Alpha's Captive 03 - Flight Read online

  Harper held her breath.

  He looked up, his amber eye dancing as he flashed a grin. He held the card up between thumb and forefinger. “Dry!” he said. “Bone dry. We’re still in business, babycakes.”

  Tossing the empty bag on the counter, he pulled her against him with his free arm and planted an enthusiastic kiss in her lips—one that instantly turned to a very different kind of enthusiasm.

  She opened her mouth under his kiss, invading his with her tongue even as his arms tightened around her, sliding down to pull her ass snug against his abdomen and the hard cock that was suddenly sandwiched between them.

  Well, he sure recovered fast….

  When he broke away, Harper ran a finger lightly across his chest. She felt the muscles tense beneath her touch.

  “We can’t go to sleep until our clothes are in the dryer,” she said. “At the earliest.”

  He reached around her to set the SD card on the edge of the counter. “And how long will that be?”

  “Half an hour? An hour?” she suggested. “Maybe we should wait for the dryer, too.”

  He laughed. “Maybe we should.”

  “In the meantime, we should get cleaned up,” she said. “You smell like the bottom of the river.”

  He buried his nose against her neck, and she shivered. “So do you, but I’m not complaining.”

  “That’s because you’re a dog,” she said, breaking away, grabbing a wrapped condom from among the pile at the bottom of the sink, and making a line for the bathroom.

  The smack across her rear made her yelp. She spun back to face him, outraged.

  He smiled ferally at her. “Turnabout’s fair play. And I’m not a dog.”

  “Fine,” she snapped. “Then I’ll bathe alone.” She went into the tiny bathroom.

  But before she could shut the door, he was there, pushing it open again, catching her body against his. “Like hell you are.”

  Chapter Three

  “Get off me,” Harper said, pushing against his chest. She might as well have been shoving against a wall.

  And then he kissed her, and she was too busy kissing him back to try to shove him away anymore.

  He kicked the bathroom door closed, pulling the foil packet from her hand, opening it, and rolling the condom on. Then he bent grabbing her thighs, and lifted her into the air as she gave a surprised squeal, hooking her legs on either side of his hips. She gasped as he pushed her back against the door and drove his cock deep inside her in the same motion, sending a thrill of reaction jolting through every nerve of her body.

  “God, you asshole, if you think you can just—”

  He started to move, thrusting hard into her, over and over, and the rest of the words tripped on their way out of her brain as a sudden heat rushed through her body. One of her hands tangled in his short hair as the other dug into the skin of his back. His breath was harsh and fast in her ear, his whole body strung tight with lust. His arms were hard around her, holding her against him, driving her toward the edge so fast that lights went off in the edges of her vision as she went over, searing through her veins and into her brain until she battled her way back out of it again, cursing.

  “You can’t just screw me into submission,” she managed a full minute later, picking up the frayed end of her thread of thought even as he pulled back and deposited her in the fiberglass bath enclosure.

  He grinned up at her as he bent and reached past to crank on the water, and she tried to remind herself that she was mad at him…though exactly why she should be angry at him, she couldn’t quite remember.

  “Who said anything at all about submission?”

  The water rushed into the tub, and he peeled the condom off and tossed it into the trashcan. Harper reached over and aimed the showerhead with one hand as she cranked the handle to switch to the shower with the other, giving his handsome, smirking face a full blast of cold water.

  Levi’s eyes widened with shock and indignation, and Harper shrieked with laugher, changing the angle of the showerhead as the water warmed before she soaked the bathroom with it.

  “You’re really asking for it now,” Levi said, his eyes flashing with something that was almost but quite definitely not anger.

  “You slapped my butt!” Harper said as the water, warmer now, streamed over her body. “And then you jumped all over me.”

  “You slapped mine first, if you recall,” he said.

  Harper paused, remembering. “Oh, yeah. I guess I did. But you deserved it.”

  “And you didn’t?” he returned.

  “I didn’t get your car shot at. And I didn’t go on to wreck it.” That still stung.

  He stepped into the shower and jerked the flowered curtain closed. “Still on about the car.”

  She looked up at him, his body inches from hers. The tub enclosure seemed far too small to fit them both. “Still? It happened like three hours ago! My car, Levi. You wrecked my car.”

  “I seem to remember that you were driving at the time.”

  “Don’t you dare try to pin that on me.” Harper really was irritated now. She’d cared about that damned car more than anything in the world. Her oldest brother had given it to her, and she’d worked summers and weekends earning money to buy parts to restore it. She and her brothers had spent hundreds of hours in the barn together, covered in sweat and grease, talking cars and sports and her poor taste in guys.

  And Levi was, from any objective standpoint, the poorest choice of all. Because whatever the failings of her previous boyfriends—and Levi wasn’t even that—none of them had almost gotten her killed.

  He caught her chin with his fingers and tilted it up. She blinked at him, then realizing that it wasn’t water from the shower that was getting in her eyes and blurring her vision, she jerked her face away.

  Or rather, she tried to, but his grip only tightened.

  “I’m sorry, Harper,” he said softly. “I knew better than to let you come with me.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have taken my car,” she said bitterly.

  A tiny smile quirked his lips, but his eyes were still solemn as he said, “I still could have stopped you, babycakes.”

  “You asshole,” she spat. “I’m upset about my car, not about coming with you.”

  “But I don’t care about your car.” Those amber eyes glinted infuriatingly. His other hand, the free one, touched the bandage on her arm lightly. “What I care about is that you got hurt. And there’s no excuse for me letting that happen.”

  Which was entirely not the point. That was a douchebag, overprotective kind of thing to do, to turn around what she was saying and make it about something else completely. And now she was really mad, mad and humiliated that he’d seen her moment of weakness, because she never, ever let guys see her cry. Harper tried to pull out of his grasp, but there was nowhere to go, and he was lowering his head toward hers again—

  She bit him on the lip, hard, and he jerked back with a curse, releasing her.

  “I’m not your babycakes,” she said. “I’m not anybody’s babycakes. Look, you’re hot. I won’t deny that. And in the sack—look, I don’t even know how you’re doing half of what you do to me because it really, really shouldn’t be that good. This is fun, okay? It’s been great, except for the whole car and almost dying thing. But here’s the deal. Don’t pretend that you know me or you care about me or that I freaking matter to you, because I know I don’t.”

  He stood there, the shower hitting the contours of his chest and running down, across the trail on his belly into the nest of hair and down his thighs and cock. And something happened—in his eyes, in his face, and her breath hitched, just a little, to see it.

  But all he said was, “You’re wrong.”

  And it wasn’t the words that shocked her but the expression, with its peculiar mix of amazement, determination, and anger, that disarmed her long enough that when he stepped back up to her again, she didn’t immediately push him away, even as he gathered her into his arms, ev
en as his mouth found hers. The shock of his lips against hers went straight between her legs, and she kissed him back, hard. His thigh was there, between her legs, and she ground her hips into him as she opened her mouth even as she entered his, wanting it, wanting more, wanting him.

  Afraid of how much she wanted someone for the first time in her life. Because, she realized, it wasn’t just sex now, if it ever had been. It couldn’t be just sex. With every touch of his body on hers, he was making away with a piece of her soul....

  “No.” She said the word against his lips even as her body shuddered against his. She broke away, turning her face to the side. “Levi, no.”

  “Don’t be afraid.”

  She glared up at him, his laughing amber eyes uncharacteristically dark and sober. “Just because I don’t want to screw you doesn’t mean I’m freaking afraid. God, how arrogant can you be?”

  “You don’t want to screw me?” A tiny glimmer of amusement came creeping back again. “Really, you don’t? ’Cause what you were doing to my leg a moment ago sure says otherwise.”

  “You’re a dick,” she said.

  “And you’re hot for it, Harper,” he said. “I’ll tell you what. Give me three minutes—just three—and you can tell me to stop if you want, and I will.”

  “What if I want you to stop now?” she challenged.

  “Three minutes,” he repeated, and he lowered his mouth to hers again, and damn her, but her body seemed to go warm and liquid at once, and she kissed him back.

  “Come on, Levi, that’s cheating,” she said when he broke away, pushing back away from him. Or at least she tried to, but in the narrow confines of the shower, there was no place to go. He caught both her hands in one of his own, pinning them to the fiberglass wall above her head.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “Two and a half minutes.”

  He skimmed his free hand across her wet flesh, and she quivered where he touched her, across her belly, lower, to her clit.

  “That’s really cheating,” she said, but the words came out as half a gasp.

  He kept his touch light as he looked down at her, his sharp gaze searching her face—reading her. She set her jaw, determined not to give him any reaction. Her body yearned for him to touch her, stroke her, give her release—but she didn’t want those eyes on her, seeing far too much. She bit the inside of her cheek even as her breathing quickened. She should tell him to stop again. He would. She was sure of it.

  She thought she was sure of it.

  Harper opened her mouth, and instead, what came out was, “Two minutes.”

  And then he slid two fingers inside of her as his thumb deepened its pressure, and she couldn’t say anything at all.

  Her legs seemed to give way until the only thing holding her up was Levi’s hand, pinning her wrists to the wall. He closed the space between their bodies, his chest coming up against her breasts, his head angling down as he looked into her face, his cock hard and hot against her leg. And all she could feel was him, against her, inside of her, pushing her onward, taking from her far more than pleasure….

  She opened her mouth to tell him to stop, that she couldn’t take it anymore, that he wasn’t allowed to wake that part of her that she’d thought she’d shut away forever.

  But instead, what she said was, “Levi.” And his name was like a sigh or a wish or a prayer.

  “One minute,” he said into her hair. But he wasn’t teasing now. It was more of a plea.

  As she shuddered with the beginning of her release, she screwed her eyes tight because she couldn’t bear to look at him anymore, and she said, “Yes. Yes, now.”

  And then he was there, between her legs, sliding past her defenses, and she was stupid enough to welcome him, her legs wrapping around his waist, her mind on fire with how right it all was, how they were made to go together, until she didn’t know where she stopped and he began, going up and up and then coming hard in a fierce blaze with his body against her, inside her, pushing her deeper into it and peaking with her.

  Then, abruptly, he pulled back. Harper opened her eyes, confused and bereft by his sudden withdrawal. Levi’s usual open face was closed, pinched, his eyes guarded, as the water sheeted across his body.

  “Maybe I just don’t know myself,” he said. “The water’s getting cold. You’d better wash your hair. I need to check on some things, and I’ll finish showering later.”

  With that, he tugged back the shower curtain and was gone.

  By the time Harper recovered from her astonishment and stuck her head out, the bathroom was empty. Water streamed from her hair as she leaned out.

  “Levi!” she called. There was no response. “Levi, you coward, get back in here!”

  Silence.

  Swearing, she jerked the shower curtain closed and squeezed a dollop of shampoo onto her hand, scrubbing her hair roughly and rinsing it until the last traces of river water were gone. A squirt of body gel and quick hands across her body—with another curse, she realized that Levi hadn’t used a condom the last time.

  She hadn’t been as late on her birth control as she’d thought, so that was fine. But she was inclined to think the absolute worst of him at that moment, and she snarled out all the diseases he probably had, lying to girls to get into their pants and then running away….

  Harper wondered if mange was an STD. He probably had mange. Mange and heartworms and fleas and rabies and whatever other diseases a dog could get….

  With a choking laugh, she dialed the water off, realizing how ridiculous she was being. Yeah, he was a bastard, but he was a bastard in completely ordinary ways that didn’t involve being a disease-ridden wreck.

  Feeling a little better for no good reason at all, she wrung her hair out and wrapped a towel around herself, tucking the end before venturing out into the main part of the trailer.

  Which was empty. Frowning, Harper stuck her head in the two bedrooms in turn, but there was no sign of Levi. With a sudden jolt of alarm, she checked the counter. Her heart slowed down to a regular pace when she saw that the SD card was still there.

  She saw that the guns had been disassembled and cleaned. Levi had found two casserole dishes and put a layer of paper towels in the bottom of them, spreading out the ammo to dry. And the little black case was open, an array of lock picks and other objects she couldn’t identify lying next to it. Her purse itself was propped open to dry with a couple of tall drinking glasses.

  Well, that explained what Levi had been doing, but it didn’t explain where he was now. Harper stuck her head into the lean-to. The wash had finished, and she moved the clothes to the dryer—all but the motorcycle leathers, which synthetic or not, probably wouldn’t survive the cycle.

  Wherever Levi was, he wasn’t going to go far without the SD card. So Harper grabbed it, then grabbed her phone, too, and set the alarm for five A.M. She tapped through to her favorite contacts, her finger hovering over her sister Christina’s name. It was only ten-thirty now—she’d definitely still be up. After a moment’s hesitation, she tapped it and listened to the phone ring. One, two, three rings—then voicemail.

  “Hi! If you get this, I’m either on the phone or ignoring you!”

  At least she was honest. Chances were pretty good that Christina was passed out drunk, given her state the last time Harper had seen her. At the tone, Harper cleared her throat and spoke.

  “Hey, Tina. Just wanted to call. Hope you’re not too sick. Sorry I yelled at you at Nana’s birthday party. I guess I’ve never taken getting punched too well, even if it is by accident. Anyway, tell Mom and Joe I love them the next time you see them, okay? And you, and Braden and Cory and Austin. ’Kay? Bye.”

  She hung up quickly before she couldn’t talk around the lump in her throat. Well, whatever happened, that was done. It wasn’t exactly a goodbye, but at least it was an “I love you.” She texted her housemate Madisyn to let her know she might not be home for a few days, then called in sick at the diner—which went about as well as she’d expected, g
iven that the manager who hated her was on duty.

  She finally hung up the phone with a shake of her head. If she didn’t make it out of this, at least she wouldn’t have to worry about finding another job.

  Harper headed into the biggest bedroom and set the phone on the bedside table. If Levi was back at five, she’d leave with him. And if he wasn’t—well, she didn’t want to think about that. She was only worried about the men chasing her. That was it. As soon as she was safe, she’d be out of there. Go home. Forget any of this ever happened. Until then, though, she needed him.

  And that was the only reason she was afraid that Levi might not be coming back, she told herself. The only reason to care.

  Harper shoved the card into a pillowcase, lay down on it, and closed her eyes. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do, even though she was certain that she’d never sleep.

  Absolutely…certain.

  Chapter Four

  Levi ran through the woods, his paws finding easy purchase in the soft earth. In this form, it always amazed him how clumsy humans were, bumbling and crashing through the trees. They always fought the forest, as they fought the night and the deepest, truest desires of their hearts. To his wolf-form, the world was a simple place, full of sharp edges, clear lines, and a thousand nuanced scents that lined up in their orderly categories: friend, foe, mate, food. Everything else was background. And nothing outside the moment mattered.

  Levi had backtracked to where they had left the water. Even with his werewolf’s sight and hearing, there was no sign of Mortensen’s men on either bank. They must have retired for the night, waiting for morning to track them again.

  When they realized the he and Harper weren’t floating down the river with bullet holes through them, the search would be back on, and almost certainly, Mortensen would bring in the big dogs—literally. A vampire wouldn’t be much use in the woods, not compared to the nose and the brain of a werewolf. And Mortensen had lap dogs aplenty. So Levi spent a solid half hour laying false trails through the woods, taking an obscene joy in leaving a particularly noxious pile of crap at the end of his best one.