chest.

  The darkness outside is almost absolute. The only shade of colour is from the heavy blizzard that has blown in. It worries me that the two remaining werewolves are out there, but I’m hoping the storm has covered any scent tracks we may have left.

  After an hour of wandering aimlessly around the cabin, I settle on the sofa adjacent to Nathan’s sleeping form. I put the gun on the back rest, ready for me to grab at a moment’s notice, and pick up the book from earlier. There’s plenty left to read, but it turns out to all be werewolf family history. After a while, I can’t keep my eyes open any longer.

  “There was only one bullet in that gun, you know?”

  Nathan is awake.

  “And you drool in your sleep.”

  The book I was reading has dropped to the floor at some point. I stretch dozily and wipe my mouth on the back of my hand, but there’s nothing there. Nathan’s watching me from by the fire, but he’s propped himself up a little, a shimmer of a smile tainting his expression at the sight of me checking for drool. I frown at him, blinking away the sleep.

  “You weren’t supposed to come find me,” he says thickly, his eyes unwavering on mine now that he has my attention.

  I sit up, trying to smooth my mussed hair. “I told you. I’m not a dog. I won’t follow everything you say.”

  The corner of his mouth twitches faintly. “Noted.”

  I sink down to the floor and crawl tentatively over to him. The bruising has all but gone from his face, but the cuts remain as small scabs. I sit down beside him. The heat from the fire scorches my cheek. I’m afraid to touch him in case he’s still icy cold.

  “How’re you feeling?” I ask, quietly.

  “Sore,” he murmurs, eyes moving to my lips and then back up. “Why’d you come find me?”

  “I was worried,” I answer honestly.

  He touches my face, his hand cupping my cheek. His palm is hot. I inhale shakily, steeping in the scent of him. For the second time, my emotions rise into my throat and prick my eyes.

  “Georgie...”

  I swallow and a tear leaks out. He brushes it carefully away with his thumb. I want to fold into him, drown in the intensity of his eyes.

  “Please don’t,” he murmurs, shaking his head softly.

  A deep breath files into my lungs. I will not cry. I am a strong woman.

  Strong, damn it.

  “So, what happened?” I whisper, my voice barely audible over the pop and crackle of the wood fire. His hand smooths around into my hair. He tangles his fingers in it, brushing it back behind my ear until I close my eyes and lean into his touch.

  “I was tracking their scents in my other form. They crept up on me, one as a wolf and the others as humans. Caleb had a shotgun. It wasn’t exactly a fair fight. The kid who was a wolf, Dan, I think they called him... He yanked my leg to keep me from running when I realised how they’d trapped me. And then Caleb shot me.”

  His lips compress as another tear leaks from my eye. I move away from his caress, swiping at the droplet. My voice wobbles, but I urge him to continue, knowing that what he’s been through is because he’s been trying to protect me.

  “They made me transform.” He shakes his head. “And when I did...”

  “They beat the crap out of you to try to find me.”

  He opens his mouth, but I wave away whatever placation he’s about to voice.

  “I should have left. I should have gone. Before yesterday. If I’d gone then they wouldn’t have attacked you. They wouldn’t have known you had anything to do with me.”

  “Georgie, dahlin...”

  He sighs.

  “Don’t think about it,” he murmurs. “Just... Lie down next to me.”

  Crimson Fire

  We lie together in front of the fire, facing each other, him shielding me from the intensity of the flames.

&nb
sp; “Nathan... What happens when all this is over...? What do I do? Where do I go?”

  His lips compress. He doesn’t look at me when he speaks. “You go back to your boyfriend, your life...” There’s a pause and I wish he would look at me. “I’ll get rid of Caleb and Dan.” He wets his lips. “Nobody else will know about you.”

  I narrow my gaze on him in disbelief. Is he making these concessions because we’ve slept together? Does he want me to go back to Carrick? Doesn’t he want me?

  “Maybe... Maybe you can have a sort of normal life.”

  My eyes close, images of Carrick and my normal life swimming in front of me. Carrick’s fumbling, careless touches that don’t equate to a sudden relinquishing of common sense. Images that didn’t involve Nathan. Or the way he smells. Or the way he feels.

  His lips press hotly over mine and I inhale his scent greedily. His hand is tentative on my hip. I feel sad and euphoric all at once. My lips part with a soft moan. The kiss is slow and creeping and ends with our foreheads pressed together, hot, trembling breath spilling over mouths.

  “I’m sorry,” he rasps, voice thick.

  I open my eyes on his face, his expression caught between lust and remorse.

  “I’m sorry, Georgie. Your boyfriend... Your life... I don’t mean to make things complicated.” He rolls onto his back with a noise of defeat. I roll back too, slowly and uncertain.

  We lie there in silence for a time, listening to the sound of each other’s breathing above the crackling of the fire. I know I want more of him, but how can I dare to ask that with the weight of everything else? How can I be so greedy?

  “Tell me about it,” he says, eventually, still staring at the ceiling. “Tell me about your life. Why are you here and not in England?”

  My fingers move blindly across the sliver of a gap between us to find his. His palm is rough and worn, but not in a bad way. I slip my hand into his and close my eyes, aching a little when his fingers close tentatively around mine.

  “My aunt died. She lived in Oklahoma.” The words feel like they’re the loop of a tape I’ve played a thousand times or more. “I came over to look after her when she was ill, and then, when she was gone, I... I had no money to go home.”

  He glances over at me, hair fanning out from his head. It’s a long time since anybody has really asked me about myself. Longer still since they’ve listened as closely as Nathan is listening to me. I wet my lips. We’ve been intimate, but this feels oddly more intense and I can’t explain why.

  “She looked after me and my brother when our parents died. And my brother... Well... No one knows where he is. So... It was just me. And I did my best, but...”

  I trail off. I never mention my brother, so why has the thought of him surfaced now? And why am I mentioning his existence to Nathan?

  “What did your aunt die of...?”

  I shrug. “The official reason was pneumonia, but it was cancer. Her body just couldn’t cope any more.”

  The words sound almost blasé. The pain behind them, though, is a deep chasm overloaded with regret that I couldn’t have done more. Nathan squeezes my hand softly. I clear my throat.

  “Anyway, I couldn’t get home, so I’m stuck here. In America. Alone.”

  I sigh.

  Nathan hesitates. “Alone? What about your boyfriend? You have him... Didn’t you want to stay to be with him? Doesn’t he... keep you company?”

  I look across at Nathan. He’s watching me, firelight flickering over his face and giving him a tanned glow. Leaving Carrick hadn’t really occurred to me, but then... he was abroad more than he was home these days. So, what would another ocean have mattered? Half the time I felt like I was single, anyway, and the other half...

  I turn onto my side to face Nathan.

  “I don’t see him very often,” I answer after a pregnant pause. “It’s a long distance relationship... Every couple of months, he comes back to see me and... And then he leaves again. We’re not... He’s not...”

  I sigh and give up.

  Nathan frowns. “Sounds... lonely.”

  I roll onto my back again, staring up at the ceiling so I don’t have to see his frown. My one word answer is raw and I can’t stop the ache from entering it. “Yeah...”

  The pause between us isn’t uncomfortable, but it’s long. We lie there, staring at the ceiling, for a while, not speaking, but still holding hands. Every now and again, he moves his thumb in a pattern over my skin.

  I think about other places he’s stroked and how recently. My body aches with the memory, but my head intrudes with comparisons to Carrick.

  They’re not good.

  Hurried fumbling and an eagerness to get in and get done. I squeeze my eyes shut at the thought. It seems terrible to go back to that after just one night with Nathan. But, with Carrick, I’d let myself get used to something that was more mechanical than pleasurable. Half the time, I didn’t even reach that sweet spot before we were done. Well... Before he was done.

  Not that any of my previous boyfriends had been much different. Was it too much to ask to be sexually satisfied? Emotionally satisfied? Intimacy was supposed to be intimate. Not some mechanical, exhausting process that left you feeling empty.

  Nathan was right. My situation was lonely.

  “I know I told you I wanted to be isolated,” he says, slowly. “But... You shouldn’t be. It’s not a nice place to be. Not if you don’t choose it.”

  I swallow.

  “Are you... happy with the way things are? With this guy?”

  “Nathan...”

  “Do you love him?”

  I look at him, the sexy dark eyes and the mouth I’m longing to kiss again, and I can’t answer. I can’t answer because I have a terrible feeling that the old, steady, reliable sense of caring I had for Carrick is being overturned by something new and deep. Something that is scaring the hell out of me with how fast it’s taking hold.

  “I loved someone,” he says, quietly and deliberately. My heart almost stops. “It’s the worst and the best feeling.”

  He sighs and turns his face away. I get the sense that he’s about to tell me something he has difficulty thinking about.

  “My pack is dead.”

  The words are rusty and hang in the air like a broken nail. My fingers tighten around his.

  “There was a fight with another werewolf pack over territory. They were encroaching on us and they knew it. I tried to fix it, but they were brutes and would only listen to violence.”

  He pauses.

  I turn on my side to look at him better, but his face is twisted towards the fire and all I can see are the flames dancing in the corner of his unseeing eye. My hand squeezes his, but he doesn’t squeeze back, lost in thought. I shift, carefully, so I’m resting on my elbow and curl my arm above his head to tease his hair. He closes his eyes, inhaling deeply. I want to cradle him close to my chest and whisper reassuring words to him, but I don’t know how to overstep this line.

  Nathan sighs.

  “My mate... Anna...”

  My fingers pause in his hair. I try to keep the action going, but, when he speaks, I can only concentrate on his words.

  “She wanted to reason with them. I told her not to go, but she defied me anyway. And when she went behind my back, they held her and used her to lure the rest of my pack. Our enemies killed them all.”

  He wets his lips.

  “Anna last. They even filmed it.”

  His voice is low and raw.

  “Then they took her body so I couldn’t bury her.”

  Anna had defied him, refused to submit. And she’d died. Was that why he’d been so angry with me when I wouldn’t listen to him? Had he thought I was just another headstrong she-wolf that would get herself killed?

  “Are they still out there?”

  His jaw flexes. “No. They’re all dead. I made sure.”

  My hand trails loosely up and down his chest. I watch my fingertips play over muscles and dips as I think. He must have loved he
r, really loved her, to still be calling her mobile and listening to her voicemail. Maybe that was why he’d professed to not bothering with women.

  Except, of course, Hattie when he was drunk and sad.

  But he wasn’t drunk when we’d had sex. At first, he was angry, but so was I. And then that had twisted into something else. Something deep seated and unimaginably right. He hadn’t been wanting her, Anna, then. He’d been wanting me. Saying my name...

  He lets me continue to skim my hands over him for a few more minutes before he turns to look at me, catching my wrist gently in his paw. My eyes flicker down to his lips without prompting. Every particle of me wants to taste him again.

  “I don’t regret last night,” I whisper, looking slowly back up at him.

  He nods almost imperceptibly.

  I lean in and kiss him gently. The press isn’t nearly enough to sate me and I linger on the touch. His mouth is warm and soft and all kinds of right. Reluctantly, I pull a little way back to check that it’s what he wants, too.

  His eyes are glittering, but the fire I see burning there is no reflection from the hearth. I release a held breath, a shiver running down my spine. His hand skims to claim my hip.

  “I don’t regret it either,” he growls lowly.

  He pulls me in, slowly, his hand snaking to the small of my back where he presses me against him. My breath catches in my throat and my eyes shutter. The kiss is slow. His tongue teases and tastes with unhurried, daring strokes that make me moan softly as my hands bunch in his hair.

  I don’t need to slide my hand below the blanket to know how hot he is for me, but the catch of his breath when I do is so wonderfully good.

  He raises my top, hands skimming my flesh until they find the under curve of my breasts. When I gasp against his lips, he smiles.

  And then the smile falters as we look at each other. His eyes are dark whorls of aching vulnerability. “Nathan?” I murmur. He moves a hand to cup my breast, watching my lips part. “Nathan...?”

  He shields his eyes from me, some inscrutable thought clouding his vision. His lips press against the base of my neck, my pulse jumping beneath his affections. “Your boyfriend...?”