Savage Alpha (Alpha 8) (12 page)

This was all new to him. Spending this much time with a woman was all new to him. And he had known from the first time he looked at Lily, she wasn’t just any woman; she was special. Different.

She wasn’t in the least intimidated by his size or moody nature, for one thing—possibly a result of having grown up with four brothers who were almost as big as Jonas and certainly cynical and uncommunicative by the time Jonas met any of them for the first time. Whatever the reason, it was refreshing to find a woman who was so relaxed in his company, and he was starting to like it a little too much. Starting to like
her
a little too much.

Becoming any more involved with Lily than he was already was a bad idea. A very bad idea.

“Please, Jonas.” She looked at him appealingly as she reached out to clasp his hands in hers and tried to pull him to his feet. “A little snowman.”

He resisted that pull. “Does this wheedling usually work on your brothers?”

She grinned. “When I can be bothered to use it, yes.”

“You just prefer to argue with them?”

She shrugged. “Wheedling is usually a last resort.”
 

Jonas could understand why it worked too. There was something so impish in Lily’s expression, along with a certainty in her eyes that he wouldn’t let her down. He would bet all the Knight brothers, including Gabriel, found it hard to say no to her when she looked at them that way.

Jonas was no exception. “Okay.” He freed his hands before he stood, preferring to ignore her hurt expression as he stepped away from her to wipe his paint-smeared hands on a cloth. “But only if you promise to cook brunch for us when we come back in.”

“Done,” she agreed instantly.

Jonas would have agreed to build six snowmen if the result was seeing her look this happy and carefree.

From the moment they met, Lily had been confronted with one trauma after another, and although she had stayed strong through all of them, they had certainly taken their toll on her. This morning, Lily looked relaxed and radiantly lovely, and although that might be taking a toll on Jonas’s self-control, he would rather see her like this than with that anxiety constantly visible in her face and the tension of her body.

He also wanted to get her out of his studio.

Like the house, painting was his refuge. The place he went to inside his head whenever he needed an escape. Having Lily follow him up here to his studio totally nullified the sanctuary he had sought from the desire he felt for her.

Lily wasn’t someone he could take to bed and forget. He fucking
liked
her, damn it. More so with each minute that passed.

“Having second thoughts?” She eyed him with curiosity.

Second, third, and fourth ones, and not a single one of them took away the hunger Jonas felt whenever he looked at her. She was just so alive. That vitality had no doubt been dampened by the events of the last few weeks, but it refused to be extinguished completely.

“Nope.” He finished wiping his hands. “I hope you know what you’re doing when it comes to building snowmen, because there wasn’t a lot of call for it on the reservation.”

“No snow in Arizona?”

“Not when I lived there, no.”

“No skiing holidays since?”

He shuddered at the thought of it. “No.”

“Then you’re in for a treat,” she promised as she preceded him down the spiral staircase and into his bedroom.

Jonas grimaced as he saw that his unmade bed looked as if half a dozen people had been fighting in it. The bedclothes were partly on the bed and the rest on the floor, pillows thrown haphazardly against the headboard.

All done while Jonas tossed and turned in an attempt to force himself to fall asleep and forget Lily was only feet away across the hallway.

Lily hadn’t asked about Evan Butler’s condition this morning, and Jonas was reluctant to bring the subject up too. As promised, he had received a phone call from his contact in the police early this morning. Evan had died during the night. Lily was going to be devastated once she knew.

All the more reason to distract her by going outside and building a snowman.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t have fun, because I won’t believe you.” Lily eyed Jonas teasingly as he sat across the breakfast bar from her an hour or so later, cold hands wrapped about one of the mugs of hot chocolate she had made for them. There hadn’t been any cream or marshmallows to put on top of it, but the chocolate drink itself was delicious and warming.

There hadn’t been any coal or a carrot for the snowman’s eyes and nose either, but she had improvised with three dried pine cones she found buried beneath the snow. A snowman almost as tall as Jonas now had pride of place at the front of the house. There had even been a small snowball fight after she accidentally dropped some snow down one of Jonas’s ankle-high biker boots.

“It was…different,” he allowed grudgingly. “But I’m no more sold on the idea of snow than I was before.”

“Bah, humbug.”

There was no way Jonas was going to admit how much he had enjoyed their hour outside. Hell, he’d actually had
fun
. Childish, irresponsible fun. And that hadn’t happened too often in his life.

Lily looked at him over the rim of her mug. “Have you always painted?”

Jonas tensed, suspecting Lily had waited until he was completely relaxed before asking the personal question. “Isn’t it time you started cooking brunch?”

“I haven’t finished my hot chocolate yet.”

“I have.” He placed his empty mug carefully down on the breakfast bar. “A deal is a deal, Lily.”

Her gaze was quizzical as it met his. “You don’t like answering personal questions, do you?”

His jaw firmed. “What I don’t like is having to guess the reason for asking them.”

“And what do you imagine my reason is, Jonas?”

He shrugged. “I have no idea.”

And he didn’t want to have one, Lily realized, hurt in spite of herself. She had thought she and Jonas had developed a connection, albeit because of the tense situation they found themselves in. But he was once again deliberately snubbing her, warning her off with his rudeness.

Because she had probed too deeply into his personal life again?

Without a doubt.

“Well, when you work it out, let me know, hmm?” she said softly as she stood up. “Because I thought I was taking an interest in the person I’m sharing a house with, but I could be wrong.”

How to feel like a complete bastard without even trying, Jonas acknowledged self-disgustedly. Most people knew better than to ask him personal questions, but Lily just forged ahead regardless. And he had slapped her down with the same disregard for her feelings.

He stood. “Lily—”

“It’s okay, Jonas, I get it. No personal questions.” She gave him a bright smile that didn’t dispel the shadows in her eyes.

Making him feel like the complete and utter bastard he had behaved like. Interpersonal relationships weren’t his thing.

Then it’s time—past time—I fucking made them my thing.

He had hurt Lily just now. Deliberately. He could see it in the way she kept her back toward him, and the stiff set of her shoulders as she took the food out of the fridge for their brunch.

His stomach churned at that knowledge, and his heart beat a little faster than usual with discomfort.

“Lily…” He crossed the kitchen in three long strides to place his hands on her stiff shoulders, able to feel her warmth through the thickness of her sweater. “I’m sorry, okay? I… Damn it, I’m really sorry.”

She gave no response for several long seconds, and then there was the sound of a choked sob before she turned to face him, her arms going about his waist as she pressed her face against his chest and she began to cry in earnest.

Lily once again nestled trustingly in his arms, and putting them back in the exact position Jonas had been trying so hard to avoid…

Oh fuck it. Fuck, fuck, fuck it.

He arched his upper body back slightly so that he could look at her. Her eyes were a dark, pained blue-green, her cheeks pale, her lips… Her lips were a deep red, slightly puffy and parted, and tempting him to kiss them.

Jonas’s head swooped down, and he gave a satisfied groan as he captured those delicious lips with his own.

Lily reveled in that groan, her lips parting instinctively to the invasion of Jonas’s tongue, and she returned and responded to the depth of his kiss.

It was as if Lily had been waiting for this since they had been together the night before in her own kitchen as her body tightened with the need for Jonas’s. All of him, not just the miniscule parts of himself he so grudgingly gave her.

Her hands snaked up over his washboard abs and hard muscular chest, fingers entwining in the hair at his nape as she pulled him down to her, her own tongue dueling with his for domination of the kiss, of the desire flaring like wildfire between them. The evidence of Jonas’s arousal pressed, pulsing, against her abdomen, the moisture pooling between her thighs in anticipation.

She gasped, lips parting even wider to the invasion of Jonas’s tongue, as she felt the warmth of his hands on her back beneath her sweater, stroking, caressing a steady path to where her nipples were hard peaks and begging for his touch.

She cried out, breaking the kiss, as one of his hands cupped her breast, her nipple tingling in response to that warmth, the heat growing stronger between her thighs.

“Your mouth is so fucking hot, Lily,” he groaned, his lips against her throat, finger and thumb squeezing, rolling her aroused nipple through the thin material of her bra. “I want to feel it on me. Around me. Taking me.” He fisted his hand in the dark thickness of her hair, arching her throat as he lifted her face to his. “Will you do that, Lily? Will you let me fuck your mouth?”

Lily would agree to anything at this moment. Anything at all. She wanted Jonas any way she could have him. “Yes.” She gave a tiny squeak as Jonas lifted her in his arms and carried her from the room and down the hallway to the bedroom she had slept in last night. Not Jonas’s bedroom. Why—

“I know what you’re thinking,” he growled as he placed her down on top of the covers before climbing onto the bed on all fours above her. “But my bed looks as if it was in a fight and lost.”

Lily’s tension eased as she raised her arms to pull him down on top of her, welcoming his weight, reveling in the hard press of his arousal against her aching core. “You have too many clothes on.”

“So do you.” He rolled to the side before sitting up to pull his T-shirt over his head, dropping it to the carpeted floor before standing to unfasten the button and zip on his jeans.

Their gazes remained locked on each other as Lily sat up to remove her own clothes, Jonas naked first, his body that same burnished color all over, with a light dusting of dark hair across his chest, dark curls at the base of his thick and jutting cock.

He
was
big all over, she appreciated as she threw off the last of her clothing, a pair of white lace panties that matched her bra. The length of Jonas’s aroused cock bobbed against his navel, and it was so thick around, Lily doubted her fingers would be able to meet if—when she held him. Thick veins ran the length of that engorged thickness, the bulbous head a deep red and glistening damply with his juices.

“Come here,” she instructed as she moved to sit on the edge of the bed, her tongue sweeping across her lips in anticipation of tasting him.

Jonas gently nudged her knees apart, eyes hot on her bared pussy before he stepped between her thighs, the difference in their heights putting his cock on a level with her mouth.

“
Fuck…!
” he hissed as her hands grasped his hips and she lowered her head, hot tongue flicking the tip of his cock. His hands moved up to tightly grasp her shoulders, her gaze holding his as she began to lick and taste him, taking him deeper and deeper into her mouth with each delicious stroke.

Jonas knew there was no way Lily would be able to take all of him into her mouth, but she took as much as she could, and the sucking and stroking of her tongue, the scraping of her teeth against the sensitive underside of his cock, was driving him crazy with the need to thrust.

A need he succumbed to as she began to repeatedly suck him to the back of her throat before sliding up the length so that only the bulbous tip remained inside the heat of her mouth, her tongue licking the slit, before she plunged downward again and took him deep inside.

Jonas closed his eyes, neck arching, as his thrusts into that inferno became wilder, harder, his balls drawing up tighter as his release built, readying to explode.

“No!” He pulled away from that completion, pushing her onto the bed. He grabbed a condom from the wallet in his jeans pocket and put it on before kneeling between her parted thighs, gazing his fill of that delicious ripeness before slowly lowering his head to lick the length of her pussy.

He pushed her legs wider apart as the taste of her exploded on his tongue and he began to lap greedily, tongue stroking, rasping over her swollen and slick folds before moving to the hard nubbin pulsing above. Two sweeps of his tongue, and he felt her convulse and then shatter as she came hard, her juices flowing freely as she bucked and writhed against and into his mouth.