Page 13 of Ruthless Alpha (Nightfire Islands Alphas #3)

At first, I thought I’d imagined the soft click of my bedroom door opening.

The house was old, and it creaked in the night.

If I could smell wildflowers on the air, that wasn’t unusual: Rosie left little traces of herself everywhere, and I was still unused to sharing my space with someone, with having another scent to mingle with my own.

I kept my eyes closed, chasing sleep, until I felt weight on the side of my bed.

I sat bolt upright.

“It’s just me.” Rosie’s voice was soft and low, and I could make out the shape of her even in the darkness of the room.

“Are you okay? What’s the matter?” I asked, scrambling for my bedside light. My fingers found the switch just as I felt Rosie move, and when I looked back at her, my eyes adjusting to the warm light, she was straddling my lap.

I quickly came to the conclusion that I must be dreaming; Rosie’s blond curls were loose around her shoulders, her blue eyes hooded, her white little teeth biting down on her bottom lip.

That look alone would have been enough to make all the blood in my body rush to my cock, but then I realized what she was wearing.

Light blue material caressed her body, inviting my eyes to linger on the generous line of her cleavage, following it down to the teasing little ribbons keeping the garment closed.

As my eyes moved down, I saw that it was barely closed at all.

Beneath that tempting ribbon, the skirt was split down the middle.

It might have been decent enough when she was standing, but the motion of straddling me had parted the two sections like curtains in the morning, exposing the soft, pale skin of her stomach and a pretty little patch of blonde curls at the junction of her thighs.

My mind went blank. I didn’t have a single thought beyond the desire to reach out, to run my hands over every inch of her skin, to kiss and lick and bite at the generous mounds of her breasts, to slip my fingers between her thighs and feel where she was hot and slick, but I was frozen where I sat, overwhelmed.

“Nothing’s the matter,” she said. I had asked her that question, hadn’t I?

“I only—you bought a wife, not a housemaid. You’ve been so patient with me.

I wanted to—to—” she rolled her hips, and for a moment it was enough for me to ignore exactly what she’d said.

I was hardening rapidly beneath the sheets, my body trying valiantly to distract me from why she was really here.

When I really looked at her, when I forced myself to see past all the ways she was driving me wild, it was easy to see the fear.

Her whole body was trembling, and her breathing was unsteady and a little panicked, her teeth digging down too hard into that pink lower lip.

When I met her eyes, I could hardly stand it: she looked at me like I was a monster about to eat her alive.

“Get out,” I growled, my hands fisting in the sheets. Had I really let her think this was what I wanted? Had I been so unsubtle in my desire that she felt she had to do this to appease me?

“What?” she choked, her expression dropping from fear to—hurt? Whatever it was, I hated it, but I couldn’t do anything to appease her.

“I said, get out.”

“But—”

“Get out. Now.” This time, I infused my voice with Alpha authority, needing her to leave that very second if I was going to let her go at all.

I hated myself as she scrambled from the bed, fleeing toward the door with tears welling and spilling down her cheeks.

She was probably going to hate me forever for this, but that was better than taking advantage of her.

Letting her hate me for this was far better than allowing her to hate me for touching her when she didn’t want it.

I wanted to be gentler with her, to take her hand and tell her that none of this was necessary, that she was safe with me no matter what.

However, I simply didn’t trust either of us to let that happen.

If I was soft with her, she’d try to argue that it was fine, that she wanted this, and I didn’t know if I was strong enough to resist that—not when she was already on top of me, half naked and beautiful in the dim light.

I would make it up to her in the morning if she let me.

For now, I had to let her slam the door behind her, listen to her hurried footsteps, and the hitched sobs of her breath as she fled back to her room.

The moment she was gone, that quiet descended again, and I was alone.

I almost wondered if it had happened at all.

It had been the strangest mix of dream and nightmare, so surreal that if it weren’t for her lingering scent and the stubborn hardness in my pants, I might have imagined the whole ordeal.

Sleep evaded me for a long time that night.

Even once I had rubbed myself to a furtive, guilty climax, I couldn’t still my racing mind.

I’d been trying to keep her safe with me, but would she be better off in the dormitories, away from the pressure of being the Alpha’s wife?

I’d almost forgotten about the marriage aspect of her purchase, but Rosie clearly hadn’t.

It had been mostly for her benefit, after all.

When I finally did drift to sleep, my dreams were fractured and anxious, and the blare of my alarm clock was almost welcome. My morning workout was a challenge for my tired body, but a relief to my restless mind, and by the time I emerged for breakfast, I knew exactly what to say to Rosie.

I was a little surprised to find her in the kitchen at all, though I really shouldn’t have been. If I’d learned anything about Rosie over the past week, it was that she took her duty—or what she saw as her duty—as seriously as a heart attack.

She was doing her best to ignore me when I entered the room, busying herself with preparing breakfast—French toast, because she’d already figured out how to butter me up.

I let her avoid me for a few minutes, mulling over my little speech as she plated up my breakfast, setting it in front of me before turning her attention to cleaning the countertops.

“Will you sit down, please?” I said. It was difficult to ignore the delicious, steaming plate of goodness in front of me, but this was more important.

It was with enormous reluctance that Rosie put down her cloth and took a seat opposite me. Even seated, her body was turned away from mine, her eyes downcast.

“First of all, I want you to know that I’m not mad,” I said, “and nothing bad is going to happen. Okay?”

“Okay,” she echoed, her voice trembling and uncertain. I could only put her at ease by explaining, so I ploughed on.

“I know that when I—when I bought you, it was as a wife, but I don’t consider you that way,” I told her.

“The traders use the marriage ceremony to convince you that we’re bound somehow, even if it’s a lesser bond than mating.

They only do it so you feel like you owe us something, and that you can’t leave. ”

Rosie didn’t respond, her gaze still downcast, her body still turned away from me.

“I want you to know that you don’t owe me anything,” I assured her.

“If you wanted to just… sit around and maybe make some of this amazing French toast on occasion, that would be fine by me.” I smiled at her, hoping for a glimpse of hers in return, but when she finally met my eyes, her face was set and hostile.

“And if I wanted to leave?” she demanded.

I should have expected that, but it still hit me like a truck.

She’d be happier on another island, I knew that.

I’d seen her little white wolf running laps around my backyard, looking increasingly frustrated with every completed circuit.

Ensign life wasn’t for everyone, and Rosie had made it clear that she didn’t agree with the way we did things.

The problem was that even if she’d be happy elsewhere, I wasn’t certain that she’d be safe.

She was so young, so vulnerable and small, making her easy to take advantage of.

Sure, Ethan or Leo would keep an eye on her if I dropped her on one of their islands, but nothing more.

I couldn’t stand the thought of her out on her own somewhere, with no one to fight for her.

I had a feeling that if I said all that, I was going to scare the shit out of her.

“I’d prefer it if you stayed,” I said instead, and her bottom lip began to tremble.

“That’s what I thought you’d say,” she breathed.

Her face was softly creased with sadness, but her eyes were hard as flint, full of resentment and blame.

I had nothing to say to that expression, nothing to offer her beyond a desperate hope that she would grow to be comfortable on my island, that she would grow to be comfortable with me.

“I’m not eating breakfast alone,” I said, pushing my plate toward her and rising to fetch a new one.

There was a single, smaller piece of toast still in the pan, with the saddest little strip of bacon, and I helped myself to those.

On any other day, Rosie would have protested, insisting I take the larger plate, but this morning she was angry with me, and so she tucked into the breakfast that now belonged to her without complaint.

It was kind of adorable, watching her pour out syrup with such clear passive aggression.

“Come on,” I said, once both plates were clean. “Time for some training. You look like you want to punch me in the face, and I’m of a mind to let you.”

“But I have to—” she started to protest.

“The dishes will be there when we get back,” I reminded her. “Come on.”

She only hesitated for a second before she rose to join me, and I couldn’t tell if that was a good sign or a bad one.

I thought she’d enjoyed our previous training session at least a little bit, so she might have been eager to go again, or she might simply have been so mad at me that she was leaping at the promised opportunity to punch me in the face.

Either way, she followed me down to the basement, quiet and a little nervous, just like always, waiting patiently while I rifled through the equipment.

When I turned around, the box of tennis balls in my arms, she was standing in front of the weapon wall, staring up at the array of knives and flails, and projectiles that were on display.

“Anything in particular caught your eye today, Madam?” I joked, trying not to be offended that she flinched at the sound of my voice. I needed to be better at not surprising her.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” she said, slightly awed, and I couldn’t help puffing my chest out a little.

“For a long time, shifters didn’t use weapons,” I told her. “We’ve kinda got them built in, right?”

She nodded, apparently listening with interest. I needed very little encouragement to talk about the history of shifter weapon development, so a nod was more than enough to set me off.

“This here is one of the first weapons that Ensign developed,” I explained.

“Human weapons are designed to help their fighters keep grip on the handle, but this one is designed to be easily dropped with the shift, even thrown at the final moment. Now, the balance on this one makes switching to use as a projectile a little tricky, but that was improved on in the second model, which is this one here…”

It was easy to lose myself in the rich history of Ensign’s weapons.

For all the shame I sometimes felt about how our island operated, I had always loved our work, and it felt good to share this part of my culture with Rosie.

She was smiling as I spoke, her gaze intent on the things I showed her—she seemed at ease for the first time since I met her, so much so that when I moved on to explaining the history of projectile weapons, she gave a little giggle.

“What?” I asked, and she shook her head.

“Nothing.”

“Seriously, what is it?”

“You just—you’re kind of a nerd about this stuff,” Rosie said. She was still smiling, but there was an edge of nervousness in her expression, as if she didn’t know whether she’d gone too far. I let out a huff of laughter, and her posture eased.

“You bet I am,” I confirmed, pushing a pair of imaginary glasses up my nose as I continued my explanation in a terrible, nasal voice.

That made her burst out laughing, and I’d never heard a more beautiful sound; it was like the pealing of delicate bells, and I wanted to hear it every day for the rest of my life. It was hard not to stare at her, not to reach out and draw her close, to find out what that smile tasted like.

“Sounds like I’m missing the party,” came a voice from the top of the stairs, and I whirled around to see a familiar, tall figure standing in the doorway.

His dark curls were cropped short against his scalp, the deep brown of his skin contrasting against the whiteness of his smile, and I grinned back at him.

“Rosie, meet Jace. Jace, this is Rosie.”