Savage Alpha (Alpha 8) (6 page)

She gave him a hopeful glance. “Spaghetti Bolognese.”

“Sounds good.” Jonas cooked for himself, but it was usually a steak or some other meat, with salad or a baked potato, easy stuff that could be quickly prepared.

“Those that eat help cook and clear away.”

He grimaced. “Sounds like one of Gabriel’s dictates.”

“Probably because it is.” She breathed out shakily. “Do we have to tell him about the graffiti?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes widened. “No negotiation or listening to argument, just yes?”

“Yes.”

“And I thought Gabriel was difficult!”

Jonas gave an unconcerned shrug. “Maybe you’ll appreciate him more when this is all over.”

“Is it going to be over?” Anxiety darkened her eyes.

“Oh, I’ll get the bastard that’s doing this, Lily,” he assured her. “And when I do, I’ll make him eat every one of his filthy words.”

“Promise?”

“Absolutely.”

Asking Jonas to eat with her, and the reality of having his large presence in her tiny kitchen as they prepared the meal together were two distinctly different things, Lily discovered a short time later. Even with the help of the glasses of red wine she had poured them.

Jonas had removed the long black leather duster in the warmth of her apartment, and Lily could now appreciate how wide and muscular his shoulders and chest were in the tight navy-blue T-shirt. Faded denims rested low down on his hips, but as Lily discovered when he turned around to put something away in the fridge, his ass was perfectly outlined in the snug-fitting material.

Or do I mean his perfect ass is outlined by that snug-fitting material?

Either way, Lily found Jonas totally overwhelming in the confines of her small kitchen, and it was virtually impossible for the two of them not to brush against each other as they first unpacked the shopping and then moved about the room preparing the ingredients for their meal.

It was a little like being in a cage with a large, untamed beast.

A little?

Make that a lot!

Lily had never felt this sexually aware of a man before. She hadn’t had such a strong reaction even to A-list actor Laurence Seaton—single, blond, ruggedly handsome, and also American—whom she had met and worked with in Barbados the previous year, when she’d been given a small part in one of his movies.

Jonas gave out a natural heat from that tall and powerful body, with that heady male musk still detectable beneath the lemon and spice of his aftershave.
If
he had shaved; the perpetual dark stubble on the square strength of his jaw said he didn’t bother with that very often. The blue-black stubble suited him somehow, added to that edge of danger Jonas wore like a second skin.

“What do you want me to do with this?”

Lily looked at Jonas blankly for a second or two, until she realized he was holding up the packet of spaghetti they had bought. “Haven’t you ever cooked spaghetti before?”

“I cook, but mainly with a microwave or barbeque. Does Gabriel cook?” He placed the packet down on the work surface as she eyed him mockingly. “Or any of your other brothers, for that matter?”

He had a point. Gabriel had moved all the family to London after their parents died, using the money left to them to buy the house and hire a housekeeper to cook and clean. It made life easier but also meant none of her brothers cooked. Lily had only taught herself to do so these past couple of years, since she had lived in her own apartment. She had no idea of Jonas’s living arrangements—or anything else about him—but she doubted he would welcome a live-in housekeeper invading his space.

But maybe a live-in girlfriend?

Or a wife?

Just because Jonas seemed like such a loner didn’t mean he didn’t have one or even both of those things. He had certainly shut down that moment of intimacy quickly enough between the two of them last night.

“What?” That scowl was back on Jonas’s brow as he caught her staring at him.

She moistened her lips as she thought how best to phrase her next question. “I was wondering… Am I keeping you from being with someone right now?”

He folded his arms across his chest to lean back against the kitchen unit. “Define someone?”

“Mother, sister, wife, girlfriend?”

“None of the above.”

Lily breathed an inward sigh of relief. She wasn’t comfortable lusting after someone who was already taken.

Lusting after?

Well…yes. No point in denying something that was so obvious. To her, at least. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Jonas since they met last night. She only hoped that lust wasn’t as apparent to him. That would be too embarrassing.

Her eyes widened as she realized what he had said. “Your not-Apache mother is dead?”

“She was dead to most of her upright English family long before she breathed her last breath,” he said harshly.

“Your mother was
English
?”

“Yes.”

“How on earth did your parents ever meet?” Lily prompted without thinking, and then realized her mistake as Jonas’s eyes narrowed in warning. “Sorry, that was incredibly rude of me.”

He sighed. “You aren’t going to stop asking questions until you know, are you?”

“I’m interested in people. Most actors are. Writers too, I believe.”

“And are you, personally, interested in people in general? Or just me?” His eyes were dark and stormy.

Had it suddenly got very hot in here, or was she the only one that felt it? And had the room shrunk too, so that she and Jonas seemed much closer than was comfortable?

Lily had a feeling that the answer to both those questions lay in Jonas’s sudden tension, and knowing she was the complete focus of those dark blue eyes. “Only you,” she acknowledged gruffly.

His mouth thinned. “My parents met at Harvard, where they were both taking a law degree. When they graduated, they married, and went back to the reservation in Arizona to fight for Native American rights. I was born there. Heard enough?”

Not nearly enough. The more Jonas revealed about himself, the more Lily wanted to know.

And the more resentful Jonas became.

“Thank you for telling me.” She reached out a tentative hand, intending to touch the heat of his chest through his T-shirt.

“Don’t.”

Her hand stopped only centimeters away, fingers trembling slightly in her need to touch him. “I was only—”

“Don’t.” His arms dropped to his sides, but he didn’t push her away from him.

The air was so thick with the tension between them, it was like trying to breathe through soup, and impossible for Lily to resist the pull to move closer. To step completely into Jonas’s space, one of her legs between his parted ones. The difference in their heights meant her breasts were pressed against his hot and muscular abdomen, with the muscled hardness of Jonas’s thighs against her hip as she leaned into him.

The hardness of Jonas’s
arousal
, long and thick against the softness of her belly.

No matter what Jonas said or how he acted, his body didn’t lie, couldn’t lie. As it hadn’t lied last night. And he wanted her as much as she wanted him. Then, and now.

Lily was standing so close to him, she was breathing in the same heavy air as him now, could feel the tension in his muscles, and the shallow rise and fall of his chest as he breathed in and out.

Her breath caught in her throat as she looked up at him and saw the desire blazing in those stormy blue eyes, his cheekbones sharp angles in his tensely set face, jaw clenched. “Jonas…” It was an invitation, not a question.

Jonas tried to resist, God knows he tried. But Lily was so—so—

In my fucking face, is what she is!

Which was exactly where Jonas wanted her.

She had taken her boots off as soon as they entered her apartment, and was wearing another one of those overlarge sweaters, red tonight. But she wore black leggings beneath it rather than jeans, and they molded to every lush curve of her ass and clearly defined the mound between her thighs. And he wanted his face there. Wanted to lick and suck and taste her pussy until she cried out, and then he would drink her down as she came all over his face.

Savage by tribe and savage by nature?

Yes,
damn it, savage was exactly how Lily made him feel.

Her perfume had invaded his senses in the car during the drive to the supermarket and then to her apartment, and each sway of those lush hips was a temptation he was finding it harder and harder to resist. And she kept
pushing
, damn it, wanting to know about him, his past, his present, when all he wanted was his face buried between her thighs and to thrust his tongue inside her pussy until she was pleading for release.

“Jonas!” Lily cried out, fingers gripping his shoulders as Jonas put his hands on her hips and pulled those leggings and her panties down to her thighs, before lifting her up and turning to sit her bare ass on the work surface behind him—not one of the ones they had been preparing food on, thank goodness—before stripping off the leggings and panties completely.

Jonas nudged her legs apart as he leaned forward with a hand either side of the work top where she sat. “Say no if you don’t want this.”

She blinked up at him, obviously unsure of the situation—and him—but her lips remained stubbornly closed as she continued to meet his gaze unflinchingly.

“Good choice,” he growled as he went down on his knees in front of her before lifting her sweater and baring her pussy to his hungry gaze. “Beautiful.” The dark curls were trimmed about those glistening, ruby-red lips, the tiny nubbin peeping out temptingly from beneath its protective hood.

Jonas’s groan echoed Lily’s as he stroked his tongue along those lips and tasted her for the first time, sweet nectar and delicious musk. He was aware of her response as he continued to lick and taste, those lips swelling, parting to the invasion of his tongue, the nubbin above beginning to pulse as he caressed her there with the soft pad of his thumb.

God, he could live on the taste of her alone, drown in the heady sensation of tongue-fucking her.

“Yes!” she gasped, hands moving up so that her fingers were now entangled in his hair. “Oh God, Jonas…!”

Jonas looked up at her as he continued to thrust his tongue in and out of her channel, capturing and holding her gaze with his. Her eyes looked green now rather than blue, dark and feverish, her cheeks flushed and her lips slightly parted.

Jonas pressed his thumb harder against her clit, watching as her back arched, pushing her breasts forward. He couldn’t wait to bare those too and gorge himself on the ripe nipples he could see pushing against her sweater—

“No…!” Lily groaned in protest as the musical ringtone of her cell phone sounded in the quiet of the kitchen, causing Jonas to slowly sit back on his heels and look up at her enquiringly, his lips wet with her juices. “Ignore it,” she encouraged desperately. Damn it, she had been so close. So close…

The ringtone stopped.

Only to start up again immediately.

“Seems urgent,” Jonas drawled.

Her need to come was
more
urgent.

She had never been as aroused so quickly. Or so desperate to have a man’s mouth and hands on her. She wanted more, damn it!

Except her cell phone didn’t stop its musical intrusion this time, the continuous—and previously favorite—tune, grating on her in a way that made her decide to change the ringtone as soon as possible. Or throw the damned phone across the kitchen in a fit of pique.

“Lily?”

To her chagrin, Jonas rose to his feet in front of her, a sure indication the moment was over, despite the ache and throbbing of Lily’s body and the hunger still coursing through her.

She pulled her sweater back down over her thighs, self-consciously aware she wasn’t wearing any clothing beneath the waist and her cell phone was all the way across the kitchen on another work top. “Would you mind?” She grimaced, not quite meeting Jonas’s gaze.

“No problem.” Jonas crossed the kitchen in two long strides to pick up her cell phone and hand it to her.

He seemed unruffled by the interruption, at least. Too unruffled, considering Lily’s state of arousal.

“Yes?” she snapped as she answered the call.

Jonas watched through narrowed lids as Lily’s eyes widened, becoming even rounder, her face paling the longer she listened to whoever was on the other end of that call.

Saved by the bell?

Or, in this case, the ringtone?

What the hell had he been thinking, half stripping Lily and then going down on her like a ravenous beast? He hadn’t
been
thinking, only feeling, wanting.

He suppressed a groan as he made the mistake of licking the taste of Lily from his lips. He could become addicted to that taste. Could become addicted to Lily.

Women came and women went in his life, most of those encounters as fleeting as a one-night stand. Jonas knew his mixed heritage was a lure, his outer calm a challenge, but once those women realized they weren’t going to get beneath that façade, they usually backed off.