Page 5 of Ruthless Alpha Beast

But I swear I hear her groaning.

Those groans are driving me insane. I blamethemfor my lack of control, so sweet and tantalizing, like dollops of honey dripping down my throat.

And then there’s the way her body feels beneath my hands, pressed up against me—I swear I don’t know how we got here. All I intended to do was give her one performative kiss, but now my tongue nestles deep in her throat, now my hands are steadying her yielding body in place as she sighs gently.

I’m in a trance.

I massage her lips, overcome by a force that’s lain dormant for God knows how long.

It’s the taste of her that has me spellbound, too. My wolf is ravenous, desperate, forcing me to devour her. I don’t have a choice.

But I know who this is. My body and my wolf recognize her so intimately with such urgency.

Now my mind does too.

This is Tara. Not just a beautiful woman with pillowy lips and a flavor like peaches. She’sTara.

I wean myself off her, slowing down my kisses, and release her from my hold.

Never has a human ever… Goddamnit. A fire rises up the back of my neck.

Disconnecting from her is like splitting my body in half, as though I’m ridding myself of my own essence.

She’s the most tantalizing drug I’ve ever... I push it down. I have to stop.

My lips pull away from hers, and I keep my eyes shut. I feel a flash of fury in my chest and clench my jaw as though I can contain it somehow.

But this is out of control.

I cannot believe I’ve gotten myself into this reckless fucking situation. I’m an Alpha; my whole existence is built on self-control, and here I am, thinking with my wolf.

I open my eyes slowly, my whole body tense with anger. I feel so much frustration, so much rage.

Then I see those familiar hazel eyes, and they disarm me completely. Yes, I’m angry, but for a second, I’m lost again.

The sunlight streams down on her face, and she looks at me as though she’s in a daze. Half asleep with sultry, soft eyes.

In a moment, everything is about to blow up. It’s the calm before the storm.

So how the hell did we get here?

This morning started as all my mornings usually do. I woke up, did five sets of pull-ups, five sets of press-ups, had a protein shake—the berries tasted a little off today, but all in all I felt good.

Then my meeting with one of my guys got rescheduled, which felt like a blessing in disguise. I probably shouldn’t think that, but honestly, things aren’t great. And there’s no amount of press-ups or protein shakes that are gonna change that, unfortunately.

The situation is this: we had some respite from the old witch’s curse for a little while. First, Lacey and Sawyer came together to destroy Willow, the witch in question, whose spirit is honestly the gift that just keeps on giving.

Then, Danielle and Ellis teamed up and destroyed a fragment of her heart, hoping to finally get rid of her presence in the forest once and for all. After that, things got a little better again, the decay in the forest cleared up, and we hadn’t heard anything from the shadow monsters, who seem to come out whenever things get bad.

All things were good, all things were as calm as they could be for a valley full of shifters and witches. For a second, I actually thought that maybe we were finally done with all this crap.

But then the forest started to get bad again. Decay, destruction—we’ve seen it all before.

The hardest thing for an Alpha is to see problems like these coming from a mile away and have no concrete solution.

So today, I was supposed to be discussing potential solutions with one of my guys. I was supposed to talk about a lot of things, actually (the decaying forest being only one of my many problems.)

My other big problem, surprise, surprise, is also witch-related.