by Dawn Steele
WANTED BY THE ALPHAS
An Extremely Sensual Paranormal Shifter Romance
By Dawn Steele
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright 2013 by Dawn Steele
Cover art by Dawn Steele
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dawn Steele is the New Adult romance pen name of Aphrodite and Artemis Hunt. Aphrodite Hunt, Artemis Hunt and Dawn Steele have had 23 books in the Top 100 Amazon Erotica, 1 book in the Top 100 Amazon Romance, 12 books in the Top 100 of the overall Barnes and Noble store and 1 book in the Top 100 Amazon New Adult.
Dawn believes that true love will conquer all, even if the circumstances appear cagey at first glance. That is why all her books have ‘Happily Ever After’ endings, although she will tease you with twisty plots and subplots to make you think this will not be so in the beginning.
THE CLIFFS
The weather delivers its promise.
The coast of Oregon is well-known for its unpredictability, and the sky has proven just that. Rain slants from west to east and falls unbroken for the past hour. The sky itself is the color of a bruise, and the clouds break apart with thunder.
“Slow down,” Shannon cautions. She is hanging onto the armrest and passenger door handle of the Toyota for dear life.
On her right side, she can see the ocean with its stormy, spraying waves. They must be five feet high at least, she reckons. One false swerve and the Toyota could plunge off the cliff road and into that awful, roaring abyss. She can only imagine all those rocks down there, with teeth that could gnash the metal body of the Toyota and the soft bodies inside.
“I know what I’m doing, so lay off, OK, Shan?”
The driver is grim, determined. His handsome mouth is set in a flat cast. He has been doing sixty on this slippery coastal road for the past hour or so. The windshield wipers struggle to keep up with the downpour, and she can barely see ten feet of road before them. Of course, he has far better eyesight than her due to his enhanced senses. She can only imagine the distances he can see with his sharp, sharp eyes.
Even in good weather, the narrow coastal road overlooking the Pacific would be difficult to navigate. Now everything is a blur – a horrible grey slate. It is as if she has vanished in a fog of a netherworld.
The road is separated from the sheer drop to the ocean below by only a thin, grassy verge. Gravel and debris pelt the underside of the tire rims. Her seatbelt is strapped tightly against her chest. Her breasts are quashed in their brassiere cups – a most uncomfortable enterprise.
“At least turn on your headlights,” she pleads.
“I can see the road, Shan. Shut up and let me concentrate.”
“It’s not what you can see. It’s for the other cars to see where you’re coming from. Slow down or you’ll hurl both of us over the cliff!”
He is reckless, she knows. He has always been reckless for as long as she has known him. It comes with his birthright – of who and what he is. He can’t help being reckless any more than a leopard can help having spots.
No one else is out in this weather, she thinks. No one else is foolish enough.
He looks over to her. He has piercing dark eyes, in contrast to her soft lilac ones. They are unalike physically as light and day. She is raven-haired. He has auburn locks. They don’t even think alike even though they have cohabitated in the same house for over ten years.
The screeching of wheels against asphalt arrests her attention. From the other side of the road, a white Mercedes veers onto their path.
“Jared!” Shannon screams.
“Fuck!” He twists the steering wheel, and the tires of their vehicle skid.
It is an awful squealing sound, like a thousand fingernails on a chalkboard. Her eardrums are splitting from the sound, and if her hands weren’t clutching at whatever they can clutch at, she would have put her hands onto her ears to shield them.
Please, don’t let me die, she begs as she closes her eyes tightly.
She braces herself for the collision.
And waits.
One.
Two.
Three.
When it doesn’t come, she opens her frightened eyes. Jared is still at the wheel, and looking none the worse for the wear – meaning that he isn’t slumped over the steering wheel with blood trickling from his forehead like she expected. The car hasn’t smashed onto the cliff wall, nor has it plunged into the ocean on the other side.
The blurry road is still ahead. She can’t be sure, of course, in this vague greyness, but they may be facing the other direction from whence they came from. This means the car has taken a hundred-and-eighty degree spin.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Jared curses, thumping his palms on the steering wheel. “I’ll get that motherfucker. I’ll wring his neck so hard that he won’t know what choked him.”
“Please, Jared.” She is disorientated. Trying to get her bearings back. The last thing she wants is road violence.
And of course . . . the other.
She can see the white Merc a short distance away from them. It is also at an unnatural angle to the road, suggesting that it too has skidded and ground to a halt. She hopes no one in it has been hurt.
The driver’s door of the white Merc opens. A figure comes out into the pelting rain.
Jared growls and unclasps his seatbelt. It snaps back to its moorings with a sharp crack.
“Please, Jared, don’t fight!” she begs him. “It was an accident, nothing more.”
Jared wrenches open the car door. The howling wind immediately pours in, dipping the temperature in the car a good twenty degrees. Goose bumps pop up on her suddenly exposed skin. Oh Gad, but it’s cold!
“Jared!”
But it’s no use. He is headstrong, as always, and he has gone into the wind and rain to confront the Merc driver. Knowing Jared, there will be a fight. And the driver might be from this new community they are going to. What’s the point of antagonizing people from a small town you are going to try living in?
Where the hell else can they both go?
Jared is a shape out there in the elements, and from the gesticulations of his arms, he is having an argument with the driver.
Shit.
Wrenching the passenger door handle, Shannon bolts out into the rain. The wind immediately seizes her hair and the rain comes down in torrents upon her head. Her teeth start to chatter as she runs as quickly as she can in her high heels to the arguing pair.
“Jared!” The wind tears her words from her lips and hurtles it onto the cliffs.
The driver of the white Merc sizes her up. It is a horrible situation to be out in the cold and rain, and it is probably not the most conducive environment for a discussion on whose car cut whose off first, but she manages to note that the driver is a young man.
A very young man, probably not much older than her.
The rain obscures much of her vision, but she can see how muscled his exposed forearms are, and how tightly he is built underneath his soaked shirt. His wet face is handsome as well, with a rugged cast to his clean-shaven jaw and plastered blond hair. He is extremely tall. Far taller than Jared. She would put his height to be above six feet five inches.
“So you’re both OK,” the driver shouts above the din. “That’s all there is to it. Don’t you go accusing me of cutting into your lane when you knew you were driving well above the speed limit on tha
t bend.”
She hugs her thin coat closer to her chest.
“We should get out of here,” she says. “There might be cars coming down on either lane and we’re blocking their path.”
“I’m not accusing you of something you didn’t do, buddy.” Jared jabs a finger on the guy’s chest.
Uh oh.
The guy bridles, expectedly.
“Did you just touch me?” he demands.
“Please!” she shouts again. She wonders if any of them can hear her. “Don’t let us fight here. If we must sort this out, let’s go somewhere warm and dry and safe!”
The man looks at her again, as if evaluating her words.
“Stay out of this, Shannon,” Jared says curtly.
She bristles at this. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
The man seems amused.
He says, “Your girlfriend seems to be making the most sense of all of us. We can settle this at Pine’s Bluff twenty miles down the road, or we can forget about it and move on with our lives.”
The way he is looking at her makes her think he doesn’t want to forget about it at all. In fact, he is half-smiling at her, as if he is thinking that it would be nice to carry on this conversation with her.
She finds herself saying, “I’m not his girlfriend!”
“Oh?” The man smiles quizzically.
She holds her breath. He is very attractive. But remember, you are not here to start a new relationship. You are here for a specific reason.
“We’ll see you at Pine’s Bluff,” Jared blusters.
She is amazed that no vehicle has come by as yet. Imagine – if they were to go over the cliff – there would be no one who’d know for ages and ages.
“Yeah, I’ll see you there.” The man’s gaze lingers on her and she feels a delicious thrill despite the super-wet conditions.
They all return to their respective cars. The Merc is the first to pull away.
“Fucker,” Jared says grimly. “He doesn’t know who he’s dealing with.”
Both of them are soaked to their skins, and she is shivering.
“Jared . . . you are not going to start this. No one can know who we are here.”
“I know, I know.” He sees her shuddering violently and relents. “Let’s get off this road and go to Pine’s Bluff, wherever the hell it is. Then let’s get out of these clothes.”
It’s the wisest thing he has said all day and she warms to the suggestion.
“Remember not to draw attention to ourselves,” she cautions.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He rolls his eyes.
She knows she nags him sometimes, but with Jared, you have to say the same thing over and over to pound it through to his thick skull.
They rev off into the rain, which is lessening, thank goodness. It is as though the sky has decided to give them all a respite.
And now they have to find Pine’s Bluff, wherever the hell it is. She seriously hopes Jared is not going to make a scene.
PINE’S BLUFF
They pass a sign welcoming them to ‘Dolphin’s Bay’, though Shannon doubts any dolphins have come up to Oregon’s coastline, as inhospitable as it is. A painting of a deep blue dolphin splashing out of the waves accompanies this sign. Maybe there’s a real dolphin mascot somewhere in the aquatic zoo here, she can’t tell. If the place even has an aquatic zoo.
She knows this is a small town after all. POPULATION: 23,000. Isn’t that what Google said?
A protest of some sort is taking place a little distance away from the dolphin sign. Shannon views some of the placards put up by the protestors: ‘OUR LAND IS BEING RAPED BY WHITE PEOPLE’. ‘GIVE US BACK OUR LAND’. The protestors are mostly in modern day clothing, but some of them have chosen to don their Native American garb, complete with moccasins and feathered headdresses.
“Nice greeting,” Jared remarks.
“Maybe that’s the point. They want people from outside this town to see what is being done to their land.”
“It isn’t their land.”
“It was. A long time ago.”
“Well, it isn’t now. They sold it for a song.”
“I don’t think that’s exactly how it happened.”
“Hah,” he says.
That shuts her up, because when Jared is in one of his moods, it’s no use talking to him. It would only aggravate the situation.
The Toyota breezes past the protestors and rumbles on.
As they near the town, the usual buildings that populate a small town start to appear. A bait and tackle shop. A gas station boasting a convenience store. A café. Two cafes. A bed and breakfast. Then the town proper begins to take shape. Banks. A five and dime. Gracious houses. Restaurants. More gas stations. An Applebee’s. An AT&T building with a generous parking lot. A Walmart’s.
The tallest building they have seen so far is the AT&T, which tops three floors. A fire department sits next to it, though Shannon decides that fires here are probably put out on their own in seconds by the torrential rain.
Anchoring the town square is a lovely old church with stain glass windows.
“Look out for Pine’s Bluff, will you?” Jared growls.
He is not in a better mood because his clothes are starting to dry in the car’s heater and they are beginning to emit a rank odor. She supposes she smells no better.
“I have no idea what we’re looking for,” she says.
She supposes she should have asked the handsome blond man where Pine’s Bluff is. But honestly, the situation didn’t allow it. It was one akin to a Mexican standoff, and if you were pointing imaginary guns at each other’s heads, it wouldn’t be too cool to ask: ‘Um, where is this dueling spot you speak of again?’
The town slopes up from its center and the hillside dots with more houses. Every one of the houses is different in style, and every one of them comes with a neatly structured garden. Perhaps they give out prizes here for neatness, because it is truly a picture perfect town. When it is not obscured by rain, of course.
Shannon teases out her cellphone from her purse. She is glad she left her purse in the car earlier or the rain would have soaked through the suede. She shouldn’t have bought suede. It is notoriously difficult to keep clean. Once suede is wet, weird imprints are left on it, like geographical maps of strange countries.
She taps her GPS application. It isn’t foolproof, but since Jared won’t invest in a Garmin, it’s the best she can do.
“Are you looking?” he says.
“I’m looking.”
His impatience makes her nervous. When she’s being hurried, she tends to type in the wrong letters on the Android touch screen.
Before she can press ‘Done’, he exclaims: “Pine’s Bluff!”
She looks up.
The sign before the huge white mansion says: ‘PINE’S BLUFF’. OK, no mistakes to be made there. The house itself is very Pacific Northwest in design with many sprawling wings, gables and lots of wood paneling and plenty of roofs in every aspect of the three floors it boasts. But the parking lot which is half filled with cars suggests it is a commercial building.
The white Merc is parked at a spot marked ‘Reserved’. Either the Merc’s owner is a ‘Very Important Person’ or he actually owns the place. Shannon remembers the ease in which he mentioned ‘Pine’s Bluff’, as though it is a territory he has staked out and laid out the land mines and heavy artillery.
The rain has tapered off to a drizzle. There is an umbrella in the car, but someone has very wisely put it into the booth, and neither she nor Jared has bothered taking it out. Good planning, this.
The car grinds to a halt. The parking lot is fringed by lawns, and she glimpses a flower garden beyond those lawns going to the back of the mansion.
“Come on,” Jared says. “We better remove our bags if we want to change into some dry clothes. I don’t reckon on starting a fight if I’m sodden.”
“You’re not going to start any fight.”
She knows he has to struggle d
aily to keep his temper under control, and she knows it’s not his fault really. It’s the chromosomes he has in his makeup and the hormones coursing through his flesh. To ask him to be any different would be to ask him to alter his own DNA. She might as well shoot a tranquilizer dart into him.
They take their suitcases out from the booth anyway. Hers is a lot heavier than his, but he doesn’t offer her any help. Jared has never been a gentleman for as long as she has known him. He is too much of a selfish alpha to be one. Now they have to find a restroom and change their clothes, if Pine’s Bluff would be so kind to allow them to do so.
A ‘WELCOME’ sign loudly proclaims that ‘ROOMS FOR RENT’ can be found in here. So her first impression is right. It is a B&B. Maybe even a small boutique hotel.
The white double doors open into a reception area. It is small, tasteful, and lined with oak paneling. Watercolors of the cliffs and stormy blue sea line the wall behind the reception desk. An elderly man looks up and smiles.
“What can I do for you, Sir? Miss?”
It wouldn’t be a bad idea to stay here, she thinks. The whole place has a very homely vibe to it, and she knows she will be happy here amongst the flowers. But of course, they can’t stay here if the white Merc’s owner has anything to do with it. It’s just a stop and go.
“Is there a place we can change out of our wet clothes?” she asks.
“Certainly, Miss. The restroom is right down the corner. The weather has been terrible lately with hardly a break in the rain pattern.”
“Is it always like this in the Pacific Northwest?”
“Not always, but close at this time of year.”
Jared places his fist on the reception counter. His stance of aggression is unmistakable.
“We’re also looking for a man. He’s the owner of the white Mercedes you have parked outside.”
At this, the man seems taken aback. “You mean Mr. Lucien Walker?”
“Is that his name?” Jared grins. “Lucien. Kind of sissy, ain’t it?”
