She-Alpha (Hell's Wolves MC Book 6)

by J. L. Wilder

  She gasped.

  His hands made their way to her breasts, thumbs circling and flicking against her nipples as he fucked her. She forced herself not to make a sound, but it took every ounce of concentration and willpower she had within her to remember why that was so important. The pack. The pack could hear us. We can’t let them know. We can’t—

  There was a reason for that. She knew there was a reason. It was right at the edge of her understanding. But she couldn’t grasp it. Not with his hands on her like that. Not with his thighs against the meat of her ass. She could hardly remember her own name.

  Was he in control right now, or was she?

  I’m the one who brought him into the woods. I initiated this. I got him to strip down, even though he was resisting me.

  But he was the one who had started things, back in the yard. Back when they were fighting.

  She gave up trying to figure it out as he pinched her nipples, sinking back against him and fucking herself ever harder. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, as long as he doesn’t stop, fuck, please don’t stop—

  Her orgasm hit her unexpectedly and she bit her lip hard to keep from crying out. Behind her, Owen was less successful, letting loose with a groan as he collapsed over her.

  Fiona held both of them up with her hands braced against the tree as they recovered their breath. After several moments, Owen staggered backward. She turned to face him, one hand still on the tree for support.

  “Someone could have heard you,” she said.

  “You think?”

  She was so impressed that he was listening to her instead of arguing with her that she decided to let the matter drop. “Probably not.”

  He nodded. “That was...that was really something.

  “You’re not kidding. Where are my pants?”

  He reached up—higher than Fiona could have reached on her own—and pulled them down from the branch of a tree. She shook her head, half admiring, half irritated, and snatched them out of his hand.

  They dressed in silence, side by side. What is he thinking? Fiona wondered. There was no sense in trying to guess. She hardly even knew what she was thinking. It had all been so quick, so intense...

  She hadn’t even intended to have sex with him when she’d brought him out here. Oh, she’d planned on doing something. She had wanted to show him that she could make him beg, just as he had made her beg the other day. But when they’d gotten right down to it, she had found herself incapable of resisting him.

  It was maddening.

  She had never felt like this before. Not with any man. The men she had met at bars and taken home with her for one night stands had always felt like amateurs to her, barely able to keep pace with her superior strength and intellect. But now, for the first time, someone was on her level.

  It scared her, but it was also the sexiest thing she had ever seen in her life.

  But he was a bear. Not just a fellow alpha, but a bear. Someone who was in every way designed to pose a threat to her position within her pack. If they ever knew, she thought, not for the first time, they would never be able to respect me again.

  God, if only she and Percy were still friends, the way they had been as children. If only she could have confided in him about what was going on. If only she could have sought advice.

  Because she was beginning to realize that the one thing she wasn’t going to be able to do was to stay away from Owen. No matter how obvious it was that that was the right course of action, she couldn’t seem to be around him without wanting to rip his clothes off.

  We’re in trouble, she thought, watching his muscles flex as he pulled his shirt back over his head. Both of us. We’re in big trouble. And with the Feral Fangs in the area, trouble is the very last thing we need right now.

  Fully dressed now, Owen stood quietly, regarding her. She looked back at him, forcing herself not to avert her eyes. She had to show him she wasn’t intimidated, even if eye contact was the only way she could think of to do it.

  “We’re going to do this again,” Owen said.

  It wasn’t an order, but it wasn’t a question either. It was a statement of fact. He might have been telling her that rivers flowed north to south. He was resigned to it.

  And he was right.

  There was some satisfaction, at least, in knowing that he was no more capable of staying away from her than she was of staying away from him. At least the attraction wasn’t one sided. It was dangerous, ill-advised, and might be the end of everything. But at least it was mutual.

  Fiona nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “We definitely will.”

  Chapter Eleven

  OWEN

  He was determined to put some distance between himself and Fiona, even though it felt inevitable that they would eventually find their way back to each other.

  But he had expected to last more than twelve hours.

  Which was why it came as a surprise, late that evening to find himself holding her in his arms, her back braced against a tree as he fucked into her slowly and deliberately.

  “Do you feel like we shouldn’t be doing this?” she asked.

  “God, yeah.” He ran his hands along the tight curves of her hips. Her body was fucking flawless. “Does that mean you want to stop.”

  “No. Fuck. No.” She exhaled, and he felt relief pour through him. “Could you even stop?”

  “I could,” he said. “If you really, really wanted me to. I could.”

  “Maybe you are more powerful than I am, then.” She tightened her legs around his waist. “I don’t know if I could stop. I don’t know if I can resist this, Owen.”

  He hummed with pleasure, pulling her closer, lowering his mouth to her neck to suckle at the soft skin there. She leaned back against the tree and led out a groan that went straight to his cock, and suddenly, without warning, he was coming.

  This time when they had finished, when they had stepped away from each other and began to dress, the mood around them didn’t seem to dissipate quite as quickly. Owen didn’t speak. He was afraid that if he did, things between them might turn sour and unpleasant again. He didn’t feel like fighting with her right now.

  And that alone was strange. From the moment he’d met Fiona, he had been determined to show her who was boss. He had resented her for her strength as an alpha, a strength he suspected might even exceed his own. And he had resented her for dragging his pack into a wolf fight. It was a fight they needed to be in, he knew, a fight they probably couldn’t have avoided for long. But that didn’t mean he had to like it.

  But as he looked at her now, her face flushed with exertion and her hair in disarray, he felt none of the unpleasant things that he usually associated with her. In fact, he almost felt tender toward her.

  She’s doing everything she can to protect her pack, he thought. She’s fighting against the prejudice that comes with being a she-alpha. She’s fighting against the resentment that exists between wolves and bears. She’s the one who brought our packs together, and if we do manage to win this battle we’re facing, it’s going to be because of her.

  Also, he could see the place on her neck where his lips had been locked until recently, and the memory of her taste made his head spin.

  “It’ll be a miracle if nobody figures out what we’re up to,” she murmured.

  “I don’t know,” Owen said. “I don’t think they’re that bright.”

  She shook her head. “I’m telling you, Owen, one of these days I’m going to rip your clothes off in the middle of the damn kitchen.”

  He laughed. “And you yelled at me for feeling you up at battle practice!”

  “Yeah, because you made it that much harder for me to resist you,” she said. “When you pressed me up against that tree, I thought I was going to come right there on the spot.”

  “Me too,” he admitted, remembering the forbidden thrill of that moment, the feel of her body in his arms when they’d been at such risk of getting caught.

  She stepped
back. “Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “We can’t go again right now. We have to get back before someone notices we’re missing.”

  “Okay,” he agreed. “But I could go again right now, just so you know. I could bend you over that log right there and fuck you until you forgot your own name.”

  She groaned. “Don’t tempt me,” she said.

  “What if I want to tempt you?”

  “You’re not the only alpha in these woods,” she pointed out. “I could do things to you too.”

  “Things like what?”

  She grinned wickedly. “I could strip you naked,” she suggested. “I could run my hands all over you until you didn’t know which way was up. I could take you in my mouth and get you all warm and wet and suck you so hard—”

  Owen grabbed a tree branch to keep himself steady.

  “And then I could gather up your clothes and run back home and leave you here,” she said.

  “You wouldn’t,” he gasped.

  “No, I wouldn’t,” she agreed. “That would definitely get us caught.”

  “By the time you got that far, you wouldn’t be able to walk away from me anyway.”

  She sighed. “No,” she agreed. “I probably wouldn’t.”

  “We should get out of here,” Owen said. “Before we lose control.”

  Fiona nodded. “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “You want to go first?”

  “No, you go,” she said. “I’m going to stay here and think for a while.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said with a smile. “Nothing to worry about.”

  Owen nodded and set off at a jog back toward the house.

  By the time he reached the yard, his head was clear. The sun was setting. He would check in with the other members of his pack, he decided, and make sure everyone had gotten enough to eat for dinner. Then he would sack out early. Between the day’s training and two sessions with Fiona, he was utterly exhausted.

  But as he approached the house, he came up short.

  Joel was standing in the shadows on the porch, watching Owen as he approached.

  Owen felt his heart skip a beat. But, he reminded himself, there was nothing to fear. Joel didn’t have any reason to be suspicious. All he had seen was his alpha returning from a run in the woods. “Hey, Joel,” he said.

  “Hey,” Joel said quietly, not moving from his position against the porch railing. “Where have you been?”

  Owen felt suddenly chilled, as though by a gust of wind. I’m being ridiculous, he told himself. There’s no way Joel could know anything. There was no way.

  Was there?

  Then, in the shadows, something moved.

  Damon stepped into the circle of light cast by the bulb that hung above the porch. “Owen,” he said.

  “Damon.”

  “You’ve been in the woods a long time.”

  “I was just getting some exercise.”

  “You don’t get enough of that during our sparring matches?”

  “Honestly, nobody there is really up to my standard,” Owen said weakly. He was scrambling for excuses, desperately trying to find a way to divert Joel and Damon from their current line of questioning, and the only thing he could think to do was to offend them. Maybe if he made Damon angry, Damon would forget he was curious.

  But Damon merely shook his head. “We both know that isn’t true,” he said. “You’re good, Owen, but you’re nothing special. You almost lost to the she-alpha five different times today.”

  “I’ve told you not to call her that.” He felt wild, suddenly, half panicked. Hadn’t he ordered Damon not to call Fiona a she-alpha? He couldn’t remember. If he had, Damon shouldn’t have been able to do it.

  What did that mean?

  “She was in the woods,” Joel said. “She went in after you. I saw her. What happened between the two of you in there?”

  Owen took a breath and tried to steady himself. “It’s really not any of your business,” he said.

  “It’s not our business what you do with the alpha of a wolf pack?” Damon asked. “Would you say that if one of us was going off alone with one of the Hell’s Wolves?”

  “Of course not,” Owen said. “But you must be able to see the difference. We’re the alphas. It’s our responsibility to plan the attack on the Feral Fangs together, and we have to make time to talk to each other and hear each other’s ideas.”

  “And you have to do that all alone in the woods?” Damon asked.

  “We can’t very well do it here,” Owen said. “Not with all of you around sniping at each other all the time. We have to spend every spare minute babysitting when we’re here, making sure you guys and the wolves aren’t killing each other. God forbid we should try to discuss actual attack plans around you. It would probably devolve into all out war.”

  “We wouldn’t do that,” Joel protested. “We would listen. Maybe we could even help.”

  “Don’t bother, Joel,” Damon said. “He’s just trying to distract you by making you feel like you can’t be trusted. That’s not what’s going on here at all. He’s the one who can’t be trusted. He’s the one who’s been sneaking off with a wolf, a she-alpha.”

  “I told you,” Owen said angrily. “I haven’t been sneaking off. It’s important for me to make time to talk to her. We’ve been coming up with our plan.”

  “Okay, fine,” Damon said. “What’s the plan, then?”

  Shit.

  “You were in the woods with her for hours,” Damon said. “Joel saw you leave ages ago. He told me himself. We’ve been waiting here on the porch ever since, so we’d be the first ones to know when you came back. You were in there with her all this time. If you went in there to plan, you must have come up with something. What are we doing?”

  He couldn’t answer the question. There was no way. The only thing he could possibly do would be to lie, and it would be obvious that he had lied as soon as they settled on a real plan of attack.

  “None of this is any of your business,” he managed, but he didn’t sound convincing, even to himself.

  “Tell me you’re not having an affair with her,” Damon said.

  Oh, God. There was no way to keep it a secret now. There was no way to keep the others from finding out. Everything was going to fall apart.

  And Fiona will never forgive me.

  The thought stunned him. Why had his mind taken him there? Of all the things that might happen now, surely being forgiven by Fiona was the least important?

  But it really didn’t feel that way, somehow. The anger he knew she would feel at him for failing to keep the secret from his packmates hung over him like a black cloud.

  “Sit down,” he said, pointing to two of the porch chairs.

  Joel sat.

  Damon struggled. Owen watched him fight the order. But in the end, he couldn’t resist it. He took the other seat.

  Owen thought he might faint with relief. I still have command, then. I’m still his alpha. “I forbid you from talking to any of the others about this,” he said.

  “Then it’s true?” Joel asked.

  “It doesn’t matter if it’s true. Never speak of it to anybody else.”

  But it wouldn’t be enough. He could see the truth of that in Damon’s eyes. His second was angry, angry enough to rebel. He hadn’t found an avenue to rebellion yet, but he would find one if he was given the opportunity.

  There was only one way to keep them safe. Only one way to keep this from turning into a brawl between the Wild Grizzlies and the Hell’s Wolves, a violent battle with no leadership that would likely claim lives.

  “You have to leave,” he said. “Both of you. You have to leave now.”

  Joel’s eyes widened. “What do you mean? You’re sending us back home?”

  “I can’t have you here,” Owen said. “You might give something away.”

  “You’re choosing that she-alpha over your own pack?” Damon snarled.

  “I’m doin
g this for the pack,” Owen snapped. “We’re facing a war with a hostile enemy. They don’t need to question their allies right now. They don’t need to question their leader right now. We can discuss all of this after the Feral Fangs are dealt with, but for now, both of you have to leave. Leave quietly, and right now.”

  He walked into the house, leaving Damon and Joel on the porch, and forced himself not to look back.

  Chapter Twelve

  FIONA

  Over the next couple of days, Fiona began to get the feeling that things were starting to come apart.

  The first blow was the loss of two members of the Wild Grizzlies. There was no discussion and no warning; they were just gone one morning. Fiona sat through the entire breakfast waiting for them to appear, but they never did.

  The Grizzlies had clearly discussed it already. None of them looked surprised by their packmates’ absence. She thought they looked a little unhappy, a little taken aback, but she couldn’t blame them for that. If two of her wolves had gone missing, she would have been deeply bothered by it too.

  She tried to see it as a good thing. With two of the Grizzlies gone, their numbers were even—five bears, five wolves. But it wasn’t a good thing. Not really. She wanted numbers, no matter which pack they were from. She wanted them to outnumber the Feral Fangs. She couldn’t be sure that they would, and losing two made her even less certain.

  “Where did they go?” she asked Owen when she finally got him alone in the woods later that day. She couldn’t wait for him to answer—her hands were already underneath his clothes, exploring, finding the now familiar sensitive spots that she knew would light him up. But she needed to ask her questions all the same.

  “I sent them home,” Owen said.

  “Why? Why would you do something like that?” She stepped back, shocked by his answer. “We need all the hands on deck that we can get, Owen.”

  “I know.” He hesitated. “They found out. About us.”