Page 29 of Ruthless Alpha
“What happened?” she gasped.
“Nothing,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about this with her, didn’t want to give her another reason to hate the place I hoped she might one day call home. “Sorry, I didn’t think.”
“That’s not nothing, Xander,” she insisted, rushing forward to check me for injuries. Her hands were so small. She was so soft, so vulnerable. Maybe she really didn’t belong here.
“A couple of males got into a fight,” I said, catching her wrists so she wouldn’t stain her fingers red. “One of them died.”
“And the other?”
I dropped her wrists, stripping off my shirt and throwing it straight into the sink. What did I need for the stains? Baking soda?
“Probably telling the tale over a can of beer with his friends,” I said. I didn’t want to see her face as I said it. I could picture the horrified look in her eyes well enough; I was all too familiar with the downward curve of her lips.
“That’s—” she started to protest, but I couldn’t hear it right now. I couldn’t handle her disgust with my Pack, not when I was so disgusted with them myself.
“We live by conquest here, Rosie. They fought. He won. End of story.”
Where was the damn baking powder? It had to be here somewhere. In the doorway of the kitchen, Rosie was still trying to argue with me.
“But you’re Alpha. Surely you could—”
“I stopped Harris from taking Tyler’s mate, and I’m probably going to get challenged over that soon enough,” I told her, still unable to turn and look her in the eye. “One Alpha isn’t enough to change centuries of Pack culture, no matter how strong he is. No matter how much he wants to.”
There was a long silence. Had I been too curt? Was she afraid to argue back? Had I just ruined weeks of careful gentleness?
Then there was a small, warm hand on my bare back.
“You did a good thing,” said Rosie, quietly. “You protected her.”
“I can’t protect her all the time,” I lamented. “Harris is too stupid to know he couldn’t beat me in a fight; he might still try something.” I could consider putting a Beta or two on watch for a week or so, just until Harris cooled off, but what was the point? Maybe it would give Nessa a few days of peace, but what about the next time something like this happened? And the next? And the next?
As if she could read my mind, Rosie said,
“Don’t do this to yourself. You did a good thing today.”
“I could have done more,” I insisted, but she shushed me with a hand on my face.
“Hey—look at me.”
I couldn’t deny her. When she turned my face toward hers, Rosie’s eyes were damp with tears, but she was smiling.
“You’re a good man, Xander.”
“You don’t mean that,” I said. I ought to pull away, but her little hand was so warm on my face. “It’s alright, you don’t have to comfort me.”
“I want to.”
She rose up on her tiptoes, brushing her thumb along my cheekbone, and I was lost. I wanted to disappear into her, to let her softness envelop me until all my hard edges disappeared.
This time, she met me halfway, tipping her head back so her lips could meet mine. Her touch lit an inferno inside me, and my hand flew to her waist, tugging her close. She gave a little gasp against my mouth, her hand leaving my cheek to grasp fruitlessly at the buzzed hair on the back of my head. The rakeof her short nails against my scalp made me shiver, and I bit down hard on her lower lip in response. Her little whimper only spurred me on, and I dug my fingers into the generous flesh of her hips, relishing the give of it.
It wasn’t enough. With a growl, I bent to lift her by the bottoms of her thighs up onto the kitchen table, and she made the sweetest little sound of surprise. I wanted to touch her every way possible to categorize all those little sounds; the groan when I pushed her legs apart to stand in the cradle of them, the hitch of her breath when my thumb found her nipple beneath her shirt, the high whine when I sucked her bottom lip into my mouth.
It was her hiss of pain when I grabbed her thighs that brought me up short. When I tore my mouth away from hers, my fingers were digging deep into her flesh, and when I let go, stumbling backward to create some space between us, I could see her lower lip was bleeding.
She looked gorgeous. Her clothes were in disarray, her face flushed, blonde curls escaping from her braid, and I had done that to her. My wolf gave a pleased growl, but I couldn’t share his victory. I’d been angry and unthinking. I’d hurt her.
“Go to bed,” I told her. Rosie blinked as if coming out of a trance.
