Alphas Prefer Curves

by Unknown

  Glaring quizzically, Vanessa pivoted to face Koller, her arms crossed far tighter than his had been. “Traumatized? By what?”

  The look on Jeremy’s hawkish, haughty face, the piteous gleam that shone briefly and the softening of tension around his eyes, betrayed his thoughts before Koller could voice them. “He is admittedly the sort of man any woman would find disarming, and I’m sure many do, Vanessa. You understand that, right?”

  “Understand that?” After a second, the implied insult really sank in, and Vanessa felt her cheeks heat like she was standing in front of a blast furnace. “That he has all kinds of women throwing themselves at him, you mean?” Blonder women, tanner women, thinner women. And yet Vanessa’s size didn’t seem to put Koller off, much as she wished it did.

  “It’s natural that a man would take advantage… would catch what’s thrown his way, but that’s not saying he has any intention of keeping it.”

  Just what did Koller think Vanessa had thrown at Eric Salo? Good god, had Jeremy seen them Friday night when they were dancing, kissing?

  “You don’t have to be concerned,” Vanessa said, her voice reined in taut.

  When she started toward the door again, Koller cut her off, partially blocking her exit with his tall, tense, muscular body. “Vanessa—.”

  The back of her neck burning now as badly as her cheeks, a sure sign of temper, Vanessa wound around her boss far more quickly and gracefully than either of them would have expected. The previous night’s dream of a fierce lioness with her fluid strength came to mind, settling Vanessa just enough to shore up her fraying self-control. “Let me rephrase that. It’s not your concern, Jeremy,” she said. His first name hit him like an elbow to the ribs, even knocking a small release of breath out of him. “I’m going to take the afternoon off sick,” Vanessa added as she jerked the door open. “The heat today must have gotten to me.”

  Total lie. The heat never got to Vanessa, the heat of temper notwithstanding. It was Aubrey, strapping track star and law dog that he was, who turned into a wilting daisy if he had to go without air conditioning during a Central California summer. He verged on comical, like kneeling in front of the oscillating fan, stripping down to his boxers, hugging a bag of ice kind of comical.

  Concentrating on those sort of images kept Vanessa from biting anyone’s head off as she forged out into the afternoon and down Neville Street to a bistro with about two dozen flavors of martini. After the apple martini, she had stopped swearing under her breath using “Koller” as a curse word. After the pomegranate and the strawberry, she quit glaring at the bartender just for looking her direction. The chocolate martini even had her thinking that he might have been admiring the shape of her pin-up girl calves as she sat cross-legged at a table in the corner, one high heel dangling from her toes as she bounced her foot like an angry cat might have swished her tail. Then the mint martini did her in, had her thinking about Eric and almost spilling her mojito lemonade on him, about the way he smelled and felt so warm and solid against her, about how big he had loomed over her and how big the ridge in those jean had felt pressing into the soft swell of her fluttering stomach. How big his cock must have been, and how wide and deep it would have opened her, filled her.

  Not that she had much experience in that area, between overprotective Aubrey, the watchful Jeremy Koller, and how amazing intimidating so many men found a woman who was both voluptuous and confident. As well as a little crazy. And a whole lot mouthy when she forgot to tone herself down.

  Maybe it was a touch hot outside, in the early moments of the summer evening, when Vanessa strolled out all loose limbs and rolling hips after her five-martini afternoon. Maybe that was the reason her mind was too foggy to connect the whiff of earthy rosemary and fresh loam with the man she so strongly associated with that wildly woody scent. When she abruptly realized whose smell that was, it tripped her up, quite literally. Unsteady on her stilettos from the emotional exertion of all the anger and frustration she’d been steeping in alcohol over the last few hours, Vanessa caught her heel on a slab of uneven pavement.

  Her ankle twisted, then her knee, and Vanessa swayed to one side. So briefly. Large, warm hands caught her with ridiculous ease around her soft waist and pulled her back just as she’d started to pitch forward. He let her fall backward, into the crook of one solid arm, her spine bowing and pushing out her chest in that low-cut green dress. When Vanessa settled, partially crouched and bent in a gentle tango of a dip, it was Eric Salo holding her, hovering over her.

  Damn, she thought, biting her lower lip lightly as she gazed up into that broad-featured, handsome visage and the alluring half-smile he wore. Damn but Eric Salo looked like some kind of angel or Adonis or Nordic war god with his blond hair hanging loose to his shoulders, with the golden falls framing his face as he leaned over her. Damn if she didn’t feel a cat-like desire to reach up and bat at those gleaming strands, and damn if she couldn’t help giggling at herself for the notion. Damn if his green eyes weren’t alight with naughty appreciation as his gaze followed the curves of her abundant cleavage and her plump thigh where the wrap dress hem had fallen open almost all the way up to her—now suddenly wet—silk panties.

  What if Vanessa had just reached down to tug the dress up that much further? What if she grabbed him by that luxurious blond hair, to kiss the living hell out of him? What if she dragged him back to her car in the parking garage and into the backseat and did all those hot, sweaty, panting things Jeremy Koller seemed to think she already had?

  The dark thought of how angry her boss had made her reminded Vanessa of how angry and confused she’d been all weekend. She was mad at Eric, too, after all. Wasn’t she? Miffed at least? Put off? It was hard to home in on the idea with the smell and the heat of him enveloping her. She specifically reminded herself what it felt like to have Eric Salo work her up like he had, dancing so close and looming over her just like now and kissing her, only to chase her away. And then not show up at lunch on Monday!

  The effect would have been greater had she straightened up, squared off in front of the presumptuous Adonis. Instead, she hung on tight to the arm encircling her waist, maybe dug her nails in just a little. Vanessa swallowed a hiccup, glared, and said, “You weren’t at lunch today.”

  Salo let out a low, chuckling breath that said he had no clue she was really pissed at him, no idea that they were having one of those you-never-pick-up-your-socks-you-don’t-love-me confrontations. And wasn’t that just a hair too weird for Vanessa to be thinking and feeling when she hadn’t even been properly introduced to the man? Why in the world did she feel so drawn to—and so possessive of—Eric Salo? Like she was taking that lioness dream too much to heart, growling at Koller and laying feline claim to Eric. The confusion made her even more cross with the man in front of her—the man holding her.

  Eric made no attempt to right Vanessa, to release her from his arms. “I didn’t know you were waiting.”

  The snort this got from Vanessa furrowed Eric’s brow. “You’re a bad liar, Eric Salo,” she blurted, rolling her R’s and vaguely hissing her S’s just enough to reveal the hint of a girlie martini slur—the kind that came fruit-scented. And with the barest note of a southern accent, though she probably owed that more to watching Gone With The Wind and The Postman Always Rings Twice a few too many times over recent lonely nights.

  Those shining green eyes narrowed with a second’s irritation, only to flare abruptly with a mischievous gleam. “So you know my name, Vanessa Dreyer.”

  Her name, her name spoken in that warm spice and worn leather voice, caught Vanessa flat-footed. She gasped as Eric hoisted her quickly and effortlessly to settle her on her feet, only to immediately swing her into a dizzying dance twirl before finally steadying her with his hands gripping her hips firmly.

  The man apparently also had no concept of how easy it was to make a teetotaler who’d been drinking throw up all over those snug dress clothes of his. Vanessa’s head, chest, and throbbing sex were awash in feveris
h warmth, her stomach with nausea.

  She planted her hands on his chest, half-heartedly leaning away while pushing on the wall of muscle made up of his amazing fucking pecs. “Not that you introduced yourself the last time we danced,” she said, chin raised, and with an accusing sniff.

  “Not that you introduced yourself the last time we kissed,” he countered, not missing a beat.

  Eric moved in over Vanessa while her faculties, steeped in alcohol and lust, were still clicking away, processing the implications of his statement. The last time they’d kissed versus….

  This time, as the hulking, seductive beast of a man—too big, too powerful, too sensually primal to be real or to be believed—dipped his head over hers. Eric allowed his silky hair to tease the bridge of Vanessa’s nose and the apples of her cheeks before he pressed his mouth over hers. Firm and honeyed at once, those were his lips, and salty after a long hot day. His skin was hotter than summer, making hers tingle, between the taste and the heat of him and his satiny lips manipulating hers like they were still dancing. So little of Eric was actually touching Vanessa—his lips and deft tongue, the feathery strands of his gold hair, his hands kneading her hips demandingly now, his breath, and the heavy muscles of his chest flexing under his shirt and under her palms and trembling fingers. Yet he filled her senses, blocking out thought the way his broad frame blocked the glare of the setting sun as it filtered between buildings behind him.

  God, no man had the right to consume her like that, especially not a man who ran hot and cold for no reason she could see. Maybe Vanessa didn’t always want to be Aubrey’s mousy little sister or Koller’s demure Girl Friday fantasy, didn’t always want to play it safe and low-key, but that didn’t mean she wanted to lose her head over Eric Salo. She had her pride, like any good lunatic with delusions of being a lioness. No pun intended.

  With this surge of resentment toward her own attraction to him, Vanessa jerked back from Salo’s kiss. Pushing at him more sincerely, more urgently, she felt him flex again and all those muscle harden like granite as he tensed at her denial. He didn’t move at her urging, so her own body had to. Vanessa shoved herself away from Eric, and they both stood panting and gaping at one another.

  Vanessa’s heart was racing, and she could have sworn she could hear his doing the same. Her pussy was aching, the muscles inside her twitching rhythmically with the need to tighten down on Eric, on the…. On the inhumanly huge cock straining at the crotch of his perfectly fitted gray slacks, of course. Why wouldn’t it be, she asked in the back of her mind. The threatening ridge was proportional to the rest of this giant of a man. For his part, Eric stood glaring at her like a barely contained predator, a beast who’d had its dinner snatched out from under its snapping jaws.

  “Fuck,” she swore—at herself—as she felt the thrill of that thought, that Eric was a hungry wild animal about to seize her. Vanessa lunged forward before she knew what she was going to do. With her hands holding his square-jawed, smooth-shaven face, she laid a hard, quick bite of a kiss on Eric’s full lips. Then, just as suddenly, she ended the kiss with a literal nip and a darting step backward, out of his grasp but not quite out of his reach. It was a slap of sorts, yes, a subtle marking of her territory, maybe, and certainly a challenge.

  The little lioness acting out in Vanessa hadn’t anticipated the length or power in the reach of Eric’s beast. In an instant, Salo had her by the hair at the back of her neck. He closed his massive fist tight in the strands at her nape, and a shower of sharp, tingling heat like sparks rained down on Vanessa along her spine. All the tension and strength in Vanessa’s shoulders and her back drained away, as he hauled her up flush against all that tailored clothing and steely muscle, right up into the musk and the hunger emanating from him.

  This time, Salo kissed Vanessa like he owned it, owned her. His mouth swallowed her small grunt of impact as her erratically pumping chest hit his body, along the washboard of his flexed abs. His towering frame went from looming over hers to curling and closing over her. And still Eric kissed her. Goddamn, did he kiss her. Tongue driving in deep and lapping with both ravenous demand and absolute command. Lips prying hers wide, making her open up to him, forcing her to let him drink in her small whimpers of surprise and resistance and reluctant pleasure. Hot breath swirling against her cheeks as he sucked so hard, so thoroughly, on the lush pads of her lips like he savored the feel and the taste of them. Teeth scraping and biting just shy of pain or blood but always with the potential, with the clear understanding that the power and the ability and—fuck yes—the inclination was there. Right there. The thought of Eric Salo just taking, fucking, ravaging Vanessa had occurred to him, to both of them. And they both knew it. They both smelled of it, the arousal in every cell and every muscle and every orifice.

  So much was obvious in the wide-eyed stare between the two when Eric finally released Vanessa’s stinging, kiss-swollen mouth. His green eyes shone almost all pupil now, and she suspected her own were dilated just as big and dark as his. Their chests pumped for breath in almost perfect unison.

  Vanessa’s gaze surveyed the streets immediately around them briefly. On a Monday, a good half hour after the close of the business day, most of the cubicle dwellers had scurried away, yet to be replaced en masse by the urban bistro crowd. The few people dotting the sidewalks almost all hurried along with their heads down. Only a couple of denim-and-leather biker sorts spied them from across the way, from outside a bar that liked to serve light beer and finger foods to entry-level brokers by day and harder liquor to the blue collar residents of the neighborhood a couple blocks off the main. And with the way Eric and Vanessa had just been going at it, no wonder they were curious.

  “Are you….?” Eric started to ask in a husky breath, eyes narrowing at her again, scrutinizing. A thin sheen of sweat shone on his cheeks as the angles of his face hardened. “Are you going to run?” he asked low and quiet, incredulous, maybe a touch indignant, and so unmistakably aroused.

  In heels? Away from him? The little Rubenesque girl from the big, hulking beast of a man?

  Vanessa had spun and put two car-lengths between Eric and herself before he finished growling out those last two words.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Goddammit if she wasn’t doing it. Vanessa was running from him. In heels, with all that brown hair waving, taunting, enticing.

  It didn’t matter now that Eric was trying to stay away from her, for her physical safety and his own peace of mind, so his conscience would stop hounding him. It didn’t help that he’d stayed in working on building plans at lunch and waited an extra half hour after work to avoid running into the infuriatingly lush little minx on the street, to avoid smelling her or hearing that playful, wicked giggle she always tried to hide under her breath.

  Eric wanted to spare Vanessa Dreyer a truckload of complication and heartache, and she just would not cooperate. Tripping right there in front of him, giving him no choice but to scoop her up and pull her close. Baring teeth and temper at him, flushing with anger and sex he could have smelled a mile away even without his lupine senses. Tasting of both sweetness and stinging alcohol at once. Yeah, that was Vanessa, a perfect summation of what he’d seen and what his instinct told him gut-deep and balls-deep.

  And now…. Now she was running. Now, as Eric snarled and launched himself after her with heart and muscles pumping, it was out of his hands. She had made herself prey. Vanessa belonged to his wolf.

  His wolf just wasn’t used to having to work for his meal. As Eric chased Vanessa across the street and two blocks down, where she veered into the tree-lined residential district, she was pulling ahead of him. In heels—he just couldn’t get over that—and with that fluttery silk dress flowing back from her legs and begging to be ripped off her plump, ripe, ready body. When Eric poured on the speed, Vanessa did as well, glancing over her shoulder with an impish fucking smile at one corner of her mouth. She sure as hell wasn’t running just because she was mad at him over sending her home and then avo
iding her. There was something in Vanessa that wanted him to catch her and wanted what his wolf was going to do to her when he had her.

  Once they had the heavy shrubbery and shade trees of a side lane to obscure them, Eric cut loose and ran—hunted—like a wolf. Even without shifting, he had the senses, strength, and speed of a were. He was closing in on his prey, his feast, his woman. And fuck if it didn’t feel good to unleash his animal, muscles engorged with coursing blood, breathing heaving hard from his chest, cock throbbing with each heartbeat in anticipation of thrusting deep into Vanessa and all that soft, vulnerable warmth when he caught her.

  If he caught her. It was that idea rising to the fore in Eric’s mind that kept his wolf from swallowing up all human thought. A wolf shifter could run sixty miles an hour flat out like this. That probably wasn’t far from what Eric was doing. So why in the hell was he only gaining on Vanessa by infuriatingly small degrees? Why hadn’t he pounced on his human prey as soon as he had her off the main street? No woman—no human—could keep up with, let alone outrun, a shifter of any species.

  So what did that make Vanessa? Clearly not a human. Why hadn’t he ever sensed that the woman he’d been sitting beside almost every day at lunch, the plump little beauty he’d been studying for months, was another supernatural?

  Vanessa made the mistake, or the choice, to lead Eric through the maze of alleyways and private drives amid the increasingly upscale mixture of older Victorian and art deco houses. When she mistook a long driveway lined with ivy-covered brick walls for a side street, only to come up against an eight-foot-tall wrought iron gate, he had her. Panting and sweaty and wafting of pheromones that were begging for hard, merciless sex—that spoke at a primal level to Eric’s breeding instinct—the two locked gazes on one another as Vanessa finally skidded to a stop and turned to face him.