Alpha's Captive 03 - Flight Read online

  The Alpha’s Captive

  Flight

  (Part Three)

  by V. M. Black

  Aethereal Bonds

  AetherealBonds.com

  Swift River Media Group

  Washington, D.C.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 V. M. Black

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be distributed, posted, or reproduced in any form by digital or mechanical means without prior written permission of the publisher.

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  Aethereal Bonds Series

  Cora Shaw’s Story

  Cora’s Choice (90 to 130-page novellas)

  Book 1 – Life Blood - FREE

  Book 2 – Blood Born

  Book 3 – Bad Blood

  Book 4 – Blood Rites

  Book 5 – Blood Bond – Coming July 2014

  Book 6 – Blood Price– Coming August 2014

  The Alpha’s Captive (45 to 64-page novelettes)

  Book 1 – Part One - FREE

  Book 2 – Part Two

  Book 3 – Part Three

  Book 4 – Part Four – Coming July 2014

  Book 5 – Part Five – Coming August 2014

  Stand-Alone Short Stories

  Heaven’s Price

  Chapter One

  Harper eyed the laughing wolf, the moonlight glancing off his long white teeth. “Are you sure you can carry me?”

  But of course, Levi gave no answer. He couldn’t.

  She was starting to shiver again, Levi’s wet jacket doing little to keep her warm, and her arm ached where the bullet had just kissed her skin.

  “Fine,” she said, “but don’t blame me if I break your back.”

  Harper slung her purse across her body, her clothes spilling over its top. It dripped water slowly down her hip as she bent to put on her ankle boots. Levi came up and planted his cold nose against her rear, and she aimed a swipe at him.

  “Don’t you think I won’t hit you just because you look like a dog.”

  She straightened and turned to look at the wolf. Levi was so huge that she couldn’t just swing a leg over his back from a standing position. And unlike a horse, he would probably object if she used a big handful of his ruff as leverage. So she put one hand on his shoulders and the other on the middle of his back and pushed off the ground, using her momentum to get her leg up and over his haunches to the other side without pulling on his hair. It took a few twists of her hips to get settled, sitting just behind his heavy shoulders with her legs locked around his barrel chest just far enough back that she wouldn’t interfere with his strides.

  Levi started off immediately—jogging downstream, she could only assume, though she couldn’t see anything but trees. She buried her hands in the fur off his neck. It was nothing like riding a horse. His stride was smooth and almost perfectly silent. And though he was small even for a Shetland, there was more power in his muscles than she would have guessed, and he hardly seemed to notice her weight at all.

  “All this just looks like woods to me,” she said.

  One of his ears swiveled back at her voice.

  “You’ll have to go down to the water if you want me to tell you when we’re close to my cousins’ cabin,” she explained. “I’ll recognize the dock.”

  He gave no reply, but after a few minutes, she caught a glitter through the trees—the river, its surface throwing back the silver moonlight.

  His pelt was thick and dry, the outer guard hairs both coarse and silky over a soft inner coat. He smelled of the river—and faintly of soap. She wondered if his wolf-form had to shed in the spring or if he always shifted into the right fur for the weather.

  Levi’s stride got longer, changing from a jog to a ground-eating lope, his muscles bunching and releasing beneath her legs as his claws dug into the dirt and propelled them forward through the night forest. Leaning forward over his shoulders, Harper grinned reflexively as she clung on tight, her heart singing with a wave of adrenaline.

  The wolf was lithe, dodging trees and changing direction effortlessly. Clinging to his back, Harper adjusted her balance with each duck and weave. A tangle of brush no sooner rose in front of them than he dodged around it, and when he leaped over a tangle of roots, Harper had to suppress the whoop of sheer exhilaration that rose in her throat.

  Her legs tightened around his body, instinctively urging him on, and soon they were flying between the trees, leaves slapping her naked flesh as her thighs held her tight to his body. They crossed several footpaths leading down to the water and even once burst into a clearing where a small, ramshackle house stood, the lights inside and truck out front testifying to the people within.

  Finally, she spotted the short floating dock that her uncles had built before she was born.

  “There it is!” Her exclamation was too loud in her ears, and she dropped her voice. “That one, there. There should be a path going up to the shed and the trailer.”

  Levi hooked away from the dock when they hit the trail, and in a few seconds, they arrived.

  The trailer stood at one end of a weedy clearing next to a ramshackle shed, its vinyl paneling stained and faded and half-swallowed by the trees. From the outside, the tidy cabin opposite looked a lot more inviting—even the windows were in now, and the porch with its rocking chairs seemed to call to Harper’s tired body. But there wouldn’t be walls or toilets or possibly even lights yet inside, so Harper slid off Levi’s back and climbed the three rickety stairs to the trailer door.

  The screen opened at her tug, but the inner door was locked. Frowning, Harper fished under the broken flowerpot that stood at one corner of the small rotting deck landing at the top of the steps.

  No dice.

  “Let me get that.”

  Harper turned around to see that Levi was human again. And what a man he made. Her heart quickened at the sight of him, and she was excruciatingly aware of her nakedness again.

  And, from the looks of it, he was well aware of it, too.

  “You have a great ass,” he said conversationally, and Harper snapped her gaze up, realizing that she’d been staring.

  “I can’t find the key,” she said, deciding to ignore both his comment and reaction.

  He didn’t say anything, just mounted the first two steps and caught the edge of his jacket, slipping his hand in against her body. Harper opened her mouth to protest being manhandled when he pulled a flat black case from the pocket and waved it at her.

  “I’ve got our key right here,” he said, and she bet that his eyes had that wicked glint of amusement though she could see nothing but shadows in the moonlight.

  He unzipped the case, and a moment later, he was holding up a slim, glinting silver object.

  “A lock pick,” she said aloud. “Is that legal?”

  “Perfectly legitimate,” he said.

  Which wasn’t the same as legal. Then again, she was the person who carried a handgun in Maryland without begging the proper authorities….

  Levi stepped onto the small landing next to her, catching her around the waist and maneuvering her to the side of the door. Harper made a noise of irritation, then fell silent as she watched him work. He slid the pick into the door lock and felt around carefully, making small, jerking motions as he coaxed the pins inside. Then he flashed a smile so wide that his
teeth flashed in the moonlight, twisted the knob, and opened the door.

  “After you,” he said.

  Harper stepped inside, hitting the light. The sudden electric glare was so bright after the hours in the darkness that Harper’s eyes watered. She blinked to clear them and took the two steps to the sink, dropping the purse inside.

  “At least it’s dry,” Levi said.

  “Oh, shut up,” Harper said, dumping the contents of the purse. “I told you, it’s a hunting cabin.”

  Levi was standing in the doorway, taking in the old shag carpet, the avocado cabinets, and the low ceiling, which he raised a hand experimentally to touch.

  “I wasn’t complaining,” he said.

  “It sure sounded like a complaint.” She pawed through the tangle of objects in the sink until she found the circular plastic pack of her birth control pills. The cardboard insert was soggy, but a quick rinse and dry of the package, and she popped one out to discover that it was bone dry. Thank God. She swallowed it with a mouthful of tap water.

  She frowned down at the tangle of objects overflowing the sink. She needed a towel, probably a big one. Harper turned to grab one from the bathroom, then caught herself up short when she almost barreled into Levi, standing inches behind her. Still stark-staring naked, of course.

  She leaned back against the counter, bracing with her hands. “Excuse me?”

  He didn’t move. “Where are the first aid supplies?”

  She pointed to the cabinet behind and to her right. “Are you hurt?”

  His smile was slow, and he blinked down her as he stretched across her body to open the cabinet and pull out the big plastic box with all the bandages and medicine in it.

  “What do you think I’d do with a Band-Aid?”

  Harper opened her mouth, then closed it. She’d seen ample evidence of his near-instant healing abilities. “Okay, fine, what’s it for, then?”

  His smile widened as he popped the box open. “You.”

  Chapter Two

  Levi caught the jacket zipper at Harper’s throat and tugged it down to reveal the curves underneath, enjoying the process far more than was strictly required. Goose bumps stood out on her skin, and there was a shadow between her breasts that shouldn’t have been there. He frowned as he tugged the jacked open wider. Mottled bruising ran down from her left collarbone to her sternum across another point low on her right ribs.

  He prodded the mark over her ribs gently, and she flinched.

  “Ow! Hey!” she said. She would have jerked away, but she was trapped against the sink.

  “How much does that hurt?” Levi asked.

  “A lot when you poke it.”

  She tried to slap his hand away, but he ignored it, feeling for any obvious break.

  “And when I don’t?” he prompted. “Does it hurt to breathe?”

  “No, Levi. Stop it.” She turned her left hip toward him, putting her ribs farther away.

  He dropped his hand. “I just wanted to make sure your ribs weren’t broken.”

  “They’re fine,” she said.

  He looked down pointedly at the bruises.

  She rolled her eyes. “Okay, they’re not fine. But they will be, okay? They’re not broken. Now, shove off.”

  “Not ’til I’ve taken care of that gunshot,” Levi said, unimpressed, as he pulled the jacket off her shoulders.

  That time, Levi could tell she was trying to hide her wince as it brushed against her wound.

  “Look, it’s really nothing,” she said even as she shrugged the rest of the way out the jacket. “It’s a scratch. An actual graze, not a Levi-graze. And it’s fine now.”

  “You don’t want that to get infected.” He plucked the jacket out of her hands and dropped it on the floor.

  “It’s not going to get infected.”

  He caught her upper arm and examined the wound. The slash was perhaps two inches long, and little more than a scratch except at the center, where it was deep enough that he wished he had a suture kit to put in a couple of stitches.

  And it was his fault that she’d even been there to get shot.

  Without letting her go, he flipped on the water at the sink with his free hand and angled her arm into the stream, squirting a little dishwashing soap into his palm one-handed and gently cleaning the cut.

  “It’s barely a scrape, and I’m perfectly able to do that myself,” Harper protested. “I bet I’ve got a lot more experience with patching people up than you do, since I don’t have magical insta-healing.”

  “Probably,” he agreed, dabbing the skin around it dry with a paper towel. A corner caught the gaze.

  “Ouch, really?” Harper said. “I’m just going to have to do it again after my shower, anyway.”

  “Nope. They’ve got the good stuff in here. Hydrocolloid bandages. Now that it’s clean, you won’t need antibiotics or anything to keep it that way.” Still holding her arm with one hand, he grabbed a wrapped bandage with the other, grabbing one tab in his teeth to loosen it.

  Harper rolled her eyes at him as he pulled out a translucent, blister-shaped bandage, and with his free hand, he peeled a corner of the backing away. He pressed it onto her bicep just beyond the start of the cut, peeling as he went to cover the rest of the two-inch slash.

  “Happy now?” Harper asked as he released her.

  He surveyed her, looking for any other sign of injury, using his hold on her arm to turn her in a slow circle. There was a slight scrape on one knee, but other than that, she seemed fine.

  But she shouldn’t be hurt at all.

  “Happier,” he said.

  “Okay, then. Back off.”

  Harper frowned at Levi until he dropped her arm and stepped back.

  What’s that all about, anyway? she wondered. All it had taken was a nick to send him from partner to mother hen.

  Once she had the room to step away from the counter, she bent and pulled her boots off, setting them together neatly on the yellowed vinyl floor.

  Straightening, Harper raked her matted, stinking hair away from her face and shot him another look. She’d just meant to glare at him, but it was pretty hard to stay mad when he was that hot, that naked, and that close. Especially since he was concerned about her. That wasn’t something she was used to.

  She also couldn’t help but notice that while she was sure she looked like a wreck, even Levi’s short crop was not only dry but casually tousled in a way that some men probably spent half an hour to achieve. With a small shake of her head, she squeezed past him to steal the hand towel from the bathroom.

  When she came back out, Levi was digging through the contents of the sink, chucking things into the trashcan at his knees as he went.

  “That’s my stuff,” she protested.

  He held up a fistful of matted receipts. “You want to keep these?”

  She huffed, setting the towel on the counter. That wasn’t really the point. “Fine. Whatever. Just give me the wet clothes, and I’ll start the wash.”

  He nodded to a pile that he’d made on the counter, and she scooped everything up, her skin shrinking away from the wet, cold, reeking fabric. The smell of the river certainly hadn’t bothered her when it was on Levi’s body, but now she couldn’t wait to get rid of it.

  The washer and dryer were in a lean-to out the back door. Years ago, Aunt Tiff had declared that she wasn’t going back to the trailer again until she had a proper way to do laundry, and the addition was the result—made from scavenged lumber, reclaimed windows, and scrap roofing, the lean-to was just big enough for the ancient washer and dryer to sit side-by-side on the right and Uncle J. T.’s big game chest freezer on the left. Harper hit the light switch, the flat, yellow-coated building wire running up the two-by-four from the switch to the bare-bulb fixture in the middle of the ceiling.

  She flipped the washing machine open and dumped everything inside, glad that Levi’s motorcycle leathers were the synthetic type. A capful of detergent followed, then she set everything to the deepest c
lean cold water cycle and let it run.

  Coming back in, she paused in the doorway to admire the naked lines of Levi’s body, the ropy muscles standing out under his skin. She’d never been an ass fan, but he could definitely make her change her mind, and those shoulders—

  He turned, and she stepped all the way into the room, closing the door behind her.

  “Scoot over,” she said, crossing to stand beside him at the sink. “I don’t want you throwing away all my stuff.”

  Her tweezers, brush, and comb were already rinsed and sitting to dry on the towel, along with both their pocket knives and the jewel-encrusted dagger. She rescued her lip gloss and mascara from the bottom of the sink, then grabbed her phone.

  “Don’t even bother,” Levi said. He was holding his with an expression so mournful that it was almost comical, the SD drive dangling from it like a sad tail.

  “Says you,” Harper retorted, hitting the button to wake it. The screen lit up.

  “What—?”

  “Waterproof case,” she said with a grin. “My first phone had an accident involving the back pocket of a pair of jeans and a toilet. So I got this.” She waggled it. “Five stars. Completely waterproof to fifteen feet. Can’t use earbuds with it, but I mostly listen to the radio, so I don’t care.”

  Harper plucked the end of the USB reader from his phone—and the grin fell off her face.

  “It’s an iPhone,” she said. “Won’t fit.”

  Levi shook his head, taking the reader from her hand and dropping it in the trash. “If it’s not bone-dry, it could short out and fry the SD card, anyway. Not worth the risk.”

  “Damn,” Harper said. “I thought I really had something.”

  “Look, that phone means we still have GPS,” Levi said. “Now let’s see if we still have the SD card.”

  As Harper watched, he grabbed the coin purse from among the clutter in the sink and opened it to pull out the SD card inside its tiny plastic bag. He wiped the outside off on a corner of the towel, then opened it carefully, tilting it so that the card slid out onto his hand.