Wanted by the Alphas (An Extremely Sensual Paranormal Shifter Romance)

by Dawn Steele

  “You are welcome.”

  A silence again. A very stretched, uncomfortable silence. Shannon senses that Lucien is not used to being silent on such subjects. Or maybe he is not used to having his lover leave him without a word or a note in the morning. She reckons that it is him who usually does the leaving.

  Of course, that is probably unfair. She doesn’t know what he does in situations like these.

  He looks up, seeming to recover his usual spirits.

  “You going shopping?” he says.

  “Just picking up some groceries.”

  “Well, I need to pick some up myself. Do you want to go in?”

  “I didn’t know you picked up your own groceries,” she teases. The awkwardness appears to have lifted some.

  “Oh, but I do.” He smiles. “I pick out my own wines and cheeses. I’m quite a connoisseur.”

  “I believe you.”

  Together, they walk into Safeway’s. There is no hand-holding, just a comfortable companionship – as if they have both made a mutual decision not to push anything but just let things go at their own pace, if there’s even anything there at all.

  She is flattered that he has actually tailed her car and come to this place with her. She is flattered that he is going grocery shopping with her. She is flattered that this extremely handsome, sophisticated scion of a multi-million dollar real estate empire is even with her at all.

  They make small talk as she pushes a trolley down the aisles. He goes to the cheese section and gives her rundown on the different cheeses from different places.

  “Do you like Brie?” he says.

  “I have never tried it before.”

  “It’s French. A little crumbly if you like that kind of texture.”

  “I prefer Italian cheeses in my pasta. This is what I mix when I make a cheese sauce.”

  “I like fruits like apricots and raspberries mixed up in my cheeses,” he says. “I usually eat them with water crackers.”

  She finds herself warming up to him again in that easy camaraderie they seem to share. Almost as if they are boyfriend and girlfriend.

  When they pass a door with the sign ‘STAFF ONLY’ somewhere between the dairy and frozen sections, he suddenly grabs her hand and pulls her through it.

  “But what about my cart – ?” she begins, but the rest of what she was about to say is lost when he presses her back against the tiled wall and kisses her ferociously.

  Ohhh!

  His mouth devours hers with insatiable hunger. It is as though he is so penned up with physical need for her that he cannot contain himself. His kisses are hard on her mouth, and she cannot help but respond to them. Her loins are turning into mush.

  Someone will see us, she thinks in a haze. But he doesn’t seem to care.

  “God, I need you now,” he murmurs against her mouth.

  He fumbles with her skirt. She is fully dressed. Her jacket is in the push trolley together with the rest of their groceries just outside this door. He hikes her skirt up and gropes for her panties. She is already very wet, and her juices have soaked through the thin strip of material which forms her crotch.

  “Lucien, someone will see us.”

  No one in the little storeroom, which is white-tiled. The air smells of refrigeration and the room is filled with racks laden with goods and deep freezers. A passage leads to somewhere else, and Shannon can hear voices in the next room.

  “I don’t care. I need you too much,” he says heavily.

  He unzips his jeans. Out springs his enormous erect cock. He takes out a condom in a foil wrapper and quickly snaps it onto his hot flesh. Her arms are around his shoulders as he lifts her up and sandwiches her against the wall. The entire act is rough and urgent, and it is also thrilling and filled with the danger of public discovery.

  She realizes how much she has missed his touch.

  He doesn’t take her panties off, but instead, pushes it to one side so that her pussy is revealed. Then he penetrates her with one swift stroke and seals his mouth on hers before she can cry out. This time, the pleasure is instantaneous. I must be getting used to his girth, she thinks. Their coupling is frantic and graceless. Her ears have too much of a blood rush in them for her to hear what the supermarket workers in the next room are saying, but it sounds as though they may come in here anytime soon.

  But she is too lost in her own pleasure to do anything but let him pound into her. There are no niceties this time – just a good, hard fuck where both of them will derive the maximal amount of pleasure in the shortest period of time. The smell of sex from their joined organs mingles with the air of the stockroom.

  “Need two cartons of Stella Artois over at Aisle 7!” says someone who is striding through the passage. His shadow is thrown against the wall.

  The urgency to finish sends her over the edge. She tips herself over to orgasm as she clutches as his neck and shoulders tightly.

  “Ohhhh!”

  Her cry explodes something inside Lucien as well, and he climaxes as a stock boy carrying a box comes into the room.

  “Oh!” he says in surprise.

  Lucien uncouples from her and smoothens down her skirt. Her panties are still askew and she is flushed and bothered and very embarrassed.

  The boy backs away as quickly as he came.

  “Sorry,” he calls out, although they should be the ones who are supposed to apologize for being in a place they shouldn’t.

  “No problem,” Lucien calls back. He chortles as he rips off the condom, drops it into a trash receptacle by a shelf and tucks his penis back into his pants. “You decent?”

  Her cheeks are burning hot. She checks herself. She left her purse out there in the trolley, and she hopes no one has made off with it. But this town is known for a very low theft rate. Unsolved killings, yes, but a very low theft rate.

  “I think so.”

  “Great. Then let’s go before we get into trouble.” He grins.

  They check themselves out of the stock room. The trolley is still there with her purse and groceries. A woman with a funny straw hat more suited for a vacation in the Bahamas gives them a funny look as she selects a carton of milk. But other than that, no one seems to be perturbed.

  The excitement of unrestrained and unexpected sex stays with her through the rest of their shopping journey. Lucien is still on a high, and his hands run down her back often, craving the contact with her.

  When they reach the checkout counter, Lucien takes out his wallet.

  “No, Lucien. This is mine.” She withdraws her wallet from her purse.

  The girl at the checkout counter does a double take at the sight of Lucien. No doubt someone who looks the way he does doesn’t line up at her aisle often.

  “I have my cheese somewhere in there,” he says.

  “It’s only one packet of cheese. I have a whole load of groceries.” She says firmly. She doesn’t want theirs to be that kind of relationship.

  Would what they are doing constitute a relationship? So far, it has only been incredibly hot sex.

  They are holding up the line, and so he finally concedes. “OK, but let me take you out to dinner.”

  He helps her push the trolley out to the parking lot.

  “I can’t tonight. Jared is expecting me.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “For more sex?” she teases.

  He has the grace to look abashed. “Look, Shannon, I know we’ve had hot sex twice already, but that’s not the reason I want to see you again. OK, maybe partially the reason.”

  They are treading on careful ground here, she knows. They are dancing around each other.

  “Then what’s the main reason?” she asks.

  They have reached her car, and he appears nonplussed and at a loss for words. She waits for him to speak.

  He laughs and runs a hand through his blond hair. “I don’t know it myself,” he confesses, and she senses honesty in his words. “It’s just that I like talking to you and being with you, even when we
are not having sex.” He shrugs. “Is it so wrong to want to see more of you?”

  He is right. She is not pressing him for a commitment or anything. They are just two young people who happen to like each other’s company. No point in making elaborate plans for a future which might never materialize.

  “I can do dinner tomorrow,” she says. She has to admit she wants to see him too. A whole lot more of him.

  The nagging image of the handsome doctor treads on her mind.

  Stop it!

  “Great,” he says. “Can I see you safely home? I can drive behind you to make sure you are OK until you get home. Where is your home anyway? We have so much to catch up on.”

  She tells him.

  He raises his eyebrows. “The old Pullnam house? Is it safe? I don’t know if I should tell you this, but it fringes a part of the woods where people have known to disappear.”

  “I know. I was given a bit of its colorful local history. As long as I don’t wander into the woods alone, I think I’ll be all right.”

  “Yes. Please don’t go in there by yourself. Or with anyone.” He hesitates, as though he has something important to tell her. Then he decides against it. “Are you working now? Did you manage to find a job?”

  “Yes. I’m working at the Orthopedic and Rehabilitation Center as a physiotherapist.”

  At this, Lucien’s face changes.

  “Under Kirk Fitzpatrick?”

  “He is the head, yes, though I work under the Physiotherapy unit. Why? Is there anything the matter?” She catches the undertones and wonders if there is rivalry between the two men. After all, they are both young, single, probably the most attractive catches in the entire Dolphin’s Bay community.

  A tic makes his right cheek flinch.

  “No,” he says, “nothing is the matter. Just that you should be careful around him, that’s all. He is not everything he appears to be.”

  “But neither are you,” she counters.

  “That’s true. So I’ll pick you up tomorrow? At seven thirty?”

  “OK.”

  It’s a date. Her second with him in a span of a week. Her entire being is lifted up with joy as much as she doesn’t like to admit it.

  As she waves him off and gets into the Toyota, her mind is filled with what Ellie said about his family of burned witches.

  EATING CHINESE

  The date with Lucien ends up with sex again at his Chatterly suite. They can’t seem to get enough of each other in bed and out of it. He talks to her about things in Dolphin’s Bay, but she notices that he steers clear of most topics of conversation regarding his family.

  She doesn’t ask him about the witches, and he doesn’t ask her about Jared. That is their tacit agreement.

  On Sunday, he asks to see her again.

  “Going out with him again?” Jared says jealously.

  She checks her look in her mirror. Her complexion is in high color, and her eyes sparkle. It must be all that sex, she decides. And she’s also happy. Deliriously happy.

  I am not in love with Lucien Walker. I am just enjoying his company.

  “Yes,” she replies.

  “Didn’t you go home with him yesterday? And last week?”

  She doesn’t mention Friday, of course.

  “What’s it to you?”

  He has been out pretty much too in a different capacity. And she knows exactly what he has been doing.

  “You know the saying. Don’t get too close to a witch or you’ll get burned.”

  “There’s no such saying. Besides, Lucien is not a witch. Just because he comes from a family of ancient witches doesn’t mean he’s a witch himself.”

  “You never know, Shannon. You never know. You got your gifts from your mother’s side of the family.”

  “My mother never had them.”

  “She probably had them, but she was too stoned most of the time to ever get them to work.”

  Shannon grins. That much is true.

  Work is particularly busy for the next week, and she hardly sees Kirk because he is even busier than most people at the center, if possible. Anyway, they run in different divisions. Lucien is involved in the family business and he has to be out of town for most of the week, and so she won’t get to see him until he returns from Portland on Saturday. But he calls her every day to hear her voice and to have phone sex.

  She laughs a lot over the phone, as does he. When they are not heavy breathing, that is.

  Friday comes with a patient load that would have stunned even general hospitals in Portland, with several walk-in cases appearing out of the blue. It is eight thirty in the evening when Shannon finally finishes.

  She is walking out, getting ready to go home for a light dinner, when Kirk lopes up.

  “Hey, Shannon. Wait up.”

  Shannon turns. Her breath catches. The sight of Kirk always lifts her stomach a little higher, as if she’s floating on air – he is that beautiful. He has changed out of his usual green scrubs and his rich dark hair is free flowing around his shoulders. He wears a leather jacket over a T-shirt which says: ‘DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS’. Through Patty, Shannon has learned that he volunteered with that charitable outfit to be stationed in the Sudan, Africa for a year.

  Kirk Fitzpatrick, in Patty’s parlance, seems destined for sainthood.

  “Sorry I didn’t catch up with you all week. How has your first two weeks been?” he says.

  “Busy. But great.” She smiles at her boss.

  He nods. “I’ve heard you’ve been doing some great work. The patients are already talking about you.” He gestures to the door. “You wanna grab a bite to eat?”

  She hesitates, and then says, “Sure.”

  “It’s the only time I have to catch up with you. I hate it when we get so busy that I barely have time to break a new employee in. You drove here?”

  “Yeah.” She can’t help noticing how the fluorescent lights catch the shimmers in his glorious hair.

  “You can hop into my car and I can drop you back here later. Or would you rather go in yours and follow me? How well do you know the area?”

  “Fairly well. It isn’t that big a town, though I hardly have time to explore it.”

  He laughs. “It must be my fault then. Come on. You can tag after my car. It’s the big Tahoe upfront. The place I have in mind isn’t far from here.”

  Yes, she knows it’s his car. Everyone knows it’s his car because it is parked in his reserved spot.

  She drives the Toyota after his Tahoe. Night has fallen already, and the final shoal of sunset is a glimmer over the forested horizon. The ocean is a dark presence to the west. It is chilly out tonight, and she makes sure her jacket is nicely buttoned down her front.

  The place he has in mind is a Chinese restaurant called Wing Lee’s a short distance away. They both park together in the half-empty parking lot, side by side.

  Once inside, Kirk takes a seat by the window so that he can look out into the distant forest and the hills. He does not draw her chair for her as this is not a date.

  The waiter comes over to give them their menus.

  “Do you like Chinese food?” he asks.

  “I honestly haven’t had that much of it.”

  His green eyes flash. “Do you trust me to order?”

  She smiles. “Sure, go ahead.”

  He orders a variety of dishes foreign to her, and then they settle back in their chairs over a pot of Chinese tea, which the waiter pours into two small porcelain cups.

  “So what brings you to Dolphin’s Bay? This isn’t exactly the mecca of holistic medicine,” he says.

  She wonders what version of her story to give him. He seems to intuit this.

  “I know,” he says. “You have the condensed storyline to tell Patty and the rest of the small town gossips. And then you have the real version. It’s OK. You can tell me the real version.”

  She hesitates, looking into his beautiful eyes. She can drown into those eyes, and the moment she feels her cheeks bu
rning, she looks away. God, but he is so beautiful. Different from Lucien, but just as beautiful.

  He mistakes this for reticence.

  “It’s OK,” he says with empathy, “you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. But I thought you could use a friend here who understands what you can do.”

  “No, it’s OK. I want to tell you.” She needs to tell someone about what happened to her to get it off her chest. “I’m from a small town in Arizona called Tupelo.”

  “Go on.”

  He nods, his entire attention focused on her.

  The soft pink walls of the Chinese restaurant melt away around them as she remembers.

  TUPELO

  “You can’t leave,” says the bodyguard she has come to know as Damon.

  “What do you mean I can’t leave?” she demands.

  She is extremely frightened.

  “Senora Conchita needs you.”

  Shannon tries to temper her anxiety by making her voice calm. “And I will be here again tomorrow.”

  Her trembling hands are betraying her. The walls of the mansion around her are rose pink. The pink of a hacienda glowing in sunset.

  “But she needs you tonight to be with her,” Damon insists, blocking her path.

  “I have to go home. My brother is expecting me.”

  “Call him and tell him you have to work tonight.” Damon is joined by two more cartel henchmen behind him. Together, the three of them form a solid wall at the archway leading to the hall, where the main doors are.

  Her heart sinks. How the hell did she get mixed up in cartel business? Oh yes, because they offered her a sum of money she couldn’t refuse. That money would have allowed her and Jared to take a few years off working if it does come to that.

  So far, they have been paying her in installments, but they are holding back the final sum until Conchita – the matriarch of the household – gets better.

  But Shannon knows she won’t get better. The pancreatic cancer which is eating her alive is terminal. And worse, the cancer is sapping Shannon’s strength and ability to heal. She has kept Conchita at bay now for six months, but the cancer is winning. Each time Shannon thinks she has managed to melt a bone lesion away, another one would appear in Conchita’s brain.