Page 5 of The Alpha’s Promise (Alpha Doms #3)

His inner wolf wanted to mate with her—permanently.

He caught her and carried her back into the house.

Her scent filled his nostrils, making it impossible for him to regain control.

His body wouldn’t obey the command from his brain to put her down.

She was his she-wolf and he needed to claim her, to make her his, to embed his scent in her, forever.

With one arm wrapped around her waist, his free hand went under her skirt straight to her core.

His lips went to her neck. Without any permission from his brain, his fingers rubbed her clit over her lacy panties.

“Cody!” she choked on his name and the shock in her voice brought his senses back.

“Fuck.” He released her like she was on fire and backed away. “Christ, I’m sorry.”

She whirled, her eyes widening at what she saw. His irises had to be ice blue, showing his wolf. Fuck, were his teeth out, too?

That didn’t make sense. Why would he want to mark a human?

He shook his head, trying to recover his human self, his rational mind.

He held his palms up in surrender. “I didn’t mean to lose control. That was… unexpected.”

As his vision returned to normal, he scrubbed a hand over his face and drew several deep, cleansing breaths. Melissa’s cheeks were flushed, her erect nipples showing through her bra and blouse.

He couldn’t think what to say, except the first thing that popped into his head. “You nearly got fucked within an inch of your life.”

She let out a shaky exhale.

He touched his teeth with the tip of his tongue. They felt normal now, but he knew he’d been about to mark her. The sweet secretion he would’ve embedded in her skin pooled in his mouth.

He glared at her, as if it were all her fault. “Never run from an aroused wolf. Especially not an alpha. It triggers the instinct to claim.”

She blinked.

Way to blame the victim, asshole.

Fucking hell. He’d screwed this situation up royally.

You’re a sorry excuse for a wolf. You’ll never amount to anything. The only female who would ever lower herself to mate you is a human. His father’s sneering prediction the night he’d tossed him out on his ass at age sixteen came ringing back in his ears.

He stabbed his fingers through his hair. Not even a human woman would have an asshole like him. Despite all these years of trying to prove he could make it his own way, he was still as bad as that wild teenage wolf his father hadn’t seen fit to keep in his pack.

“I’m sorry, Melissa. I didn’t mean to force myself on you. Are you okay?”

Her head wobbled around on her neck, and she opened her lips, but no sound came out.

He hated seeing her like that, wanted the uppity little real estate agent to return and insult him.

But it was probably just as well she kept silent.

If they went back to their verbal sparring, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to hold back—she had his lust on a knife’s edge as it was.

Even with his brain back in function, his cock strained painfully at his jeans.

He walked to his dresser and pulled out a t-shirt and pair of boxer briefs and tossed them near her on the bed. “You can wear these for now. I’ll get you some clothes in the morning.”

She didn’t answer or move. Her breath pumped rapidly in her chest, berry lips parted.

“Are you hungry?”

He half expected her not to answer—he’d deserve the silent treatment after what he’d almost done, but she nodded immediately. He tried to think what he had in the house. Not much. He’d have to go grocery shopping for her too.

Taking care of anyone besides himself was an entirely foreign proposition. As alpha, he’d lay down his life for any of his pack mates, but that didn’t mean he had to worry about their basic needs. They were all young and tough like him.

This little human, though? She required more. A lot more. While part of him rebelled at the obligation, some other part needed him to be the one who took care of her. Like no one else on Earth would do it right.

But that didn’t make any sense, since he had no idea what protecting and caring for a human female entailed.

Great, as if he wasn’t already on edge enough.

Melissa shucked her blouse and pulled on Cody’s clothes with shaking fingers.

What had just happened?

She’d almost been taken. Except she knew Cody hadn’t meant to hurt her. He’d half-shifted—teeth long, irises sky blue. She remembered that had happened to Ben before he marked Ashley, and he’d been devastated about what he’d done. Maybe this was why humans and shifters didn’t mix.

What would’ve happened if she’d been a wolf?

Or a full wolf, because she and Ashley were one quarter wolf.

They hadn’t known it, but their grandfather had been a shifter.

After Ben had marked Ashley and she recovered more quickly than expected, they’d taken a road trip up to Wyoming to visit their Grandma Jane to uncover the family secret.

She hadn’t said much—the memory seemed painful to her—but she’d confirmed the man they knew as their grandfather hadn’t sired her father.

He’d been conceived by a shifter, whose pack had forced him to abandon her because she was human.

He’d left her before he knew she was pregnant and she never made any attempt to tell him.

They told Grandma Jane about Ben, but the three had agreed to keep Ashley and Melissa’s parents in the dark about it all unless there became a compelling need for them to know.

Would a full wolf have welcomed Cody’s ‘attack’? No, the situation never would have happened, because she would’ve known better than to run.

She slid her fingers through her tangled hair. Honestly, until she saw the lengthened teeth, she had wanted him. She would’ve parted her legs and let him plunge his huge cock—she was only guessing, but based on the size of the bulge in his jeans, it had to be—right into her core.

So what did the teeth mean? Surely he wasn’t going to mark her. That would mean they were mated for life, and Cody didn’t seem to even like her, apart from the sexual attraction between them.

Regardless of what it all meant, one thing had been confirmed—her instinct that this bad boy was as much trouble as her last boyfriend was dead on.

She needed to keep her head, cross her legs, and wait this out.

Soon, Ben and Ashley would be back and she could leave the protection of the silver wolf and find someone totally normal. And human.

Except those thoughts fell flat and thin as a crepe. She’d never be happy with normal, would she?

Sighing, she pushed open the bedroom door, the rumble in her empty stomach becoming more insistent than her desire to avoid Cody.

He stood at the stove, somehow managing to look both manly and incredibly sexy as he flipped something in a pan with a spatula.

His broad shoulders rippled with muscle, and his torso tapered to a narrow waist followed by the best ass she’d ever seen on a man.

There was something about those ripped, worn-out jeans.

Yum. Just yum.

She cleared her throat. “What are you making?”

The way he paused before speaking told her he’d known the whole time that she’d been standing there watching.

Well, of course he had. He probably had extrasensory wolf instincts.

She wondered what other gifts wolves possessed, apart from being able to jump from two-story windows, catch one hundred twenty-five pounds of falling woman, and drive a motorcycle like the 1970s hotshot Evel Knievel.

“Grilled cheese.”

She snorted. “I should’ve figured that, Walmart boy.” It was a low blow. Actually, she loved grilled cheese, but Cody had decided she was some kind of diva, so she figured she’d play the part just to goad him. It worked.

He whirled, brows down low over his eyes. “I didn’t promise to feed you,” he warned, with a shake of the spatula at her.

She smirked and sauntered forward, pretending he didn’t look scary as hell. Backwards though it was, after what had just passed between them, she’d lost much of her fear of him. She’d seen his limits. “Keeping me alive probably involves feeding me, though, don’t you think?”

His lips pressed together in a thin line. “Don’t push your luck.” He turned back to the stove and flipped a grilled cheese onto a plate beside a whole tomato. He thrust the plate in her direction, without turning to look at her.

She took it and looked down at the tomato, wondering how in the hell he expected her to eat it.

Also, there was nowhere to eat. She hadn’t noticed before, but he lacked a table and chairs.

Rolling her eyes, she walked to the sofa and plopped down.

No wonder it seemed dirty. This was where he must eat all his meals.

A moment later he joined her, sitting in the armchair across from her, his plate stacked with four grilled cheese sandwiches and two tomatoes.

Because she enjoyed needling him, she picked up the tomato. “How exactly do you expect me to eat this?”

The tic showed up in his jaw again. “I don’t care how you eat it, or whether you eat it, princess. In fact, while you’re here, maybe I should put you in charge of cooking.” His eyes slid sideways and she caught the glint of goading in them. “I could use a live-in housekeeper around here.”

That thought shouldn’t turn her on. Especially not after living with Jeremy, who did absolutely nothing around the house.

It must be the wicked way Cody looked at her that made her heart tumble and her flesh heat.

She imagined wearing a little French maid’s costume and running around to serve him under threat of a spanking while he waited with those powerful arms folded across his chest.

Stop it. Just stop. This guy was another Mr. Wrong. Definitely not the guy for her.

To throw it back at him, she held his gaze, picked up the tomato and took a big bite of it, as if it were an apple. Juice and seeds dribbled down her chin, but she didn’t move to wipe them away.

Cody stared at her mouth, his expression turning hungry.

She jumped, pulse racing, when he leaped to his feet and stalked toward her.

“What are you doing to me?” he demanded in a guttural voice.

She froze, the tomato still gripped in her fingers in front of her mouth, juice dripping down her arm. She wasn’t sure what he meant.

He grabbed the tomato out of her hand and then his mouth was upon hers. His tongue lapped up the juices before his lips descended on hers in a brutal kiss.

She gasped.

He hooked one hand behind her neck and hauled her to stand, body pressed against his, and took her mouth again and again.

Her nipples, bare beneath his oversized t-shirt, puckered and stood up, rubbing against the soft cotton.

When he broke away, he stared down at her like a man possessed. “Are you really sure you want to play that game with me?”

Dizzy with desire, she probably would have fallen over if he hadn’t been holding her tight against his hard body.

She thought about playing innocent and asking “what game?” but they seemed beyond that. Cody had effectively put her on notice—nearly anything she did that might be construed as sexual put her in danger of getting fucked by him. And she bet he fucked hard and rough, like his manners.

She stared at his stubbled chin, not quite able to lift her eyes to his face.

The idiotic part of her wanted to wave the white flag and surrender. Take me! it cried, like the pathetic quick-bonding female she was.

Not going to happen.

She put her hands on his sculpted chest and pushed.

He moved back, but it was after a moment’s hesitation, as if to show her that her feeble pushes meant absolutely nothing to a man—wolf—as strong as him. His eyes bored into her as if she stood there naked.

He brought the dripping fruit to her lips, offering it for another bite.

After his warning, she ought to have known better, but she sank her teeth into the soft meat of the tomato and closed her eyes with the explosion of taste, made all the more potent by her fascinated observer.

He ran his thumb over her lower lip, corralling tomato seeds into her mouth. “You’re not going to last long around here.”

“What do you mean?” Her voice only quavered a little.

She licked the juice from her lower lip, missing being mashed up against his body.

Despite the ill-fitting t-shirt and boxer shorts ensemble, she’d never felt so desirable in her life.

Cody made every cell in her body spark to life, alert, simmering for his touch.

He gripped her hips, fingers firm against her flesh. “I’m already dying to bury my cock deep and pound until you scream my name.”

Her mouth dropped open. She ought to be shocked by his crudeness, but dirty talk must be her thing because the flames of desire only burned hotter. Her breasts ached, swollen for his touch; her clit throbbed in time with her heartbeat.

“I-I can’t,” she somehow managed to stammer.

What she meant was she could. In a heartbeat. But it would be something her old self would do, and she was trying, very hard, to stop being the loser twin and do something right with her life for a change.

He released her and took a step back. Heat still burned in his gaze but as she watched, he produced an expression of scorn. “Then stay clear, princess, or you might find yourself in a compromising situation.”