Page 16 of The Alpha's Gamble
“Maybe I am, darlin’, and maybe I’m not going to bother with you. You’ll never find out, I promise you that. Strip. Bend over. Stop wasting my time.”
MacKenna had gotten that tone again, the one he’d used a couple of times last night. The one that told me all too clearly that his patience had hit its limit.
Pushing him had been working for me so far, though, if only because it made me feel like less of a pushover. So even though his voice felt like it scraped my spine raw, I still didn’t hurry to obey him. It’d make it worse, I knew that. Whatever he meant to do to me, it’d be so much worse the more I pissed him off.
But it was like that feeling I got when I rode a motorcycle way, way too fast, or waited a few extra precious seconds to pull the release on my parachute when I went skydiving.
A rush. Fuck. Teasing MacKenna was giving me arush.
It made sense, I thought wildly as I pulled my T-shirt over my head and let it dangle from my fingers for a moment, subtly flexing my back muscles as I did. It made sense, because no souped-up sports bike could compare to an aroused, angry alpha with a grudge. At least in terms of potential for grievous bodily harm, which seemed to be my bag, now that I thought about it. I kept my back to him, knowing I’d lose my nerve if I had to look at him.
Besides, the longer he went without seeing my semi, the better. I wished I could stay totally unaroused. Show him how much I hated this. But his magic and his pheromones had wrapped themselves around me like a choke collar. No other alpha had ever overmastered me this way, on an instinctive level that I couldn’t begin to fight. I’d always been on even ground, at worst.
But MacKenna had a fundamental power to him that would’ve overmastered just about anyone. At least I wasn’t special.
And I certainly wasn’t special to him. Just someone he wanted to fuck, and not even because of anything desirable about me. The opposite.
My cock still didn’t soften at all, even from that lowering thought.
It made undoing the button and tugging down the zipper of my jeans a little more challenging, and I ended up struggling with it, making the process even slower than I’d intended.
MacKenna walked across the room, moving away for a minute and rustling something behind me, and then he stepped closer again. I knew not because of his silent returning footfalls, but because the heat at my back intensified. My skin prickled with awareness, hot and tight. At last I got a grip on the zipper with my sweat-damp fingers and pulled it all the way down.
Fuck this. If I couldn’t strip slowly and maintain my cool, and do it elegantly, I should get it over with. Doing it slowly and clumsily would just make me look, well, clumsy. And nervous.
So I shoved the jeans and my underwear down in one go, grateful that I hadn’t bothered with socks or shoes when I got dressed. Cool air hit my now-naked ass. Was MacKenna looking? A low, almost subsonic growl raised my hair, everywhere. Even my pubic hair felt like it’d straightened and stood to attention. Yeah, he was looking. My ass muscles clenched. I hadn’t meant to do that.
Another growl, louder this time.
My heart had started to beat triple-time, vibrating down to the tips of my fingers and the soles of my feet.
Yeah, I really didn’t want to actually be grievously bodily harmed, no matter how much the possibility of it tended to trip my trigger during recreational activities. And if I dragged my feet any more than I already had, MacKenna might snap.
I took one more second to step out of my clothes, kicking them to the side.
My lungs wouldn’t let me hold a deep enough breath. Lightheaded and with black spots spinning in my vision, I leaned down and braced my hands on the mattress. I’d hoped for close to a ninety-degree angle, since the bed was kind of high.
No such luck. I had long legs for my height, and my ass stuck up in the air like I’d spent an hour finding the perfect angle to make myself look like a slut. My overlong hair hung in my eyes. I tried to blink it away and failed. My arms wouldn’t give out for hours, alpha strength and all, but they trembled anyway, from nerves rather than any kind of muscle strain.
And the weight of MacKenna’s gaze, and the pressure of his magic and the heat of him, rested on me like a ton of bricks.
The faint whistle of something moving quickly through the air alerted me just in time for my whole body to tense up—which only made the cracking, stinging impact of his hand against my ass that much worse.
Pain bloomed instantly, and searing heat, my balls swinging from the force of it. I pushed up, furious, my hands leaving the bed. “What the fuck, MacKen—”
His other hand in the center of my back shoved me right back down again, and this time I landed on my face with anoof, mashed into the fluffy duvet and choking for breath. Another smack, this one even harder and centered perfectly, the sting of it making me clench helplessly. His hand lingered, stroking a circle over the center of the pain, one finger prying between my cheeks.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I demanded, muffled by the bedding, twisting my neck to get some air and try to see him. I couldn’t move, he had me pinned, and the angle of my body gave me no leverage at all, with my toes scrabbling at the floor for purchase.
“Eighteen minutes,” he said, voice as calm as if I’d asked him what the weather looked like tomorrow, and not why the fuck he was spanking me like a disobedient brat. “I allowed you ten. So that’s eight minutes you need to pay for.”
“Eight—ow, fuck!” His hand lifted and came down again, this time on the left. The vibrations tunneled into me, lodging somewhere south of my sternum.
And my cock dug into the bedding, harder than ever, the pain somehow transmuting into stimulation, and I hated—crack, and another wash of burning humiliation, my ass jiggling and then clenching tight, exposed the whole time for him to do anything he wanted to.
“Fuck, MacKenna, stop, this isn’t part of the—fuck!”
“That was five,” he said, this time slightly less calmly. But it didn’t matter. I was worked up enough for both of us, writhing under the weight of that hand in the center of my back. “Anything’s part of the deal if I say it is. And here’s six.”
