by Victoria Sue
Easing his way up the bed, he reached for a foil packet he’d dropped earlier. He took some deep breaths. It was gonna kill him to hurt her.
Mac stilled and kissed her breast. “Sorry, I’ll go slowly, but this is gonna hurt a bit.” He gently eased into position, holding his cock and brushing her entrance.
“A bit?” Lisa cried out and tensed up. “You’re not going to fit.”
Agonizing seconds passed while Mac turned his attention to her breasts. He pulled a small moan from her as that part of her body relaxed into him. Mac pushed in hesitantly, and Lisa cried out at the sharp pain.
Tears threatened in Lisa’s eyes, and he kissed them away. Still holding himself up with one arm, he carefully brought his hand between them and gently touched her clit.
“Oh.” Lisa breathed the word out slowly. He felt her relax.
Mac slowly slid himself partly out, watching Lisa all the time.
Her hips wriggled some.
He pushed back, and her lips parted slightly.
Sliding back out slowly, he felt a gentle canter of her hips toward him as if she didn’t want him to go. Changing position slightly, he watched her face as he pushed back in. Bunching the pillow under her with his fist some more, he repeated the move.
Lisa gasped. Her hands clasped the sheet. A delicious moan echoed from her throat.
Got it.
Using his elbows to take his weight, he pushed in harder, aiming for the same sweet spot, and Lisa moaned. Mac clenched his jaw. His balls tightened, and he was determined to hold back until he knew she had come.
Over and over he hit the spot, until he was convinced he couldn’t hold it back anymore, when she clamped down and screamed. Her whole body jerked. Mac had no choice then. The contractions in his cock were so powerful, his orgasm was wrung from him. Intense pleasure slammed from his balls, and he cried out louder than she did.
Mac collapsed on his side and pulled Lisa with him.
Mac panted like he’d just run some marathon or shit, but he wanted to know how Lisa was doing.
“Lisa?”
“You killed me.”
Mac smiled “That good huh?”
Chapter Eight
Lisa snuggled.
Mac lay quietly, listening to the sound of her breathing. He knew she hadn’t fallen asleep despite her needing the rest. He could practically hear the thoughts ticking around in her brain. She had a lot of stuff to process, but damn, she needed the rest as well.
“Lisa?” Mac moved to face her, and her eyes opened. “What is it? Can I help?”
“I have another question.”
Mac propped himself up on his elbow to see her. “You can ask anything.”
“Well…” Lisa fidgeted.
Mac put two fingers under her chin and raised her face. He snagged her lips for a very satisfying kiss.
Lisa smiled. “Is that so I forget what I need to ask?”
“No.” He wiped his thumb over her lips. “It’s to give you the courage to ask.”
“Do I lose my temper because I’m an alpha?”
Mac grimaced. Where was Cassie when he needed her? “Yes and no. How old were you when this started becoming a problem?”
“Around eleven or twelve I think.” Lisa screwed her nose up thinking.
Mac could feel himself reddening. “And what things normally happen to a girl around that age?”
Lisa looked confused.
“Maybe you should talk to Cassie about this?”
“Cassie, but why?” Lisa stared at Mac. “It doesn’t matter really. I’ll talk to Cassie tomorrow.”
“Oh shit.” Mac sat up, and Lisa looked alarmed.
“It’s okay. It doesn’t matter.” Lisa bit her lip.
Mac felt the biggest idiot that walked the earth. He’d told her to ask him anything, and he’d wussed out at the first question. “I’m not mad at you. I’m embarrassed.” Mac sighed, lay back down, and scooped her up. “Girls start err— changing around that age.” Mac stopped and didn’t know what else to say.
“Oh my God, are you serious?” Lisa’s face was thunderstruck as understanding dawned. “They locked me up for that?”
“Okay, so obviously I don’t know that much, but we’ll find out for you.” He added hurriedly, “We were told that what an alpha female goes through is like off the charts compared to a human woman. It causes violent uncontrolled outbursts. The trouble is because you weren’t brought up in a pack, you wouldn’t have had the male companionship you needed.”
Lisa stiffened.
“No, honey, I don’t mean like that, I mean a father figure. Apparently it can be controlled if you have support. Later when you get older, well…” Mac cringed unable to go any further.
“And that’s what you did.” Lisa stated baldly. “I lost half my life through ignorance and being in the wrong place.” Her head lowered. “I’m sorry you were forced to do that.”
“Forced? What do you mean forced?”
“You don’t have to shout. I’m just saying it put you in a bad position.”
“I wasn’t in a bad position. You’re my mate. Did you not listen to anything I’ve been telling you?” Mac couldn’t believe it. He knew he shouldn’t have started this conversation.
Forcing himself to calm down, he glanced at Lisa’s face. Tight and frowning. Hell. “Lisa honey, calm down.”
“Calm down! I lost half my life! Half my life. How can I ever make up for that? Calm down?” Lisa shook her head and wrapped miserable defensive arms around herself.
Mac put a hand on her arm, and she shook it off. She jumped out of bed and reached for her jeans. “So, tell me, how come you got the call? Since when did twenty-year-olds qualify for foster placement?”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly like that. I mean where…”
Mac swallowed at Lisa’s thunderous expression.
“Where else was I gonna go? That was it, wasn’t it? That’s what you were going to say?” Lisa was shaking so much, she could hardly fasten her jeans.
“Lisa, honey—”
“Don’t call me that. Don’t ever call me that.” She grabbed her sweatshirt.
Mac jumped up, realizing she was going somewhere, and he was naked. “Lisa.” He grabbed for his jeans.
She put a hand on the door and drew a deep breath. “So what was I, Mac? A challenge? Some time off from having to be so good-looking for all your dates?” Tears streamed down her face. “And what was that?” She tossed one careless arm at the bed. “Poor Lisa, never done that before. Let’s give her one good pity fuck, to make up for the hell that’s been my life for twenty years?”
* * * *
Lisa didn’t know how she got the last few words out before her throat completely closed up. She ran, nearly blind, down the stairs and across the hall. She registered Mac behind her, put on a burst of speed she never knew she had and ran out of the door, straight into Alex
“I need to get out of here,” she cried, lungs heaving and eyes streaming.
Alex, with better reflexes, had caught her before she ran into him. He looked startled at Mac trying to catch up, and summed up the situation quickly for a kid. “Wanna go for a walk?”
Mac caught up to them. “Alex.”
“I know he’s been sighted. I’ll be careful, and I can smell him before you. We won’t go near the woods.”
Mac sighed. Lisa still refused to look at him. “Got your phone on you?” He half-smiled as Alex gave him the duh look.
“Come on, Lisa, I’ll show you where all the coats and shoes are. You can grab something there.”
Lisa followed him to a small mud room off the front door.
“They keep it well supplied in here. Spare clothes.” He glanced at Lisa. “Well okay, we need some girl stuff, boots, sneakers, coats.”
Lisa grabbed blindly at some boots and a pair of socks. Mac had walked to the end of the hall and just stood there. She ignored the troubled look on his face. “Why all the clothes?”
Alex grinne
d. “For when we shift. You saw earlier?” Lisa ducked her head, and Alex shrugged. “No one gets embarrassed around here. We sometimes have to shift in a hurry, so bang goes your stuff. Starting off with nothing on is way better.”
Lisa breathed slower. She had to get out of here, but at that moment was unsure she could put one foot in front of the other. Alex tugged her coat on.
“We’ll just go around the back. There’s some swings and stuff for the younger kids. It’s a nice place to just sit sometimes.” He shuffled anxiously, like he wanted to help.
Lisa smiled and stood. She liked Alex. He reminded her of a boy she’d been in a foster home with. They’d had a good three months together, and then the lady who wasn’t supposed to be able to have kids had gotten herself pregnant. They’d both been shipped off straight away to different homes. She couldn’t even remember his name now.
“Lisa, I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
“I think I did as much yelling.”
“Call it even then?” He grinned and opened the door. They headed to the back of the house and sat on the swings.
“Have you been here long?” Lisa asked.
Alex frowned and sighed. “Not as long as I’d have liked.” He changed up to a grin. “But don’t tell anyone I said that.” He sat quietly for a few beats. “I didn’t grow up in a pack, either.”
Lisa calmly waiting to see if he wanted to share. He toed the ground with his sneakers.
“I left the pack when I was about three or four. Mom took me. I don’t know why. She said it was good for us.” He frowned as if trying to remember.
Lisa looked away toward the same unseeing distance that had Alex enthralled.
“Then she had to go get a job.” Alex poked the ground. “She couldn’t take a kid. I just got dropped off at a home. She said it was only for a few days. I never saw her again.”
Lisa ached. Words that were spoken so quietly, but echoed with injustice and pain. “When did you move here?”
“Two years ago.” Alex shrugged, trying to seem unconcerned. “Kept getting into trouble for fighting.” He seemed determined to dig a hole with his sneakers. “I gave them hell though. I always thought my mom wouldn’t be able to find me if I wasn’t where she’d left me. Stupid, huh?”
An easy silence settled.
“Mine died in a car accident. I never knew them.”
“How come you never got adopted?”
She shrugged. “Had a couple try once. But nothing ever worked out. I never fit right, I guess.”
Alex nodded. “At least, I always knew what I was. I can’t believe how hard it must have been for you.”
Lisa smiled. He really was a nice kid. “I never thought about it.” Lisa stopped, realizing that was wrong. The kids used to get giddy at the homes when prospective parents came. They weren’t supposed to know, but they always did. The girls put their best dresses on. Boys seemed to be better behaved, played football better, and tried harder, like it would make a difference. Make them stand out. She hadn’t. She’d seem to go naturally the other way, defiant and argumentative. She never felt like she fit in. Maybe that was why. Maybe she’d always known she was different.
Lisa grinned at the boy trying so hard to be a man. “Well, like you said, ‘We alphas got to stick together.’”
Lisa followed Alex back to the house and risked linking arms. He didn’t seem to mind. Laughing, they both shrugged off boots and jackets in the mud room and followed the amazing smell coming from the kitchen.
Cassie was trying to fold pasta for lasagna and balance the baby.
“Can I?” Lisa held her arms out.
“Oh, please.” Cassie blew a lock of hair off her face. “I don’t suppose you would mind feeding him, would you? He had some baby rice earlier, but he’s due for a bottle now, and I need to get this lasagna in.”
“I’d love to, although I’ve never done it before.”
“Well, that’s okay because up to six weeks ago, I hadn’t either.”
Lisa looked down at the baby. For only six weeks old, he seemed awfully big, but what did she know?
Cassie laughed at Lisa’s doubtful expression. “Zack only found out about him six weeks ago. His mother was an old girlfriend. Zack didn’t even know she was pregnant. She’d left Zack months ago.” Cassie paused. “It’s not really my story to tell, but we think she was a drug-addict. They found Codie alone in some god-awful basement. A sheriff friend of ours knew he was a shifter.” Cassie smiled at Lisa’s puzzled look. “He could smell him. So, he would have come here anyway, but then the sheriff found some papers saying Zack was his father.”
Wow.
Cassie tested the milk and handed it to Lisa. “There you go.”
Lisa nestled herself in one of the big Adirondack chairs in the corner of the massive kitchen and laughed when Codie latched fiercely onto the bottle. She watched him in awe. No one had ever trusted her with one of the little ones, but she’d desperately wanted to play with them. She remembered a foster family that had a young baby. Lisa had been quite little, but the mom used to plonk her in a big chair like this one, and she got to cuddle the baby. She hadn’t been able to stay there long. She thought the mom got sick, but no one ever told her, and after a while, she stopped asking. It was safer that way. She didn’t need people to tell her she was bad and no one would want her. She already knew.
Just then, the kitchen door opened, and Lisa smelled wolf. Instantly, she was on her feet, clutching Codie.
She jumped around the chair and curled her body over Codie’s protectively.
Zack followed a shorter guy in laughing and carrying a bunch of papers. Mac was right behind them. Lisa flushed. Codie had cried, startled when she’d suddenly jumped up. Embarrassed, Lisa knew Zack would take his baby back. She cringed. Suddenly, she was back to thirteen, and her foster mother was screaming at her for shoving her precious boy against a wall. The foster mother’s perfect baby was taking lunch money off some younger kids, and Lisa had just found one crying. No one trusted her around kids, and her throat closed on the huge lump that lodged itself there. Idiot, why had she left herself open to this again? Wicked.
Zack gave her a level look and smiled. “Good instincts. It’s good to know we have another pair of hands around here we can trust to look after him.” He calmly dropped a kiss on Codie’s forehead, but made no move to take him from her, and sat down. “Something smells good.”
Lisa sat, flustered. The warm place that had started inside her grew. Codie eagerly latched back onto the bottle, and a gentle pair of hands settled on her shoulders. Mac.
She automatically shook the hands off her shoulders.
“Lisa, we’d like you to meet Brett.”
Lisa smiled at the shorter guy. Well, he wasn’t too short, probably normal height. It was just the others that were making him look little.
Light brown hair fell messily over a freckled face and an easy smile.
“Hi, Lisa, good to meet you. Oh wow, is that Codie? He’s huge. What you been feeding him?” Laughing, he lifted the little guy, who promptly burped and smiled back.
Lisa looked at them all, happy and smiling, like families ought to be. She felt a bit like she was looking through a shop window at something she really wanted, but couldn’t have. Her head lowered, she was suddenly tired, probably from the warmth in the kitchen and the walk with Alex.
Mac was back at her side and urging her out of the room. She let him guide her to the stairs, stumbling on the bottom step. Then all the air whooshed out of her as a pair of big strong arms lifted her up.
She struggled half-heartedly. “I’m too heavy.” She wasn’t ready to forgive him yet.
Mac carried her into the bedroom and sat in the chair with her on his lap.
* * * *
“You’re right. You came here because there was nowhere else for you to go.”
Lisa gasped, struggled. Mac just tightened his arms until she relaxed.
“Listen to me.” Blue eyes pinned her. “It s
tarted like that. But that isn’t what it is now. I’m not perfect, Lisa. I have a past. I wasn’t ready to mate. I’ve never been one for too much responsibility. Hell, I don’t even do the F.B.I. thing one hundred per cent. I play at that like I play at most things.”
He ran a frustrated hand through his hair and eased her closer to him. “It’s like I just take bits of life that I like. Riley, Zack, hell, they run their own business. Cassie’s doing her nurse training. Even my baby brothers are at college.”
He struggled inside. He’d done college, but more because it was easy, and it put off any more life decisions for another three years. He didn’t know how to say the responsibility was scaring the shit out of him, without making Lisa feel he didn’t want her. Now all of a sudden he was twenty-six, and he still didn’t know what the hell he was doing. Why do things have to be so damn complicated?
“I want to try.” He gazed at Lisa willing her to understand, willing her to meet him halfway. Mac smiled. He brushed a stray brown lock carefully off yellowing bruises. He stood and gently lowered a sleeping Lisa onto the bed. Tight closed eyes. Soft breath. Mate.
Yeah, she needed him, but he had a feeling he needed her even more.
Chapter Nine
Sometime later, Lisa rolled over to a large space where she could still smell Mac. Startled at the empty space, she put her hand on the bed. Still warm, so he had been there.
Was she still angry? No. She’d been in a bad place for most of her life, but that wasn’t his fault. She had to grow up.
Time to pull up your big panties, girl.
Her stomach rumbled, and she remembered the lasagna. Heading to the bathroom, she quickly changed her creased tank top and jeans. Some makeup had appeared in the bathroom, probably Cassie. She experimented with a little bit of mascara. She looked at herself in the mirror and wryly thought she’d either better start getting used to a bra or wear more clothes. Quickly, she changed into a sweatshirt.
Nearly skipping eagerly to the kitchen, Lisa passed a closed door and froze at the sound of her name and an angry sounding Mac. Without pausing, she pushed open the door. Mac, Brett, and Riley were obviously in the middle of a full scale row, and it had something to do with her.
