Page 23 of Ruthless Alpha Beast

And then there’s the fact that she still looks so good. Even though she was covered by large bags and not exactly dressed to impress, she still looked the way she always does. Beautiful and interesting.

My wolf’s sexual frustration isn’t helping.

Nor is the fact that I’m about to officially be a married man, and so cannot legitimately entertain a physical relationship with anyone else.

Not like I’d have the time for all that anyway.

“So, I’ll show you upstairs,” I tell her. “It’s pretty straightforward, not much to know aside from the fact that you need to watch your step a little when you go up and down. I’ve been meaning to get the stairs fixed; there’s a little chip that doesn’t affect me, but you being human and all, I don’t know. Might be a risk.”

“Chipped stairs,” she says. “Got it.”

I’m not sure whether I prefer her being loudly sassy or showing her disdain quietly, like she’s doing now. At least when she was calling me names, I knew what she was thinking and feeling.

I recall the way she slammed the door in my face and her insults after I kissed her.

Hm.

On second thought, maybe this is better.

We can just avoid one another and pretend we’re living alone.

Once we’re upstairs, I show her the bedroom.

“So this is where we’ll be sleeping. I usually keep the blinds open to wake up with the sunlight, but I understand that maybe being human-”

“Hold on, hold on,” she says, hands on her hips. “I think you accidentally saidwe.”

I roll my eyes around the room. “Yep, we. There’s only one bedroom.”

She scoffs. “Yeah, no, that’s not going to work. I’m not sleeping next to you.”

I exhale in frustration. “It’s not exactly a dream come true for me either, but we’re supposed to be a married couple, so it’s what we’re going to have to do.”

She shakes her head. “I’ll go somewhere else.”

“Tara, you can’t go somewhere else, do you know how suspicious that would look? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I don’t care!” She yells. “I’m not sleeping with you.”

She steps closer to me, and my wolf instinctively sharpens his senses. He flinches, and I have to temper him down. That, along with her stubbornness, is pissing me off.

“There’s nowhere else for you to go,” I tell her, tightening my jaw as I feel a wave of frustration pulse through my whole body. No one else makes me feel this frustrated. No one else can get this reaction out of me within only seconds.

She steps even closer to me again, a raging fire burning in her woodland green eyes. They look greener than brown in this lightning, I don’t know why, but of all things, I’m noticing that now.

“Well, you should think of somewhere else I can go. I mean, we’re not technically married yet, so wouldn’t it be the traditional thing,notto sleep in the same place?”

I scoff.

“How very ignorant of you, Tara. Why don’t you impose your ridiculous human values on us some more?”

“Ridiculous?”

She’s so close to my face that I can practically feel her breath, and I can hear the agitated thump of her heartbeat.

Her pulse is rising like crazy.

Well, yeah, I’m pissed too.