Page 41 of Alpha Varsity

The intimate muscles between my legs lift and contract. My heart inexplicably starts to pound.

He sucks another finger and releases it. “I get to do whatever the fuck I want with you. If I want to kiss you–” He loops a hand behind my head and lifts my face to his. His lips descend and hover, millimeters away from mine, his hot breath feathering across my face. “—you open these lips for me.” He attacks my mouth, his tongue sweeping between my lips, possessing me.

I struggle–or rather, part of me struggles while part of me submits. And the third part of me just ignites into white hot flames.

He breaks the kiss by dragging my lower lip between his teeth.

“If I want to fuck you, you open those legs.”

Said legs wobble, barely holding me up. The worst part is that I’m sure he knows his effect on me. He can smell my arousal. Feel the way I melt into him despite my deep desire to resist.

“And if you ever slap my hand away again when I want to caress you, I will spank you until you cry. Understand?”

My nipples pucker. A powerful shiver rolls through my body. I’m equal parts furious and turned on. I want to knee him in the balls. I also sort ofwantthat spanking.

Why does that turn me on so much? Do Idesirehis punishment for what I did?

Face hot, palms wet, the best response I can manage is to spit out three words: “I hate you.”

A slow, smug grin spreads across Asher’s face. “Believe me, that’s a two way street, sweetheart.”

For the second time in twenty-four hours, Asher walks out of my place leaving me hot and unsatisfied.

He turns in the doorway and pins me with a cocky look. “Oh, and I want a key to your place.”

Chapter Thirteen

Asher

I toss and turn all night. I can’t stop thinking about Lotta’s empty refrigerator. It doesn’t fit the image I have of her–of the spoiled pack princess who gets everything she wants or needs handed to her on a silver platter.

Why would her pantry be bare? Why would she say she can’t afford meat? She has a job. She has rich parents. She just graduated from an expensive private college.

But she’s been denying her wolf for years. That came as a total shock. That level of self-denial… it says something about her. Who she is. The amount of self-control she must have. But also, of her inner conflict. There’s a literal war going on inside her. Her wolf refused to stay sublimated when she got in the proximity of her mate. But she doesn’t want a mate. She especially doesn’t want me.

Not that I want her, either.

This new information adds to my misgiving about the tears she cried while I was fucking her. Maybe they weren’t just about finding out her mate is one of herstudents. Or about getting nailed by a guy who hates her. Maybe they were a release from letting her wolf out.

Or–a prickle travels across my skin–maybe they were spawned from grief that she lost the battle with her wolf.

“That’s fucked up,” I mutter, throwing my legs out of bed long before dawn again.

I slip out of the townhouse and climb onto my Ducati. When I turned sixteen, I couldn’t afford to buy a car, but Greg Lane, the owner of Wolf Ridge Body Shop, cut me a smoking deal on this baby. I bought it with money from working weekends for Mrs. Angelson at Sweet Treats.

I ride to the Circle K where Cole and Casey Muchmore’s dad works. It’s a twenty-four hour gas station and convenience store at the edge of town. The only place open in the middle of the night. I buy bread, milk, eggs, bacon and sandwich meat with the money I have from the last packet of cash my dad mailed me.

My mate needs protein. She needs sustenance. That primitive impulse to protect and provide for her won’t be ignored until I’m sure she’s been fed. I drive back home and jog up the wash to her place, respecting her rules about no one seeing me coming or going.

Hell, I don’t want anyone to see us, either. The last thing I need is for her uppity parents to find out that the pack pariah has been touching their precious daughter. Fate knows her mom would falsify evidence of some new, heinous crime to get me permanently kicked out of Wolf Ridge.

I don’t know why I try the door handle.

I’m disturbed to find it unlocked. Even more disturbed when my beautiful mate doesn’t stir. I only hear the deep, even breath of heavy slumber from her. Either her wolfinstincts for danger are dead, or she hasn’t recovered her energy and stamina yet from the shift.

All the more reason for me to be here. I walk softly to her refrigerator and open the door. The light doesn’t make her stir, either. I put the groceries inside and close it.

I should get back home and see if I can sleep another hour before school. Or head to the bakery to help my mom and Mrs. Angelson. Instead, I find myself standing over Lotta’s bed, looking down at the lovely curve of her cheek. The curl of her dark lashes against her cheek.

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