Owned By The Alphas - The Prequel (4 page)

“
Y
ou done with the tractor
?” Hope asked him, holding onto the enormous empty vehicle with one arm. Her slim body was outlined by sunlight streaming through her cotton sundress. He could see she wasn’t wearing a bra, and he guessed that was on purpose.

“You know I wasn’t using it,” Jared answered, warily. He wiped his dirty hands on a rag that hung from the pocket of his light blue jeans, eyeing her. His brown hair fell over his blue eyes that squinted a little against the bright light. He felt tired during the daytime and more alive at night, but that wasn’t going to sit well with his employer, her father. The dusty green t-shirt tugged at his eighteen year old muscles as he ran a hand through his hair, waiting for her to say something.

Hope gazed at him a moment with a flirtatious smile, longing shining from her green eyes. Damn, was she a cutie. “My daddy’s not going to be home for another hour at least. It takes a long time to go into town, you know.”

Jared dropped his gaze to the newly bound chicken-wire he’d just installed around the coup, running the length of it from the dirt to six feet up. It had been busted into for the third time, and Lester McKlain had gone into town to get more chickens. All twenty of the new egg-laying hens were gone, with some blood stains and feathers left behind. Jared hadn’t told Lester he thought it was wolves who did it, the real kind, not werewolves like himself. The reason he’d settled into this little town was it was free of werewolves, and he needed the rest from fighting. Maybe in the next town, he’d find some who didn’t want to kill him the second they laid eyes on him. For now, he needed to reset his buttons and not feel so damn lonely…and broke.

He also hadn’t told Lester that his pretty little daughter had been coming onto Jared ever since he’d been hired to help around the six acre property now that the old man was, well, old. Three long months of saying no to a daily invitation was beginning to wear on him. They were both eighteen. It was legal, but it didn’t matter, did it? Fucking his boss’s daughter was probably not going to keep him sheltered, fed, and earning enough to save so that when he moved on, he didn’t have to steal. He wanted to stay away from her. This job and roof over his head were the best gifts the gods had given Jared in four hard years.

“I know how long it takes, Hope. He’ll be back soon, and I’m done fixing this, so why don’t you entertain me with one of your stories?” He offered her a smile.

A flicker of disappointment flashed across her face. “You’re so stubborn, Jared. You know that? Don’t you find me attractive?” When he didn’t answer, she sighed, “Okay, a story. Well…” She weaved her slender, painted blue fingertips into the chicken wire, holding on with both hands as she swayed. The sunlight outlined her shoulder-length blonde hair in the most appealing way. Jared listened with his arms crossed, determined not to let her affect him. “…I’ve been living here my whole life, as I told you.” She smiled. “And since my brother went away to college two years ago, I’ve been dying to get out of this small Wisconsin town. Daddy doesn’t know it, but I think I can confide in you, can’t I? I want to maybe move to Chicago, or New York, or anywhere with some action.” Her smile changed as she whispered, “I’m just dying for some action.”

A snort broke out of Jared’s upturned lips and he shook his head. “Hope, here you are a virgin talking like a girl who’s been around. You don’t know what you’re asking for. You don’t know who I am. I could be a…well, I could be anybody.”

She dropped her hands and turned around so that the wires were at her back. Tilting her head a little, the sun lined the side of her face and body. Quietly, she told him, “I’m not a virgin, Jared.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, you are.”

With a tiny shake of her head, Hope said, “I had sex with one boy. Twice. You know Chris Lake?”

He frowned then nodded. Chris Lake was a punk kid who’d given him the stink-eye many times when Jared had gone into town with Lester. When they saw him outside the hardware store one afternoon, Chris had been coming out of the deli and had paused long enough to let Jared know he didn’t like him. Lester hadn’t noticed, and Jared hadn’t thought much of it since he got that look a lot, mostly from werewolves he’d come across over the years since he’d turned. But Chris was no werewolf. He knew that. He could smell beasts like him, and they had a dangerous quality that a normal teenage kid like Chris Lake just didn’t have.

“Well, that makes sense,” Jared muttered.

Hope’s eyebrows rose. “Why?”

“Nothing. Well, then, I guess I have to apologize.”

“For thinking I was innocent? That’s a compliment.”

“For a numb-nut like him being your first.”

She laughed and brushed blonde bangs from her eyes. “Yeah, he was pretty awful.”

Jared held her look. She was so compelling to the beast in him, so innocent. Even with the two times she’d been with that punk, she was innocent to Jared. She smelled of sweet shampoo and fresh, clean female skin. He wanted to taste her.

But that couldn’t happen.

“Well, again…I’m sorry.” Abruptly, Jared turned away to head for his one-room shack that sat just twenty yards off from the main house. But as he made to leave, he felt her fingers wrap about his right bicep.

With melodic sweetness, she asked, “You want to show me what it’s supposed to be like?”

His wolf stirred inside him and he looked over his shoulder at her. “No.” With her warm hand still lightly holding on, she stared up at him with hurt feelings. She was so much smaller than his six-foot-three inch frame. She looked vulnerable, not aggressive. It was killing him. “Hope, don’t do that. It’s not personal. It’s just, I need a place to stay. I need work. I’ve been traveling a long time and it’s been…hard out there.”

“I’ve seen the scars on your back, and the one on your side,” she whispered.

He pulled his arm away, filled with self-consciousness. “Oh yeah? How’d you see those?”

She hurried to explain, “When you stripped off your shirt last Tuesday? After you got it all sweaty? I was…watching from the house. I’m sorry. Did something happen to you? Where did you get those? I could just kill the person who did that to you!”

A pain in his chest surprised him. But he couldn’t tell her the truth
. I’m a werewolf, and for some unknown reason, other werewolves want to kill me. I’m an outsider. And this scar on my side…well…
“Let’s just say, be glad you have a good man for a father. And you shouldn’t spy on other people, Hope. If I want to tell you something, I’ll tell you. Understand?”

The harshness of his tone made her hand flutter to her lips and her eyes widen. But then she stepped forward and touched his chest lightly. “Let me take away the pain.”

His cock hardened instantly, pushing against the tight fabric of his jeans. “No!”

Her hand drifted down his shirt and they locked eyes as it traveled lower. He groaned as his wolf thrashed about inside him. She touched the jean cotton pulling at his crotch and he grunted, trying to stave off the pleasure it gave him. A smile flickered on her parted lips and he lost control. He grabbed her, relishing in the soft gasp that escaped as he pushed her against the chicken-wire. The metal rattled as it swayed under their weight, testing the work he’d just done, and finding it solid enough to hold them both. She smelled even better up close and her skin was so soft, so unlike his. He heard her heartbeat race, her breath come in shorter gasps of need. The desire to claim her grew. He grabbed one of her legs and wrapped it around his hip, grinding into her as he buried his face in her neck, loving how her hair tickled him. How he ached to feel softness of any kind! She moaned, egging on the starving kisses he raged down her collar bone, her bare shoulder, and back up. He locked lips with her and his tongue teased hers. She let him lead, and he wanted to stop, but couldn’t. Feeling his way down her body, he explored the tender terrain he’d yearned to touch ever since he’d first laid eyes on her.

“I promised myself I wouldn’t do this!” he murmured.

“I want you to!”

He grabbed up the hem of her summer dress and slid rough, calloused fingers up her thighs, hips, and finally her stomach, holding there and trying not to reach for more. She sighed into his mouth as he kissed her again, her hot breath driving him to distraction. He wanted to take her right then, but she’d told him Chris Lake was terrible. If he was going to do this, Jared wanted to show her what sex could really be like.

“God help me,” he rasped, lifting up her small breasts. How pretty they were, how soft and kissable. He pulled down her dress straps to expose her, staring at the dusky pink crests of her nipples. Then he ran his thumbs over them. “So beautiful.”

With hooded eyes, she watched. “You think so? I thought maybe you didn’t think I was pretty…”

He shook his head at the absurdity of that, and bent down to take one of her sweet little crests in his mouth, lightly licking it like someone who loved to do it. He licked it for so long, never increasing speed, that soon she was holding onto his head begging him, “Jared, please, take me!”

He shook his head again, and moved to the other nipple, covering it with his lips and sucking gently. The scent of her arousal was so sweet it was torture. She moaned again and he ground into her panties with his bulge, hungry to ease the swollen need that burned him. He’d been so fucking lonely for so long. He’d been with women before, but Hope was sweet, and so different. A friend.

Dropping to his knees, he looked up at her and hooked his fingers around the sides of her yellow panties. She stared at him, submissive and waiting. Slowly, he revealed her, slipping the damp cotton down until it fell on the ground. She was lovely, unshaved, with a small bush that glistened. His heart thudded in his ears as he gazed at her, knowing this was a precious thing she was allowing him to do. Wrapping a strong grip around her left thigh, he lifted it up and hooked her smooth leg over his shoulder, her sneaker’s heel resting on his back. He parted her secret lips and looked at her for a long, tantalizing moment, intoxicated by the wetness he saw there, and the beautiful scent of her. How soft pink her folds were, and how dark crimson her little bean.

“I have to taste you,” he said, thickly, and leaned forward, inhaling her. “You smell so good.”

She cried out as he buried his face, tonguing her opening and working his way up. She writhed a little and he murmured against her fragile skin, “That’s right, Hope. Move. I want you to.” Her hips swayed forward to open up for him and he grabbed them and most of her ass, working them to his advantage, undulating her so that she became less self-conscious, more open to freely expressing her desire by moving on his handsome face. There wasn’t another house for miles, so she cried out with abandon as he slipped his tongue inside of her, the sweet sound of ecstasy ripping from her lungs. He slid a finger slowly in and pulled it out again. She melted and nearly collapsed, grabbing onto the wire to hold herself up. She was so wet, he couldn’t believe it. So yielding.

The sound of a car in the distance reached his sensitive ears. No human could have known Lester was on his way home, but a werewolf could hear a car from two miles away when it was an old clunker truck like that one, and on a dirt road in the quiet country. He cursed silently at the timing, and looked up at Hope. “Your dad’s nearly here.”

Her eyebrows knit together and she stared into the distance, craning to hear. “How do you know?”

“Never mind. He just is. We have to stop.” Jared rose up and covered her legs with the dress. It had bunched around her waist and he hastened to right it, pulling it over her shoulders, too. “I want you so bad. Fuck!”

She grabbed his arms and implored, “Then be fast! Please don’t stop! He can’t see us from here, not until he gets almost to the house. You can’t leave me like aching like this. It’s like my body is on fire!”

He closed his eyes against his own lack of willpower and wrestled his fly open, unleashing his engorged cock into his hand. With amazing speed, he lifted her into the air and she wrapped her legs around his naked hips, his jeans dropped around his thighs. Her breath hitched on a throaty gasp as he filled her up in one intense movement. Pounding into her with long bursts, he encased her mouth with his and hungrily kissed her, loving how she tasted. The car neared closer. Hope’s breaths were short and hot, and she was so slippery and tight that Jared knew he could cum any second. But he put it off, for her. Listening to the approaching car, he groaned as the pleasure overtook him, kissing her in a rhythm that matched the sureness of his thrusting hips. He focused on her pleasure, on moving where her moans dictated, and suddenly she tightened and trembled. Her whole body shivered, showing him he’d done a much better job that her first lover had. As soon as she was finished, he pulled out and set her down, just as the 1989 Chevy Pickup pulled onto the far end of the dirt driveway, palming himself to unleash his own juices safely outside of her fertile body.

Hope grabbed her panties, yanking them on as she whispered, “You pulled out!” disappointed.

Jared threw her a look, pulling up his jeans. “Trust me. I did that to save you, not me.” He smoothed her hair down, acting as her mirror. “Go drive the tractor back. It’ll explain your flushed cheeks, since you’re not supposed to be driving it. Go!”

Hope ran for the tractor, climbed up into it, started the engine with a roar and headed for the house. The Chevy met it, the fence the only thing between them. Lester yelled, “Hope! How many times have I told you not to drive that thing? You’re no good with heavy machinery! Now get out of it!”

“No, daddy! I can drive this just as good as you and Jared can! You’re always treating him like he’s your family, and not me!”

Jared chuckled at the blatant lie and grabbed the rag from his pocket, wiping off his hands and staring after her. His smile dropped as he thought of her wishing he hadn’t pulled out to finish. The idea that he might impregnate her with a baby monster made him shudder, and he quickly shoved the thought away. Watching Hope jump down from the tractor, he smoothed down his hair and shook his head. “That was close,” he muttered to himself.