Page 83 of Alpha Chase

The way she moves is like poetry in motion, her body swaying and dipping and rolling to every beat of the music, the fluidity of her movements like pure fucking sex. I’m not the only one to take notice, either- all of my boys are laser-focused on watching the little show she’s putting on, not to mention the hungry gazes she’s attracting from every other guy in here.

Yeah, I’m gonna gouge their fucking eyes out.

A loud growl tears from my throat as I shoot to my feet, bending forward and slamming my shoulder into her torso. I wrap an arm around the backs of her thighs, folding her body over my shoulder as I lift her in a fireman carry, a red haze bleeding into my vision as I storm toward the front door of the packhouse. She’s kicking and screaming the whole way, her little fists pounding against my back as people skitter away to let me through, instinctively fleeing from the dominant Alpha energy rolling off me.

“Open,” I command, and a scrawny kid closest to the door grabs for the handle, looking like he’s going to piss his pants as he pulls it back and leaps out of the way to let me through. Vienna’s still fighting me hard, writhing and cursing as I march her outside, clambering down the steps and out to the driveway with her small body slung over my shoulder. I don’t set her down until I reach the side of my truck, and as soon as I do, I throw one arm up against it to cage her in, the other hand curling around the column of her neck to hold her in place against the vehicle.

“What the fuck?’ Vienna huffs, blowing out a harsh breath to clear her disheveled hair from her field of vision. Her eyes are alight with that feisty, deviant spark that always makes my dick hard, her hands closing around my forearm and her sharp nails piercing my skin.

“Are you trying to get every fucking guy in there killed?” I growl, flexing my fingers around her throat as her nails dig deeper into my arm. “Because that’s what was about to happen. Don’t fucking test me, Vienna.”

Her eyes narrow on me, glowing with the bronze flecks of her wolf. “You’re the one who invited all these people here tonight!” she hisses. “I had every intention of coming here and talking things out, but you fucking ambushed me with this party. So no, this one isn’t on me, Chase. It’s on you. I had to fight fire with fire because it’s the only way to get through to you when you’re like this.”

I release her throat with a growl of frustration, taking a step backwards and burying a hand in my hair. She’s too fucking right. This girl has me pegged; she knows exactly how to bring out the best and the worst in me. Claiming her in front of my boys like that would have any other girl eating out of the palm of my hand, but not Vienna Vega. She forces me to confront my bullshit, pushes me to the limits of my sanity.

She makes me feel so goddamn alive.

“You wanna talk?” I challenge, narrowing my eyes on her. “Fine. Then let’s go somewhere.”

She folds her arms, reclining back against the side of my truck; maddeningly calm and composed in the face of me losing my shit. “Where?” She arches a brow.

I nod to the truck at her back. “For a ride.”

“Yeah right,” Vienna snorts, pushing off of the truck and shaking her head. “You’re not getting behind the wheel, you’re half a bottle of whiskey deep.”

I shove a hand into my pocket, yanking out a key fob to the Jeep. Because of-fucking-course I held onto the second key. “You drive, then,” I say, tossing it at her. I may be three sheets to the wind, but she only had a sip of vodka- the rest of the bottle is probably all over the floor of the living room right now.

She catches the key fob, opening her palm to look down at it before glancing up at me suspiciously. “Where to?”

An idea pops into my mind, my lips sliding into a deviant grin as it starts to take shape. “Let’s head toward Summervale.”

Her brows knit together in confusion, her face tilting as she searches my eyes like she’s going to find the answer there. I just shrug in response, not giving anything away as I round my truck to head toward the Jeep, pausing to glance back at her. “You coming or what?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Vienna

Ihavenoideawhat Chase has up his sleeve, but I can’t deny the little spark of excitement that comes with not knowing. As we roll out of Norbury and head toward Summervale, he starts fiddling with the stereo, muttering something about the specs of the sound system in the Jeep as he works to connect his Bluetooth to play music from his phone. We should talk, but I’ve got a feeling that our conversation will be a lot more productive after he’s cooled down and some of the alcohol works its way out of his system. Shifters can drink a hell of a lot more than humans without feeling the effects, but nobody’s sober after slamming a half a bottle of whiskey.

He selects a song and presses play, the opening bars of Machine Gun Kelly’s ‘bloody valentine’overtaking the silence in the cab of the Jeep. It’s not the upbeat, peppy version of the song- it’s the acoustic version with Travis Barker on drums. MGK’s gritty, melancholic voice comes out crisply through the speakers, the low hum of Chase’s joining in to sing along to the lyrics.

Goosebumps raise on my forearms as I listen to the words of the opening verse, darting a glance over at Chase. His head lolls to the side against the headrest, his eyes locking with mine as he pointedly sings along to the lyric:“in my head, I’m calling you ‘girlfriend’, what the fuck?”

My heart stutters in my chest as he stops singing, wetting his lips with his tongue and looking into my eyes with so much intention, like the words came straight from his own mind rather than MGK’s. I have to tear my gaze away to focus back on the road and he resumes singing along, every lyric piercing into my soul and hitting home like never before.

“I can’t hide how I feel about you inside, I’d give everything up tonight, if I could just have you be mine, be mine baby…”

It’s just a song, but it feels like more than that for some reason. It feels like Chase’s fucked up way of making a declaration, and damnit, I wish it didn’t have the effect on me it does. My palms are clammy, my mind is racing, and by the time it ends and he starts swiping on his phone to choose the next song, my heart’s beating fast in anticipation.

When I hear the familiar opening bars of the song he chooses, I nearly weep.

‘Vienna’by Billy Joel.

My jaw goes slack and I snap my head sideways to gape at him, but he just grins back, turning the dial to increase the volume. I get full body chills as the song begins to play, taking me right back to my childhood home, my parents dancing, my dad laughing and beckoning me to join. Taking me back to that day in Chase’s bedroom, when I first caught a glimpse of him shirtless listening to this song.

I glance over at him at the end of the first chorus, catching him mouthing the final words:“when will you realize Vienna waits for you?”

“Ha!” I exclaim triumphantly, my face splitting into a wide grin. “I knew you knew this song!”

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