The Alpha's Captive Read online

  The Alpha’s Captive

  Part One

  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

  Smashwords Edition

  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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  At least one installment will be published every month, so don’t miss out!

  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 – Coming May 20, 2014

  Book 4 – Blood Rites – Coming June 17, 2014

  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

  Book 2 – Part Two – Coming June 3, 2014

  Book 3 – Part Three – Coming July 1, 2014

  Book 4 – Part Four – Coming August 5, 2014

  Book 5 – Part Five – Coming September 2, 2014

  Stand-Alone Short Stories

  Heaven’s Price – Coming June 24, 2014

  Chapter One

  The asphalt blurred under Levi’s front wheel, the engine between his knees sending him flying north along the country road.

  The plan hadn’t worked. It almost couldn’t have gone worse. The bloodsucker’s minions had caught him with his backside hanging out of the third-story window, loot in hand and about to begin his descent.

  Wolves didn’t care much for vertical surfaces. That was more of a feline attribute. Trying to stay in human form while naked, gripping a stolen dagger, and being threatened with very serious looking weapons was just about impossible.

  He hadn’t tried.

  Instead, he’d taken a header into the bushes, shifting on his way down so that he hit the branches in his wolf-form and rolled free, the dagger in his teeth. Legs and heart pumping, he ran in a flat sprint for the gate. Every leaf etched against his vision in the darkness, and the wet foliage slapped his body as his long lope ate the ground beneath his paws.

  Worst of all, it’d been his own kind that had come after him, howling through the woods until he hit the fence and shifted just enough to use his hands to catch the top edge and propel himself over, into the woods on the other side and to the motorcycle waiting beyond.

  Paws were good for a lot of things, but driving wasn’t one of them. So he’d had to shift all the way back to human as he hit the seat, bare ass cheeks on cold leather, and slammed the keys home. The engine had roared to life as the pack following him burst from the treeline, and he’d driven off stark naked with the dagger still clutched in his teeth, shooting the bird at every single one of them.

  Lap dogs.

  That had been satisfying, but it wouldn’t take long for the damned vampire to send a more effective force on his trail. And though his Ducati Superbike could outrun pretty much anything on the street, the desire to not attract attention required that he stop long enough to pull on his clothes before he hit a major road.

  Of course, before he’d done that, there had been the very nice-looking lady in the minivan, whose shocked face behind the glaring headlights still made Levi chuckle to himself….

  The truth was, though, he was in deep shit. Probably the deepest he’d ever been in. His brothers had been completely against the heist. The entire clan had vetoed it, in fact. So, technically speaking, he was now an outlaw.

  Levi had never bothered much with technicalities before. But he did wonder how he was going to get out of this one, since his plan had pretty much depended on not getting caught.

  Now the bloodsucker’s goons had a good fix on his scent, and they knew what he looked like, too, and knew his ride. The problem with high-up vampires wasn’t so much their own power but the sheer force they could bring to bear if they wanted to.

  And given what Levi had just taken, Mortensen would be pretty damned motivated to do whatever he could to stop him.

  Screw him, though. Screw the vampire, screw Levi’s clan, and screw everybody who stood in his way. Levi had something that represented real power, the first chance for everyone in his clan to finally be free of vampiric threats or dependence.

  No more uneasy truces. No more negotiations. No more contracts. With what he had, he could cut ties to them, and they couldn’t do a thing about it.

  Of course, that would only work if he survived to use what he now had. And the first step in raising his chances of survival would be to ditch his motorcycle, which was probably being broadcast on police channels across three states by now, and get another ride.

  The thought gave him almost a physical pain. He had scrimped and saved for his bike for a whole year back before he’d established his main business, taking jobs he had no interest in for rich scumbags and paranoid husbands, all with the goal of owning this beautiful beast. Riding a motorcycle was the closest he could come to feeling like a wolf in human form, and on it, he kept all the keen intelligence and analytical ability that gave way to primal instinct and visceral immediacy as a wolf.

  And riding this motorcycle, in particular…. If riding a motorcycle is like sex, he thought, the Supersport versus his old, secondhand hog was like the difference between having a long night with a beautiful woman and rubbing one off in a dirty bathroom stall.

  But now it was a liability. If everything worked out well, he could buy as many Ducatis as he wanted. If it didn’t, well…. Dead men—or wolves—didn’t have much use for a bike.

  He had to ditch it.

  As if on cue, a car appeared on the opposite side of the road as he crested the hill, a golden Buick from the late ‘60s or early ‘70s. If he could get it running, that could be perfect. He blew past it and made a U-turn in the middle of the empty road to come up behind it again at a more sedate pace.

  He could see a girl with a butt to die for leaning into the open trunk, and he spared a moment’s pity for her, since he was planning on commandeering her ride. It was a shame to upset the owner of such fine assets.

  But he’d take what he could get—and beat it before his recent past caught up to him in a very literal way.

  Chapter Two

  Harper was thirty miles from the Maryland border in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania, when her right front tire exploded.

  The sound, as loud as a rifle going off, drowned out the top-fifty station. The car jerked to the side, yanking the wheel out of her hands as it lunged across the center stripe.

  She slammed on the brakes, pulling hard to the right, and came to a rest on the muddy shoulder. For several seconds, she sat frozen behind the steering wheel as the panicked tempo of her heart slowed while Pharrell Williams’ Happy blared and crackled in her speakers.

  And then she started to curse.

  It had been a bad day. A very, very bad day, which had started off with a call from her shift manager, who had wanted to fire her even though she’d arranged for her absence with the diner owner a week before.

  It had gotten worse when the big party for her grandmother’s eightieth bi
rthday had devolved into a shouting match between her sister Christina and her cousin—and worse still when the cops arrived just as Harper stepped between the two and was rewarded for her efforts with her sister’s punch, which missed their cousin by a mile to land squarely against Harper’s cheek with enough force to leave her with a tender eye.

  Harper had managed to talk herself out of a charge of disorderly conduct and had left the party in a furious black mood, damning her entire family—okay, except her grandmother—as she tore out of the drive.

  And now this.

  “Why’d you have to go and crap out on me now?” she asked her car.

  But she couldn’t be mad at it. The ’68 Buick Skylark was her baby, and she spoiled, petted, and coddled it.

  And in return, it broke down, seized up, smoked, and just now, tried to kill her by throwing her into oncoming traffic.

  Harper sighed. Well, the tire really was her fault. She was flat broke after helping out her last deadbeat boyfriend—which she’d done for a month before she’d realized that he really never was going to try to get another job as long as he had her to mooch off of. So she hadn’t had the money to replace her tires even though she knew they were getting bald. Anyway, she didn’t want any old cheap tires for her Baby. It deserved only the best. And she couldn’t afford the best, yet, so she hadn’t gotten any at all.

  She just couldn’t resist a bad boy, even when the ‘boy’ in question was her car….

  Harper put the parking brake on and killed the engine but left the radio blaring. She leaned across the wide bench seat to crank down the passenger window so she could to listen to the music as she changed the tire, then popped the trunk. She got out of the car, pausing to squint up and down the two-lane county road hopefully, wondering if there might not be some helpful guy in a pickup who might want to lend a hand.

  She heard the sound of traffic in the distance. But of course, there was nothing in sight.

  Just my luck, she thought. She was perfectly capable of changing a tire herself, but she wouldn’t refuse a white knight, if one came along.

  Or a black one, for that matter.

  She shrugged and set to work pulling out the full-sized spare and dropping it in the grass next to the flat tire, surveying the damage for the first time.

  Crap. The old tire was just shredded. Gone. She hoped she wouldn’t need a new wheel. She got the jack and lug wrench and tossed them next to the spare. She pulled off the hubcap—an original spoked model that she’d bought to restore the car to its former glory—and slotted the wrench into place. She pushed, but nothing happened.

  Damned pneumatic tire-changing tools. They tightened the nuts so hard they locked up sometimes. Well, Harper knew one way to deal with that. She shifted the position so that the wrench was parallel to the ground, then stomped it with all her weight.

  The lug nut gave, and she smiled in satisfaction. She was no rail. She was big, just like her personality, and she knew how to use her body—around cars, around horses, around the kitchen, and around men. And there were plenty of men who appreciated that about her—the big boobs, full hips and butt. Too bad she kept going for the losers.

  Harper recognized the purr of a motorcycle just as the second nut loosened. As she bent to fit the wrench over the third, she realized the bike was stopping. She peered down the length of the car just as a man in motorcycle dark brown leathers stepped around it.

  He was tall, with ropes of muscles over his spare frame and a three-day scruff of a beard. His face was heartstoppingly handsome—young but tanned and already slightly weathered, just the way she liked them. His grin when he saw her was distinctly predatory, and he pulled off his sunglasses to reveal delicious amber eyes and shoved them into the pocket of his jacket. Big, rawboned, and as hot as sin on a three-day bender.

  He-llo.

  “Nice view,” he said, his gaze resting on her rear, which was still pointed skyward as she bent to push the lug wrench into place.

  No kidding.

  “You going to help?” She cocked her head at the tire. “Or are you just here to admire?”

  He leaned against the side of the car. “Looks like you’re doing fine.”

  She snorted and stood, folding her arms and cocking a hip. His eyes flickered down to her cleavage. She knew full well that her posture drew attention to it, and she smirked back at him.

  “You could at least pretend to be a gentleman. You’re more likely to get what you want that way.”

  His gaze raked across her, taking in her dangling earrings and small nose stud, then coming to rest briefly on the small butterfly tattoo on her inner arm. The tattoo covered up another mistake—the initials of her high school boyfriend she’d gotten on her eighteenth birthday, the boyfriend who had already been cheating on her with her so-called friend.

  “I doubt it,” he said.

  But he stepped forward, taking her place and loosening the last few lug nuts with quick, efficient motions. Harper planted her rear against the hood, quite deliberately in his peripheral vision.

  Maybe the day wasn’t going to turn out so bad, after all.

  He looked up at her. She could break her heart on that hard jaw. “Jack.”

  “Harper,” she said.

  His smile was slow and lopsided. “Get me the jack.”

  Damn. She scrambled for the jack to hide her blush, handing it over to him.

  “So, what’s actually your name, then?” she said, raising her chin. “Unless you want me to call you Jack. ’Cause that works just fine for me.”

  He scratched his nose, regarding her with amusement still glittering in his eyes. “Levi,” he said.

  She raised her eyebrows at him. It fit in a kind of cowboy-country-boy sort of way. “Nice.”

  He slid the jack under the front of the car, and she pushed away as he raised it. He spun the lug nuts and slid the bolts out one at a time, handing them to Harper without a comment. The wind ruffled his short hair, medium brown with just a touch of auburn where the sunlight glinted off it. He pulled the wheel off, not appearing to notice the weight as it came free of the axle, then slid the new one on just as easily.

  He held out a hand without even looking at her, and Harper put a bolt in it, then the nut.

  “Where’re you from?” Harper asked, handing him another.

  Again, that wolfish look, the gaze that saw too much. “Around.”

  Wouldn’t he like to eat me up.

  “And where are you going?”

  “North.” He held out his hand, and she put the last nut and bolt in it.

  Damn. She was heading the other way, back to Baltimore. She wouldn’t mind taking a detour for him, though. Now that she was standing, she could see his motorcycle, a dozen or so feet behind Baby. Some exotic model—it was probably worth twice her car’s value, maybe more. Not much of a chance of convincing him to leave that for a while. Maybe she could get him to take her for a spin, though….

  He tightened the last lug by hand before lowering the jack.

  “That’s a pretty hot bike. Think you could take me for a ride?” she asked.

  He raked her with his gaze, still spinning the jack to lower it. “Tempting. But no.”

  “Going to be late?” she prompted.

  “Late.” He seemed to find the word amusing. “Yeah, something like that.”

  He slid the jack out. Harper hauled the wheel back to the trunk and heaved it in, sad scraps of rubber dangling from the wheel. Scowling, she stuck the jack in after it. She wasn’t used to getting shot down, not from a man who was so clearly attracted to her.

  She leaned against the car again as he used the lug wrench to give each nut a final tightening, then slapped the hubcap on.

  Dammit. She knew that she interested him, and he sure as hell interested her. Why was he giving her the brush-off?

  “I could drive along with you. You could get to where you were going, then maybe we could hang out,” she said.

  He grunted as he stood, the wrench d
angling from his hand. He flashed his white teeth at her. “You won’t be able to do that.” He turned away and walked to the back of her car.

  “Why not?” Harper pushed off the side of the Skylark and trailed after him, bristling at his easy assurance.

  He tossed the wrench into the trunk and closed it, continuing up the left side of the car. Standing near the driver’s door, he turned to her, treating her to the full effect of his smile.

  “Because, Harper, I’m taking your car.”

  Chapter Three

  Harper’s stomach dropped, and she bolted for the driver’s door. But the man was already inside, slamming the door in her face and hitting the lock.

  “You can have my bike,” he shouted through the glass, shifting into drive. “It’s worth more, anyway.”

  He meant it. He was really going, and he was taking her Baby with him. Harper ran for the front of the car, whether to throw herself in front of it or to try to reach the open passenger’s window, she didn’t know, but he was already pulling away, and the car peeled out before she could take more than a couple of steps, narrowly missing her toes and making a wide U-turn before heading north along the road.

  She stood frozen in the dust of the tires for half a second, her heart hammering a frantic beat.

  Damn. Damn, damn, damn.

  There was no way in hell she was going to let anyone take her Baby.

  She ran back to the bike, the heels of her boots digging into the ground. A Ducati, she saw, and she was sure that her original estimate of its value wasn’t wrong. If the bike wasn’t hot—and seeing as she’d just gotten it from a car thief, how likely was that?—she’d come off better from the swap.

  But she didn’t want to come off better. She wanted Baby.

  Of course he hadn’t left the keys. That would make it too easy. And the steering column was locked in place by the pin that kept people like her from just hotwiring the bike and riding off on it.