Craved by an Alpha (11 page)

Because he was her pride’s alpha.

She could hate him all she wanted for what had happened, but she still had to respect him.

“Eloise.” He reached for her.

“Don’t Eloise me,” she snapped and paced away from him, towards the entrance of the cave where the air was chilly and fresh. She took deep breaths of it, using it to cool her head before she did something she would regret or said something she couldn’t take back.

He lowered his hand onto the sleeping bag, over his knee, and heaved another sigh. “I left because of you.”

Her lips parted. He had done what?

She scowled at him. “No… you left because Stellan defeated you and you wanted to get away from being the alpha of the pride… you left because you hated it at the village… you…”

“Left because I couldn’t bear seeing you drifting away from me.”

She shook her head, a chill skating down her spine, and folded her arms across her chest. She rubbed them, trying to stop herself from feeling cold to the bone. It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t have left because of her. He just couldn’t. It was too much. How did he expect her to react to it? Why hadn’t he sought her out and told her why he was leaving? She might have stopped him.

She might have gone with him.

She shook her head again, tears burning her eyes. It was too cruel to say these things to her now, after everything she had been through because of him.

“No… please, Cavanaugh… don’t lie to me.”

Because she couldn’t bear it. It was tearing down her defences, even when it changed nothing. He utterly laid waste to what was left of her barriers when he rose onto his feet, the sleeping bags falling away to reveal his naked body.

Her mouth went dry. She tried to look away but her eyes were too occupied with drifting over every inch of him, reacquainting herself with just how lean and powerful he was, honed and god-like, the epitome of a strong male.

“Eloise,” he husked, burning her resolve to ashes, “I left because I wanted you and I couldn’t have you.”

She barked out a short laugh at that, a bitter taste on her tongue as she glared at him. “You could have had me. You could have just ordered me into your bed.”

His eyes darkened and she took a step back, a ripple of awareness travelling through her. She had pushed too far and too hard, and she had hurt him with her callous words. Her Cavanaugh would never do such a thing. She knew it in her heart. He would never use the rules of their pride to force her to sleep with him.

She had just put him on the same despicable level as Stellan.

“I’m sorry.” She covered her mouth and shook her head, hating how feeble her apology sounded.

His jaw tensed and he looked away from her, his gaze downcast. “I see. So… you’re bringing me back to the pride to trade one monster for another.”

“No, Cavanaugh, that isn’t what I—”

He silenced her with a glare, his eyes glowing silver around his wide pupils.

“Shouldn’t you speak to me with a little more damned respect?” he barked and she took another step back. Her gaze darted to her feet, but not before she caught the regret that shone in his eyes. “I need some fucking air.”

He swiped his trousers from the pile of clothing near their packs, pulled them on and strode towards her. She ducked to one side and pressed herself against the wall as he passed, and closed her eyes as he crawled through the entrance of the cave and disappeared from view.

Eloise slid down the wall and onto her backside. She drew her knees up to her chest and stared at the wall opposite, listening to Cavanaugh as he paced the ledge outside the shelter. She wanted to apologise and explain, but he radiated fury at a level she could sense and her instincts were screaming a warning at her. She heeded them, willing to give him a moment to cool off because she knew he wouldn’t go anywhere without her.

He was angry with her, but he wouldn’t leave her.

Her mind drifted over everything he had said. He hadn’t wanted to be the pride alpha. He hadn’t wanted to leave her.

But he had left her.

He had left her without a word. Without a goodbye. It had cemented her feeling that he hadn’t cared about her, not in the way she cared about him. What if she had been wrong all these years?

She had thought about going after him when he had left, but it had been dark, a moonless night, and Stellan had been swift to warn everyone that he would kill anyone he caught attempting to leave. She had never been as afraid as she had been that night—both for her own life and for Cavanaugh’s. Her mother had convinced her to wait until daybreak, and somehow she had managed it, only to find it snowing heavily. Even if she had managed to slip unnoticed from the village, she wouldn’t have been able to track him with the fresh powder covering his trail.

Her mother had comforted her by saying that Cavanaugh would return and Eloise had believed her. She had realised too late that her mother had said whatever it had taken to keep her in the village and safe. Her mother had confessed it to her on her deathbed and Eloise had reassured her that she wasn’t angry with her, even when part of her had been. The rest of her had been filled with a need to find Cavanaugh. She had needed him so much in those dark days following her mother’s death.

She hadn’t been brave enough to go through with it and leave the village, so she had convinced herself that it would be too hard to track him down.

Eloise chastised herself for making excuses. When she had finally left the pride in order to bring him back, it had taken her two years, but she had found him. She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against her bare knees. The thought that she might have been with him for at least the last three years, living in London and maybe working at the same nightclub, ran on repeat in her head.

She should have gone after him that snowy morning and not listened to her mother.

She drew in a slow breath, lifted her head, and exhaled it. There was little point in wondering what might have been and playing the
should have
game. Cavanaugh should have done a lot of things differently if he truly had feelings for her too, but he hadn’t. Both of them were at fault for what had happened, back then and even now.

He had sprung something huge on her, telling her that he had left because he couldn’t bear seeing her drift away from him.

She hadn’t reacted in the smoothest way.

Gods. Now he was standing on a ledge several hundred metres up the side of a mountain and no doubt cursing her name.

She had to speak with him.

Eloise shifted onto her hands and knees, and crawled towards the narrow exit of the cave. She slowed as his bare feet came into view, her heart beginning a slow, steady thump against her chest. She had to do this. She pushed onwards and came out onto the ledge behind him.

He whirled to face her and frowned. “Go back inside. You’ll freeze out here.”

She had forgotten that she was only dressed in her underwear, but she wasn’t going to let the cold deter her.

Even if it was freezing.

Wind whipped across the wall of rock, battering her and loosening strands of her dark hair. It played in Cavanaugh’s too, tousling the silver-white tufts, and plastered his dark grey trousers to his legs.

Eloise kneeled and rubbed her arms. “I’m sorry.”

He stared at her, the question in his gaze asking whether she had come out into the frigid cold just to apologise again or whether there was anything else she had to say.

She looked out at the valley and everything she had wanted to say to Cavanaugh fled her lips. Normally, the view was spectacular, a lush green valley that followed the river as it snaked down through the mountains. The tops of those mountains were grey rock tipped with dazzling white snow. Not today.

Today heavy grey clouds hid their peaks and she couldn’t make out the valley beyond a few hundred metres below her.

Snow swallowed it.

The first few flakes drifted down and settled on the ledge, and on her bare skin, melting on contact.

This wasn’t good. A snowstorm would keep them trapped in the shelter, unable to continue their climb until it had blown over and the wind had swept the snow and ice off the rock face.

Cavanaugh stared out towards the storm as it slowly closed in on them. “We wouldn’t make it.”

Had he been reading her mind? She had been on the verge of saying they had to leave now.

She looked up at the thick clouds that were already overhead. “We have to try… if we don’t…”

“I know what happens if we don’t,” he said, a sharp edge to his deep voice. “I know what happens if we do, too. It’s over two hundred metres to the top. It would take too long to climb that far. It’s better we’re not caught in the open when it hits.”

She knew that but she didn’t care. The pride were relying on her and she was so close to having Cavanaugh back with them.

The quiet voice in her heart said that she didn’t care about that or the pride. She cared about Cavanaugh. She had already messed up once on the climb and he had somehow saved her. If she messed up again, in the middle of a snowstorm, she might end up killing both of them.

White flakes swirled on the wind, steadily drifting down towards her.

“Back inside,” Cavanaugh said and she didn’t argue with him.

Eloise turned around and crawled back into the cave. He followed her and a blush burned up her cheeks when she realised she was giving him a free show, flashing her backside at him. She hastily got onto her feet on the other side of the wall, scurrying away from him.

He made it through the entrance, rose onto his feet and went for his pack. He crouched beside it, pulled out some protein bars, clothing and other items, and then stood and carried the pack towards the door, together with hers. The snow was already creeping inside. Cavanaugh stopped it by wedging their backpacks across the bottom of the entrance, sealing the lower half of the gap.

“That should keep us warmer.” He turned back towards her and met her eyes before averting his down to his bare feet. “We might have to share body heat again… if you can bring yourself to be near a monster.”

“Cavanaugh,” Eloise snapped and his grey eyes leaped to hers. “I never said you were a monster… just… it hurt that you stayed away. It hurt that one day we were best friends and the next you were acting like a stranger.”

“Gods, Eloise…” He scrubbed his left hand over his silver-white hair. “I didn’t want it to be like that… but what was I meant to do?”

Talk to her. He was meant to talk to her. She would have listened to him and she might not have spent years believing she had meant nothing to him.

She lowered her gaze back to her feet. It was cold and she didn’t have the energy to think, let alone argue with him. She trudged to the clothes she had spotted on the floor and picked up her beige trousers. They were damp. So was her top.

“Here.” Cavanaugh rounded her, stooped and scooped up his long sleeve black thermal top. He offered it to her. “I meant to lay your clothes out to dry but I forgot.”

Because he had been focused on warming her.

“You could have talked to me,” she whispered and took the top from him, ignoring the confused crinkle of his brow. He knew damned well that she wasn’t talking about yesterday when she had been unconscious. She was talking about a decade ago. She lifted the top to her nose.

It smelled of Cavanaugh.

Gods, she wanted to rub it all over herself.

She tamped down that feline urge and put it on.

“What could I have said?” Cavanaugh stepped into her, his hands claiming her hips, guiding her backwards towards the sleeping bags.

She stared up into his grey eyes, lost in them, feeling as if he was beating down her defences all over again. Every time she reconstructed them, he went to war again, tearing them down. His eyes darted between hers and his silver eyebrows furrowed.

“Tell me, Eloise,” he husked. “If I had told you that I wanted you, what would you have done?”

She dragged her eyes away from his, dropping them to his bare chest. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know,” he echoed and she swallowed hard and nodded. He sighed. “You don’t know because there is no answer where we get what we want… is there?”

He released her and stepped back, his eyes lowering to his feet as hers rose to his.

He looked vulnerable, a male stripped of his power and strength, one who was breaking inside. She didn’t like it. It filled her with a need to step towards him and slide her arms around his neck, bringing his lips down to hers for a kiss that would relay all of her feelings for him and chase away his pain.

“There is no way for me to have you… not the way I want you.” He scrubbed his hand around the back of his neck and closed his eyes. “If I had gone to you back then and told you that I wanted you, it wouldn’t have changed a thing… just as it doesn’t change a thing now. It doesn’t change my status or the things I did.”

She wished he hadn’t said that last part. The things he had done. A brief flash of the pride females blasted across her eyes and she shut them, wishing she could shut out the images too. They refused to go away.

“I never wanted this,” he whispered.

Eloise opened her eyes and looked at him. “What did you want?”

He lifted his gaze to hers, silver glowing around his dark pupils.

“You.”

Gods help her, but when Cavanaugh looked at her like that, with desire darkening his grey eyes but making them burn at the same time, she lost all of her will to resist him.

Eloise had stepped into his arms, claimed his shoulders and pulled him down to her before she could even consider what she was doing. She fused her mouth with his in a hard kiss, one born of the need blazing through her, hunger that had been building from the moment she had set eyes on him in London. She could no longer deny it. She was surprised she had made it this far without surrendering to it.

The wind howled across the mountain and the scent of snow grew thicker, but she didn’t care. She didn’t feel the cold as Cavanaugh’s hands clamped down on her hips and he slowly drew her against him. She felt only the scorching heat of the desire that burned within her heart and her body, a need and hunger that only he could satisfy.