Promising Peter (Bad Boy Alphas) (Shrew & Company Book 6) (4 page)

“I’m not?”

He growled, and said through clenched teeth, “No. You’re not his.”

“Whose am I?”

Without answering, he dropped his jeans and stepped out of them.

Those weren’t all he’d stepped out of. His boxer briefs pooled atop his pants.

He folded his arms over his chest and widened his stance a little so his feet were shoulder-width apart. “Go on and search me. You’ll see there’s nothing worth finding.”

She didn’t think she was going to agree with that anytime soon. Already, she was finding new and interesting things, like that the tattoos that started at the sides of his neck continued down his ribs, past his hips, down to his knees. She’d probably need an hour to examine them all, and she planned to at some point, but that would have to wait until she had fewer distractions. Like the long, thick cock jutting proudly from the nest of dark blond hair at his crotch. Or the way her mouth watered at the enticing sight.

With just a nod, he could have her down on her knees waiting for his explicit permission for her to take his shaft into her mouth.

She forced down a swallow and dragged her tongue across parched lips. As usual, she’d spoken too quickly and without a plan. She’d gotten him naked, and now wasn’t certain what she was supposed to do with him, except touch.

She skimmed her fingertips down the ridge between his pecs, and looked up to find him staring back curiously with one pale eyebrow cocked.

“The shirt was already off,” he reminded her.

“I know, but I was…standing farther away then.”

“I see.”

She skated her fingers around his navel.

His abs clenched and contracted.

“Does that tickle?” she asked.

“A little. Do you plan on defeating me through tickling?”

“I don’t think so. That would probably take more energy than I have.”

“Maybe you should have finished the sandwich.”

“If I’m short on endurance, I may heed that advice.” She swallowed again and pressed her palms against his hipbones, unable to do much more than to take him in. Her brain wouldn’t let her. She was, after all, a woman with needs who’d neglected them for far too long, and in spite of her brother’s and sister-in-law’s protestations, she was safe with Peter.

She took in the broadness of him, the strength of him. Notched her fingers briefly into the scars on the flesh of his arms and thighs. Skimmed her fingertips around to the base of his spine.

He looked over his shoulder at her and tucked his hair behind his ears.

“I should look there,” she mused. She stood on tiptoes at his back and tracked her fingers through the uncombed strands, touching every inch of his scalp. Not really searching, just feeling. The man was a sensual delight. Beautiful to look at—even the rough parts of him—the right combination of hard and silken for her tactile needs, and even with her busted nose, he smelled to her like a safe place to hide.

Pressing her body against his back, she drew in his scent and laced her fingers together at his belly. On top of the familiar scent of Bear—the earthiness all the born ones had—was citrus and musk. Soothing scents that managed to simultaneously quell her anxious thoughts and arouse her body.

He had to know what being so near him did to her. His nose was far better than hers, and arousal wasn’t something she could fake.

“No wonder you don’t do investigative work for the Shrews,” he said low. “You’re easily distracted.”

She pressed her lips against his back and kissed the salty flesh. “Tell me where to search.”

“That would defeat the purpose, I think.”

“I’m not good at this. You’re right.”

“We can’t all be good at everything.”

She kissed him again, and then let her tongue dance up the ridges of his long spine as far as she could reach. He had at least eight inches on her. She’d never considered five-feet six to be short, but she was feeling small at the moment. “Are you telling me to give up?”

“You might as well. I don’t think you’re going to find anything, carrying on as you are.”

“Maybe you should teach me what to do, then.”

“And have your bother kill me for providing you with the knowledge?” He pressed his hands over hers at his hips, awaiting her response.

“Why does he have to know?”

“You think he doesn’t know who carried you off?”

“I don’t care if he does. My life isn’t his business.”

“Isn’t it? He’s your alpha, and he’s a good alpha. His opinion means something.”

“So does mine.”

“Yeah? And what’s your opinion?”

“I’m thinking you should worry less about what people outside this apartment are doing and focus on the ones here in this kitchen.”

“I shouldn’t be concerned for my longevity? I shouldn’t fear Bryan’s bite when he catches up to me?”

“He won’t bite you. I’d get between you.”

“Why?”

“Because I…” She sighed and pressed her forehead against his spine. She didn’t know how to articulate her thoughts. If her inner bear had been less hostile at the moment, Drea might have been able to express some suitably reasonable explanation for why she had to let what was simmering between her and Peter happen. She wasn’t the aggressive type and wasn’t used to arguing on her own behalf. Usually, other folks did that for her. Maybe that would never totally change, but she had to tell Peter some things—that what they were doing was
okay
.

“I…want you to touch me,” she said, and hoped that would convey enough.

“Why, Andrea?”

She sighed again and closed her eyes.
Why
always tripped her up. She was smart, but not quick-witted like the Shrews. Her intelligence cranked on a low simmer. Her responses were slower, but when she made them, they were sure. Every important question had to be filtered through both parts of her brain—the woman part and the bear. Then she had to mentally sift through the feedback and meld the components into something cohesive and cogent.

“You think I should be afraid of you,” she said. “But I’m not. At least, not in the ways you probably expect. You’re not going to let anything bad happen to me.”

“If
I
happen to you, that would be something bad.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I am who I am, Andrea. My reputation is well earned, and though I may go looking for fewer fights than I used to, I certainly stumble into more than my fair share. I’ve got blood on my hands and plenty of dark spots on my soul.”

“You make yourself sound like Satan in disguise.”

“Sullying the virtue of an angel.”

“I’m no angel.”

“Aren’t you?” He squeezed her wrists and looked back over his shoulder again.

His question caught her up short.

She could put her foot down and demand he treat her like the vixen she most certainly wasn’t, but they’d both know her aggressiveness would be false. She’d be trying too hard to be something she wasn’t. Her best strategy was still to get him to accept her as she was. And he had to have had a pretty good grasp of that to start with, or he wouldn’t have abducted her.

“Aren’t you?” he repeated softly.

“Sometimes, I wish I weren’t,” she whispered. “I wish hurting people when I need to was an easier thing. The Shrews have been trying to teach me to fight and how to be on the offensive when I need to be, but I just don’t have the knack. I’m slow to speak and even slower to react. Most of the time, I’m a sitting duck. Dana had a keycard system installed outside the office. She said the system was part of the agency’s overall security plan, but I know she moved up the installation timeline because of me. She made accessing the business harder for clients because
I
can’t handle myself at the front desk.”

“She could fire you if she wanted to. She’s a very practical woman. You’re still employed because she needs you there.”

“That’s what Sarah keeps telling me, but that doesn’t make believing what they say any easier. Anyway, I am what I am, and I can’t help what I want.”

“What do you want?”

“Right now, I want you. You brought me here. Whether your inner bear compelled you or the human part of your brain had some say in the matter makes no difference to me. We’re here and alone, and…if you want me, you can have me.”

At the slight movement of his spine, she looked up to see him shaking his head. “I can’t have you, Andrea.”

Her body crumpled against him as if someone had cut the marionette strings holding her up.

He quickly threw an arm around her and pressed her to his back. He wasn’t going to let her fall, apparently.

“I can’t have you,” he repeated, “but I
want
you. Both parts of me. Therein lies the conflict.”

She was breaking his goddamned heart.

Peter hadn’t been speaking completely in jest when he’d said Andrea was an angel. She was certainly the closest to one he’d ever get to see on Earth, and if he so much as looked at her with the heat that had been consuming him for nearly a year, the guilt that followed overwhelmed.

Still, he stepped out of his pants, pulled her around to the front of his body, and held her tight. She practically melted against him. She wasn’t the stiff, frightened woman she should have been. That underlying scent of fear was still there, but he considered what she’d said. Her fear was something she always carried around and not caused specifically by him.

The bear in him wanted to find some way to siphon off her worries so she was carefree and happy—so she could eat a fucking sandwich from start to end without stopping. But that should have been some other Bear’s job. What the goddess had been thinking in steering him toward the timid woman, he’d never know. He’d always assumed that if he felt a pull toward any particular woman, his mate would be like his mother—brash and assertive. Cutting when she had to be, but maternal to a T. She was a pretty beast in lipstick and high heels, and nothing incited her ire worse than her children being threatened. Her children could take care of themselves just fine, but that didn’t stop Mama Ursu from being on the defensive, anyway.

Andrea, though…

He slipped his fingers under her chin and tilted her face toward him.

Wide-eyed and expectant. Wary, but not frightened. Beautiful brown eyes and generous lips he should have been kissing instead of forcing himself to ignore.

“Pretty girl…” he said in a whisper.

She cringed and closed her eyes.

“You are. That is why Gene harassed you, isn’t it?”

“He did that because I had the right body parts.”

“I don’t think so. While he may be derisive toward women in general, he’s like any man and would gravitate toward beauty. He’d want to claim you, but you’re not his to be claimed.”

“Hopefully no one is.”

“I can’t say if anyone is or isn’t, only that you’re not his. If you’re anyone’s, you’re mine, and that’s bad enough.”

She opened her eyes only to roll them. “If you don’t really want me, let me go home. We can pretend this never happened.”

“You know I can’t let you go home. Even if my inner bear would allow me to let you leave, I’m not so certain the part of me that’s just man would be so enthusiastic about seeing you walk away.”

She blinked at him.

“I didn’t say I didn’t want you, Andrea. Obviously, I do.” The enduring erection pressed between the two of them should have been evidence enough of that. She smelled so damned good—so
fertile
—and his inner beast was getting impatient. He worried the time would pass, and he’d have to wait for weeks for another chance to inseminate her. The bear wanted a cub. The bear obviously didn’t give a shit about obstacles.

If Peter didn’t slake off some of the edge soon, he might do something he’d regret, and he regretted so many things already.

“Come here.” He took her hand and led her back to the sofa.

He lay on his back and wedged her on her side between his body and the cushions.

She put her head on his shoulder and he moved her hand down to his stimulated cock.

Her grip was tentative, but he made her tighten her hold around the shaft. He figured that since she’d caused the erection, she should have some hand in providing the relief.

“Every time I see you, it does that,” he said into her hair. “Even outside the mating season, I can’t think about anything else than you being naked and ready for me.”

“I’m here,” she said.

“But you’re not ready.”

She might never be ready.

She gave his cock a squeeze that was probably meant to be punishing, but the action only served to force more pre-ejaculate from his slit and down to her fist.

He wrapped his fingers around hers and tightened her grip. “Like that. If you’re gonna do this to me, make sure I can feel it.”

He pulled his hand away and twined his fingers behind his head.

She settled in, wrapping her top leg around his right one, and began slow, languorous tugs of his shaft that had his toes curling and inner bear howling.

“Just like that.”

She swiped her thumb across the head and played with the sticky sap at the top for a moment before spreading the liquid downward.

He closed his eyes and lifted his left leg to improve her access to his sack when her fingers flitted lower. “Been waiting so long for you to touch me.”

“Why didn’t you ask me?”

“There are certain kinds of women you don’t ask such things, and you’re one of them.”

“What kind of woman am I?”

“A woman to be taken seriously.”

“I think there are lots of women like that who would enjoy being asked to play.”

“But what we’re doing isn’t just play, is it?”

Her squeezes turned into lazy strokes and her breathing sped.

“Is it?” he repeated.

“I don’t know what you want me to tell you, Peter. You’re putting off a lot of mixed signals.”

If his eyes weren’t goggling, he would have been surprised. “I think I’ve been very clear about what I want. What I said was that I shouldn’t claim you.”

“And yet here we are. I have my hand on your penis, and I’m not shedding a single tear.”

“You’ll regret everything tomorrow.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Common sense. Good girls tend to regret these things.”

“You’ve been with many good girls?”

“I’ve been with practically every kind of girl.”

She stopped stroking.

And there we go.
He wasn’t going to take back the words. Perhaps he was self-sabotaging in some small way, but the part of him that was man and still somewhat honorable believed he’d needed to tell her. He wasn’t a monk. He and Soren had been on the road for a lot of years, and they’d gotten around. Peter couldn’t count the number of women he’d bedded, but he knew exactly how many of them he’d wanted to keep: zero, until Andrea.

None of the others had seemed right. While in the past, he may not have been very discriminating about who he’d put his dick into, both halves of his consciousness were very picky about whom he made his mate. Andrea not only smelled right, put off the right kind of energy, and was amazing to look at—assuming he didn’t stress too much about what she had or hadn’t been eating—but the very first time he’d met her, he’d felt something click into place. A mental
a-ha
moment in which he’d found some piece of him he hadn’t known was missing. She was everything, and he was a bastard.

He brushed her hand away from his cock and took up the chore of tugging it himself. She settled in to watch, or at least he thought she did. From his angle, he couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or if she were just lying there playing dead until he went away.

He’d go away soon enough. She would have learned that if she’d kept working her fist over him. Three or four more times, he might have been done.

Instead of her soft, silken skin, he was enduring rough calluses and inelegant tugs, but they did they did the job.

Groaning, he released his seed into his fist and held it against his belly. He just needed a moment to recover. There was no euphoria or afterglow. Just sticky cum in his hand, and tingling nuts.

Andrea sat up swiftly.

Knew that’d turn her off.

She removed her tank top and pressed it over his fist. “Here. You’re dripping.”

“I was going to get up.”

“Don’t get up. You’re warm.” She snuggled back against him, bracketing her leg where she’d had it before and resting her hand on his belly.

Bemused and more than a little surprised, he scraped the viscous liquid off his palm and ignored his inner bear’s perturbed monologue about the spill being
“such a waste.”

He wadded up the shirt, set it on the floor beside the sofa, and not knowing what else to do, grabbed one of the afghans from the arm to wrap around them.

“Mmm,” she said, snuggling beneath the blanket in such a way that her head nearly disappeared.

He patted her rear and stared up at the stained ceiling. “Uh. Let me know if you get hungry, I guess. There isn’t much else to do here.”

“Except wait for Bryan to find me and beat down the door.” She giggled.

Peter ground his teeth. He didn’t think her joke was funny because the probability of Bryan behaving that way was too high. As an alpha, Bryan would have done anything he could have to care for the weaker members of his clan, and Andrea wasn’t
just
that. She was his only sibling. If he and Tamara didn’t conceive—and there was a strong possibility that would be the case given Tamara’s mutant Shrew status—then the chore of continuing the Ridge line would fall to Andrea.

That may have been a petty consideration for some people, but lineage was important to Peter because he was a Bear and he knew Bear history. The clan wasn’t just called the Ridge Bears because of their location in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but because of the bloodline that had started their group. The Ridges had once been one of the largest peacekeeping families in the States. Many peacekeepers remained, but few were dominant. Only Bryan had the right balance of strength and magic needed to revitalize the clan.

Peter and Soren may not have been very upfront about their hopes, but though they were outsiders, they
wanted
to see the clan succeed.

More strong Bear clans meant a more diverse gene pool, and that was certainly something the Bears in Europe were suffering a lack of at the moment.

He was pleased the goddess had sent Tamara to Bryan, and that her brothers had gone to check out this new “threat” to their little sister’s life. For the first time since childhood, Peter had found a place he’d wanted to stay in for a while, and the fact the alpha’s sister was wide open and in need of rescue was simply greater incentive to stick around.

Shaking his head slightly, he chuckled to himself.

“What?” came Andrea’s voice from beneath the blanket.

“Thinking silly things.”

“What things?”

“You don’t want to know. Just sleep.”

“It’s warm in here.”

“You should pull the cover back.”

“I’m not complaining. I’m always so cold.”

“You could—”

“Don’t even tell me what you’re thinking,” she interjected. “You’re going to tell me I wouldn’t be so cold if I put on a few pounds. You think I don’t know that? I’m
trying
.”

“Okay. I’m sorry.”

“Tamara keeps pushing milkshakes under my nose whenever she’s at the office, and they always taste weird.”

“Probably that weight-gain powder crap lifters use.”

“I figured she’d slipped in something like that. Sarah’s tactic is leftovers. Whenever her mother is visiting to help with the baby, she cooks a lot. All that really good Puerto Rican stuff. Sarah brings food to the office saying her mother made too much, but the plates will still be hot when she gets there.”

“Not leftovers.”

“Nope. First dibs. Astrid’s a little more discreet, but I know her tricks. I keep finding granola bars and beef jerky in my desk drawer. The only reason I know they’re there is because someone keeps taking the pens off my desk, and I have to go rooting around for them.”

“How do you know Astrid’s the one who leaves them?”

“Because that’s the way her mind works. She thinks in reverse order sometimes and decides what she wants an outcome to be, and then she imagines the steps that need to happen first. I’ve never called her out on what she does, because then that would lead to her asking if I ate the stuff.”

“She would know from checking the drawer.”

“Yeah, and I keep my desk unlocked so she can check.”

“What does Maria do, offer you pot?”

Andrea shook against him, her body shuddering from a low and restrained laugh. “I don’t think she actually smokes. She’s not that kind of hippie. She’s more likely to bring me coffee that’s half cream and sugar.”

He smoothed down a cowlick at the top of Andrea’s head and watched the untamed hair spring up again and again. “What about Dana?”

“Well, Dana has an arrangement with the staff at Paddy’s, seeing as how her husband owns the pub. I’m supposed to call for lunch whenever I’m working and whoever’s in the kitchen will send over a delivery.”

“Do you call?”

“Most days I forget to.”

“You need to do better. Set a reminder on your phone that’ll beep every day at eleven-thirty.”

“I’ll do that whenever you give me my phone back.”

He closed his eyes again and let out a ragged breath.

“I…don’t mean now,” she said. “I don’t need it now.”

“But you do. You should let people know you’re fine.”

“But if I do that, they’ll figure out where I am. They have the resources to track that stuff back.”

“You should want them to track you.”

“Why?”

“Do we really need to hash this out again?”

She sat up a little so she was more on top of his chest. Brow furrowed, she stared down at him.

He grunted and looped his arm around her back.

“You brought me here, and you’re trying to push me away.”

“Because I need to be near you right now. That doesn’t mean I have to sully you.”

“Sully me? Okay. Interesting word choice, but isn’t my chastity or lack thereof mine to do with as I see fit?”

He grimaced. In the end, their mating
was
up to her, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t continue being vigilant. As badly as he wanted her, he knew better than anyone that he needed to leave her alone.

She lie back down and idly rubbed his bicep. “I’m sure you and Soren have ways to send emails that aren’t easily traced back to their originator.”

“From my phone, yes, that would be possible.”

“Then give me your phone. I’ll call off the dogs, or whatever. This is between you and me. We’ll work this thing out between us without interference.”

“Is that what you want?”

“I’m a grown woman, Peter,” she said with exasperation. “Don’t you
dare
discount my ability to make a sound decision on occasion.”