Page 23 of In Control

I kiss her slowly and lazily. A kiss I know will have her wanting more. This woman will take everything at once if she can and I intend to make her wait.

Her fingers trace across my chest and she sighs into my mouth.

I lean away, watching as her eyelids flicker open and she gazes up at me.

“Come on, sweetheart.”

I hold her hand as I pay our entrance and lead her through the fairground. Bright lights flash and swoop, people scream as they’re thrown through the air and loud pop music thumps into the night.

“What do you want to try first?” I ask into her ear.

Her deep eyes swing across the scene, lingering on each ride.

“That one.” She points to the haunted house, its exterior painted like a crumbling old, gothic manor. Cartoon ghosts and vampires peer out of the windows and bats flocking around a sliver of moon.

She tugs on my hand and skips towards the queue.

“It’s going to be scary,” I warn her.

“I love scary,” she says.

“We’ll see.”

A rickety carriage pulls up alongside the queue and once the current riders have vacated, she climbs onto a seat near the back and I follow her in, wrapping my arm around her shoulder and drawing her close.

An attendant walks down the train, lowering bars and flicking through her phone at the same time. Then the carriage jerks forward and Sophia squeals, swinging her gaze my way and grinning.

The cool, sophisticated act has vanished and I suspect I’m being offered a momentary flash of the real woman beneath the layers of practised charm.

As the carriage lurches forward into the chasm of darkness before us, she snuggles back into my arm and I lean forward, inhaling the jasmine aroma of her hair as it tickles against my nose.

Unfortunately, though, there’s no time to savour the moment, because in the next second, we’re being spun around and a howling witch swoops down from above to cackle in our faces. Sophia screeches right back then laughs as we spin again. This time bats rack their wings in a swarm above our heads before a ghoul leaps out at us making everyone on the train scream. All except me. When you’ve seen true horror laid out on the operating table in front of you, when you’ve seen lives slip away through your fingers no matter how hard you try, there is not a lot that frightens you.

Sophia digs her elbow into my side. “Not scared, Alpha?”

I swallow. That’s the first time she’s called me that and, fuck me, it’s a turn on. Betas use the phrase, the name, all the time, and usually it leaves me cold. Usually it’s only a little omega whispering that name that gets me hard. But Sophia, she’s special.

“No, sweetheart,” I say as she flinches when something wrapped in bandages pops up behind me.

She covers her hands over her mouth, her whole body shaking with laughter and I watch calmly as more ghoulies dart out at us, everyone around us screaming.

Just when I think it’s all over, the carriage comes to an abrupt halt. Cold mist creeps in around the carriage and a faint howling plays out over the speakers.

“Now what?” Sophia whispers, squeezing on to my bicep. I’m enjoying this far more than I ought to.

Sophia swings her gaze about, searching the dark space. Others in the carriage are whispering. The mist creeps close.

And a huge ghost crashes through the darkness, screaming right in our faces.

Sophia yelps and buries her face in my chest. I wrap her in my arms, holding her that way as the carriage trundles on again, emerging into the brightly-lit night.

When the train grinds to a halt, she looks up at me with a huge grin on her face.

“I can’t tell if you hated or loved that,” I confess.

“Loved it.”

I climb out and help her after me, our seats quickly taken by a pair of excitable children.

---