Page 37 of The Bookseller and the Alpha
My legs were shaky as I stood up. I was going to get dressed. Then I was going to give the annoying Alpha a piece of my mind. He couldn’t just take over my life using the excuse of protecting me. Even if he did think I was his mate. And that was a whole other can of worms. He’d assured me that it wasn’t a joke, but I’d only just met him. And currently, being his mate didn’t sound so attractive.
I went through the motions of getting ready for my day, almost on autopilot. And the whole time, my mind wouldn’t stop. Could Shifters make mistakes about who their mate was? Could they get infatuated? Was he mistaking protectiveness forthe mating pull? Until I knew him better, I had to take a step back. I needed some time away. Time to process what he’d said. To think about what it meant without the insane sexual tension between us turning my brain to mush. But I didn’t have the luxury of taking time out. If the thieves hadn’t found what they were looking for, I was still in danger. And I wasn’t stupid. If I was in danger, I didn’t want to put myself at risk. And I was honest enough to acknowledge that I didn’t really want to stay here by myself. Even with the new security, my stomach twisted with anxiety at the thought of staying here alone at night. So I could go to Luc’s, he could stay here, or I could go to a hotel. And if I went to a hotel, the over-protective Alpha Shifter who had Declared his Intent to court me would insist on giving me guards. And that would use up valuable resources. His staff had better, more important things to do than to guard me around the clock. Which meant that the hot Alpha I couldn’t resist was my best choice. Yes, he was my preferred choice, if I was into stupid decisions, but he was also my best choice.
But that didn’t mean that he could control my every movement. It was bad enough that I was agreeing to stay with him at night. He had already declared he wanted me close. And that meant… that I had to stop letting him touch me or I’d find myself bonded before I knew which way was up. And there could be no more orgasms. Not until I understood my own mind.
Right. Damn.
Chapter 42
Luc
I had fucked up. Again. I’d been overbearing. Insulting. I’d brushed off her job as if it was nothing. My only excuse was that I was desperate not to have her out of my sight. I couldn’t do my job from her bookshop. She couldn’t run her business from anywhere else. Rationally, I knew that my guards could keep her safe, but now that my Beast had started to bond with her, I simply couldn’t leave her safety in someone else’s hands. There had to be a way for us to compromise.
She needed some time to decompress. And so did I. Watching her in the throes of her orgasm, giving her pleasure, had helped. But it wasn’t enough. I hurried to her tiny bathroom, locking the door behind me. I pulled her panties from my pocket. Roughly taking my cock out of my pants, I wrapped the scrap of fabric around my pulsing length, giving myself a couple of hard strokes. Her scent and the memory of her soft wet pussy on my fingers was all it took, and in moments I was spilling ropes of hot cum all over my hand and her ruined panties. The orgasm was so strong that it stole my breath, made me see stars. Gasping and shuddering, I collapsed against the tiled wall. I would be inside her tonight. I couldn’t wait any longer.
When I had recovered, I returned to the kitchen. I washed the pans I’d used to make breakfast and swept up the broken plates. When she’d orgasmed in my arms, the breakfast dishes had flown across the room and smashed against the wall. Luckily, I had anticipated something of the sort after the power display in my apartment and I made sure that my body was between her and anything that could fly loose when she lost control. And she did so beautifully. But yet again she’d had no idea that she had used magic. She had been so focused on taking her pleasure. From me. Her mate.At least you did something right, Beast muttered.
I looked at the clock. I’d given her thirty minutes. Time’s up, sweetheart.
I was outside her room in an instant. The door was shut, but I could hear her moving around the room. “Caly. I’m sorry. What I said didn’t come out right.” She asked for a couple more minutes. I checked my phone for work emails while I waited. Two minutes. That was enough. I needed to explain what I’d meant. I had sounded like a total asshole and she was right to be angry with me. But I wasn’t going to allow that anger to fester. I could explain.
We will grovel. I sighed. Beast was right. I would grovel. But I wouldn’t back down. She needed to understand that her safety would always be my first priority.
I knocked. “I’m coming in.” I pulled the door open.
Both times I had been in her room, I had arrived late and I’d left the bed (extremely reluctantly) before dawn, and it had been too dark to see the details of her space, the things she liked to have near her. The room was small, dominated by the large bed. The rest of the space was organised chaos. Bright rugs, like the ones in the living room, covered the floorboards. Shelves overflowed with books, pot plants and little knick-knacks. It was garish, overwhelming, and completely unlike my apartment, butalso… happy. This was clearly a space where my mate loved to spend time.
“Uh, just give me a minute.”
My attention snagged back on Caly when I detected embarrassment in her voice. I almost swallowed my tongue when I saw that she was on her knees by the side of the bed, showing me her delectable ass. As I watched she started to wriggle onto her front. “My boots are under the bed. It will only take a moment.”
Take all the time you needI almost said as my eyes locked onto the sight of her luscious body wriggling as she tried to reach her shoes. I locked my lips on the words. Little breathy gasps punctuated the wriggles. My brain helpfully supplied the other ways I could coax those little gasps from her. Fuck. I’d only just come, but my dick swelled in my pants. I was wrong. I didn’t want her to keep going. This was torture. I’d died and gone to hell.
“Bloody box is jammed on something.”
“Let me help.” I adjusted my cock and lowered myself to the floor beside Caly. Carefully. Thank you gods. Give me something to do other than look at her ass and imagine how she would scream my name when I finally got my cock inside her wet heat.
Chapter 43
Calypso
“What’s this?” Luc’s voice was muffled as he wriggled back out from under the bed. The motion showcased his tight ass and I licked my lips, suddenly hot.No more orgasms. Remember. I dragged my eyes off his ass, turning to Pompy, who was wiggling her cute little body in joy, wanting to be let down from the bed to greet her new favourite person.
I let her down and she jumped onto Luc, who handed me the shoe box. He sat on the floor, cuddling Pompy in one arm as if she was a baby. Her little bulldog eyes were half closed in bliss. Picking up something from his lap, he waved it at me. “Did you lose a book? It was jammed in the corner and the shoebox was snagged on it.”
“Let me see.” I took the book from his outstretched hand, avoiding touching his fingers. Plain cover. I flicked it open to see pages and pages of densely handwritten text. Completely meaningless jumbles of letters. My breath caught. “I remember this.” I looked at Luc. “This came in the crate of books that arrived in my shop before the break-in. I took it home to see if I could make any sense out of it.”
“And?”
“And nothing. I think I fell asleep looking at it and when I woke up to the phone the next morning I forgot about it. Must have fallen under the bed.”
Luc’s eyes sharpened with interest and I handed the book back to him. He flipped through the pages. Pompy snored gently in his arms. “It’s all like this?”
I nodded. “I figured out that it’s a code. I think I understand how it could be reversed but I don’t have the power or the training to do it.”
“Me neither.” Luc’s brown eyes, showing that the man was in control rather than the beast, met mine. “But I know someone who can help.”
That was good. Luc would follow up inquiries about the book. I would go to the shop. I would tell him firmly that I was going. Even better, I could dive into my texts on Shifter behaviour. And while I was there, away from the temptation he presented, maybe I could talk myself out of the bad decisions that would likely follow when I was alone with him at night. Hormonal Caly sighed with regret.
