The Virgin Goddess and the Alpha

by Rita Stradling

  I could not let that happen—not ever.

  Clearing my throat, I stepped back. “You’re not showing much patience now, hunter.”

  “I’m not going in, but I want eyes on every corner of that building while you and I continue our hunt. They’re not going to make a move without my say-so, but if she shows up, we’re going to track her.”

  “I’m going to track her,” I corrected.

  He leaned in once more, closing the distance between us. “I thought I made this clear. We’re going to track her, or I’m going to track you.”

  Chapter Eight

  Jackson

  “This time, you’re going to wear your seatbelt,” I growled across the bench seat at Artemis.

  Her jaw clenched, and I knew how she was going to respond even before she opened her mouth. “I will not.”

  “Yeah, you will. Maybe you’ll survive flying through my windshield and smashing into a vehicle going eighty miles an hour, but I don’t want to have to buy a new windshield, so you’re going to do it, or you’re going to walk.” Truly, I could give a shit about my windshield, but damn, I was pissed the fuck off. Right now, I had zero tolerance for Artemis putting herself stupidly at risk.

  She’d lied to me.

  Well, if I was fair, she hadn’t exactly lied, but it sure as hell felt like she did. My people were still alive. Well, at least one of them was alive this morning, and Artemis seemed to think the rest were. I wasn’t sure how to take that.

  I wanted to be relieved—I wanted to be jumping for joy, but instead, I just felt like this monster was killing them all over again. The worst part of all of this: every damn part of it was my fault. Even that article in Celebrity Life and Times was my idea. I’d thought emphasizing the good work so many of us had done over the years would cast a positive light on us in the eyes of the public. It hadn’t even worked. It didn’t matter that some of us had served in wars or that Jamie had worked in the cyber counter-terrorism unit for fifteen years, we were werewolves. That was our only consideration, and the humans hated, feared or loved us for that and that alone.

  She glanced over her shoulder to the seat belt and then reached for it with the type of hesitancy with which one might reach for a poisonous snake. She pulled at the strap, looped it over her body and released it. “Now I am tied to your vehicle, and we may go.” She nodded and looked forward through the windshield, the faintest hint of red blossoming on her cheeks.

  Between her hesitancy and her words, I realized that Artemis had probably never seen a seat belt before. My anger drained out of me, replaced with a distinct temptation to laugh as I stared at where she’d looped the seat belt around her waist.

  My phone rang, and I pressed the button on my steering wheel.

  “Are we waiting for something?” Luca asked. He drove the pack van idling behind my truck, with every member of the pack except Becca, Guy, and Jamie.

  “Yeah, just one minute.” I hung up on him and leaned toward Artemis.

  Her eyelids narrowed on me, but she didn’t move away.

  “The buckle,” I said.

  She paused as a small line puckered between her brows. “Buckle,” she repeated.

  “This,” I said, grabbing the buckle, careful not to touch her, and snapping it into its receiver.

  The blush on her cheeks ripened to full-blown red. “The buckle is optional in some vehicles; I just chose not to use it,” she mumbled as her gaze move forward to look out the windshield.

  “Of course,” I said, fighting a smile as I shifted the car into drive and wound back up the road and onto the PCH. Traffic was heavy and conversation light as we headed into Los Angeles. When I say light, I meant that Artemis’ gaze darted around constantly with that small line cresting her brow. As a woman crossed the road on roller skates holding a tiara-toting Pomeranian, Artemis’ lips parted slightly. I was pretty sure that small gesture signified a much greater amount of shock.

  As if the whole city knew of its audience, LA was coming out in force around us as we headed away from pacific palisades and into Santa Monica. Among LA’s normal scantily-clad summer crowds, a group twenty strong of unicyclists, wearing what could only be very generously called jean underwear, wheeled from the beach and across the road. Artemis, however, seemed more fascinated with their bikes than their exposed skin.

  I wanted to ask her what she thought of the city. I wanted to tease her for not admitting that she’d never seen anything like contemporary LA before, and how strange every detail from the skyscrapers down to the Pomeranians must be to her. But I said none of these things. For some reason, she refused to admit that this was all new to her, and bugging her about it wasn’t going to make her open up to me.

  What I did do was pay so much attention to her that I was surprised to find we were only a block away from our destination.

  It was a half-finished five-story, the top floors were more frame than solid structure. When Jamie had looked up the address, it had come up as ‘unregistered,' but I immediately recognized the site. I’d never actually gone to the Santa Monica Zoo, but I’d driven around it more times than I could count. From the outside, the complex gave off more of an impression of a mall. A large tarp sign hung across the building under construction. ‘Aquarium Coming Soon,’ it read.

  “That’s the building,” I said.

  “Ah,” she said, looking up at it. “I would not get too close.” Her hands went to her temple and rubbed—like maybe I was stressing her out or something.

  “We’re just going to circle the block.”

  In my rearview mirror, Luca took the turn-off into the Santa Monica Zoo’s nearby parking structure. He and my other pack members would disperse throughout the zoo complex to every vantage around the building to lay in wait. My gaze traced over the flapping plastic sheet and tie-wrap that made up the intended murder scene’s exterior walls. The flash of yellow helmets from workers came in and out of view as we drove past.

  Flipping over my turn signal, I glanced right to find Artemis inspecting me. Now her fingers were rubbing into both sides of her temples. Did goddesses get headaches? Because that’s what it looked like from here.

  “You okay?” I asked her.

  Her hands dropped from her face. “Fine.” She squeezed her eyes shut then opened them wide.

  Headache, must be.

  Turning back, she said, “You looked deep in thought though, and I wanted to know what you were thinking.”

  The turn light switched to green, and I grabbed one more glance at the building as we turned away. “It’s just different from the other sites. The other buildings were unused, abandoned, or condemned. That there is an active construction site.”

  “Would it have been active at the time she told him?” she asked.

  “No . . .” After making a full loop, I turned away from the building.

  The moment I did, the softest sigh of relief came from Artemis.

  I looked over to find her arms wrapped around her chest; she was practically hugging herself. “Do you get headaches?”

  “No. I’m lucky in that I don’t have health problems.” She gathered her dark hair up and away from her face, tying it into a knot high on her head. A lock of dark hair fell loose behind her long neck.

  I had an urge to reach over and wind it around my finger and then run my fingers down over the curve of her neck.

  Glancing over, she inspected me. “Are you still angry at me?”

  I blinked out of my thoughts of her—which were anything but angry. “I wouldn’t call what I was angry.”

  “What would you call it then?” I could have been imagining it, but I could swear there was a little amusement in her voice.

  “Protective. I never get angry at the people I care about.”

  She gave me a look like it was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard.

  “I’m not saying I don’t get annoyed.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “I’m well aware that I’m demanding as fuck and I expect a lot out of the
people around me. Sometimes I’m disappointed or irritated, but never angry, I reserve that for my enemies and my enemies only.”

  “So you don’t consider me your enemy, then?” she said it with a small smile on her lips, but there was a seriousness in her eyes that made me think maybe she did care what I thought of her. Fancy that? My good opinion mattered to a goddess. Or maybe that all was just wishful thinking. But, hell, I decided to be honest with her.

  “Artemis, I don’t think I’d be angry with you even if you shot me again with that big bow of yours.”

  A true smile crept up her lips, and her eyes shone with it. “Should I put that to the test?”

  I gave her a smirk of my own. “I’d rather not if it’s all the same to you. I wasn’t the biggest fan of getting shot in the neck—but if you’d like to reenact the rest, I wouldn’t complain.”

  She bit her lip as her gaze moved away slowly. Her legs shifted, squeezing together as the sweet smell of her arousal filled the air. Damn, I could never get tired of that look on her face or the perfect smell of her arousal. As it was, I was damn tempted to pull over to the side of the LA residential road and bury my head between her thighs.

  I focused back on the street, trying to convince my dick to take a rest as my pants were growing uncomfortably tight.

  “So . . . can I ask you about this vow of celibacy?” I asked, maybe to remind myself of how impossible what I wanted truly was.

  She didn’t respond for a second, and then she lifted her chin and said, “Go ahead, I’m not ashamed of it.”

  “You said that you and your followers do it to prove that you can live independently and not depend on a man.”

  “Yes.”

  “A lot of women I’ve known over the years have done that, some of them never married, but none of them were entirely celibate.”

  What the hell was I saying? Sly, Jackson, real sly. I might as well have come out and said, ‘want to go somewhere private and fuck?’ when that was so not what I wanted from this woman. Well, that was exactly what I wanted from her. But that was just the tip of a very big iceberg—no, that was just the tip of Antarctica.

  I braced for her to call me a pig and tell me she’d rather walk, but instead, her expression grew distant and her brow furrowed just the slightest bit.

  “Most people are resilient; they can be the sole provider, defender, and caretaker when they have children with no support, but it is a very hard life—for men and women. And many less savory sorts will attempt to take advantage of such parents and their children when they see their vulnerability. If you want to be independent, it is much easier to steel yourself against the allure of love . . .” She turned back forward. “And all that comes with love.”

  I knew I should let it go, but as I pulled up to the keypad at the gate which blocked off a row of warehouses, I looked over my shoulder and asked, “What about birth control?”

  She laughed. “Birth control is a myth, Jackson.”

  Let it go, Jackson. Just laugh along and shut the hell up. That’s what I told myself, but what came out of my mouth was, “I’m pretty sure most birth control pills are something like ninety-nine point nine percent effective.”

  She blinked slowly and looked away.

  I pulled around to the back, where no passersby would be able to see my truck. I’d purchased both the property where each of the scenes took place and the surrounding properties. I parked and looked over at Artemis’ confused expression, realizing she still must be deep in thought over my birth control remark. After a few seconds of silence, I said, “That’s it, over there” I gestured to the long row of warehouses adjacent to this property and blocked off by another high gate.

  “I see.” With a heavy amount of concentration, she turned down to her seatbelt and studied it.

  “It’s just the buckle.” I reached over, but she grabbed my hand.

  Her gaze met mine, and it was sharp, but not quite angry. “Jackson Hunter, I am an immortal goddess, I can unfasten myself from a seatbelt without assistance.”

  I couldn’t help but smirk, and when she loosened her grip on my hand, I held on and twined my fingers through hers. “I’m not helping you because I think you incapable of doing these things on your own, Goddess.”

  Her voice was hushed as she responded, “You keep helping me and touching me and getting so close.”

  “Sorry.”

  We were really close now. Her face was so near to mine that if I leaned in any closer, we’d be lined up perfectly for a kiss. Maybe she noticed too because her gaze flicked down to my lips before shifting back up.

  “What do you want, hunter?” she whispered.

  “You,” I whispered back, because, damn it, it was true. And, I wasn’t fooling anyone. She knew how much I wanted her from the moment I woke up with her straddling me.

  “You know that that’s impossible, right?” she said those words, but at the same time, her hand gripped mine, and she leaned in closer to me.

  “If you say so.” I wasn’t going to close the distance; she had to be the one to make the first move, here—at least physically. But damn, I wanted to. “Can I tell you something?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even though I’ve only been around you for twenty-four hours, I already know your smell will be my favorite scent for the rest of my life. And I’ve been dying to see if you’re also my favorite taste. I’m almost certain that you are, but there was only one way to be certain.”

  Damn if the smell of her arousal didn’t fill the truck again as her eyes widened and lips parted at my words.

  “What do you mean you want to taste me? My lips?”

  “Starting with your lips. But it’s all up to you, Goddess. I’m not going to make another move. But I want us to be on the same page so that there can be no mistaking exactly what I want.”

  She bit her lower lip, before releasing it. “I’ve never kissed anyone before like that.”

  “Why? Would a kiss be breaking your vow?”

  “My vow is to lie with no man—so I suppose not. I have just never—risked it.”

  “Have you ever been tempted?”

  She didn’t answer me for a second, but then she whispered, “Never as much as now.”

  “Okay . . . how about this, Goddess: if you want me to stop, say it, and I’ll stop right away.” I moved in just a little closer on the bench seat. Reaching over very slowly, I pressed the button on her seat belt buckle.

  Absently, she let it slide over her shoulder and off, releasing my hand as she did, all the while keeping her attention fixed on me.

  I wanted to crawl over to her, but I didn’t want her to feel cornered. She needed to be in complete control of this first kiss. Generally, neither my wolf or I was very good at giving up control, but for one taste of her, both of us could learn to be good.

  After unbuckling her, I slid my hand up her side, watching her eyes carefully for any sign that she wanted to stop. When her pupils only dilated, and her arousal filled my senses, I moved my hand to her other side. “Can I move you?” I asked her.

  She gave only the most infinitesimal nod. My fingers gently gripped and pulled her toward me.

  She moved with my hands. I wasn’t sure that she would, but she did. Her gaze never left mine as she climbed onto my lap, straddling me once more.

  Immediately, I felt my cock lengthening between us. But I couldn’t stop it even if I wanted to. Smelling her heat while her soft thighs pressed in at either side of my legs . . . there was only so much a man could take.

  “Did fate send you to destroy me, hunter?” she asked as her body pressed into mine and arms wrapped around to rest on my shoulders. “You would tempt me into breaking my vow?”

  “Not here. Maybe fate sent you to destroy me,” I muttered as her lips moved in even closer, almost brushing mine. I wanted to thread my fingers through her hair, press my lips to hers and kiss the fuck out of her, but I fisted my hands at my sides and stayed very still.

  “How would I de
stroy you?”

  I looked up into her deep brown eyes. “Because I’ve been waiting centuries for you, and I know I’m never going to get the chance to be with you really.”

  “That sounds like fate. Perhaps it would be better if we never kissed,” she said the words, but she didn’t move away.

  I couldn’t help a small grin. “I’d rather take what I can get, Goddess.”

  “All right, then.” And she closed the distance.

  Chapter Nine

  Artemis

  My hands wound through Jackson’s hair as I pressed into him. His body was hard against mine in every way, but his lips were soft.

  As if my body already knew exactly what I wanted, I molded against his wide muscular chest. My lips moved slowly over his, sucking and tasting, just as he said. His lips moved on mine, responding, but never pushing in harder. Other than kissing me back, he stayed perfectly still, letting me make all the movements. As I pressed in against him once more, deepening the kiss and closing the very small distance between us, my core slid up the length of his lap, feeling the hard length of what I was almost certain was his cock.

  I gasped as he groaned into my mouth. An amazing pleasure I’d never felt before tingled through my core.

  I broke our kiss and hastily scooted back up his lap. “Oh no,” I said, shaking my head to clear it.

  Jackson blinked at me slowly, looking confused. “What—what’s the matter?”

  “We’re not having sex right now, are we?” I asked.

  His hands came up like he was trying to ease my fears. “No, no, baby. Don’t worry. All we did was kiss.”

  The moment his words were out, humiliation washed through me. I just completely exposed my absolute ignorance on all things sex in front of someone who probably had been having it for centuries. Now he would think me young and innocent and weak—all things I was not.

  His hand came up further, moving to cup my cheek. “Are you—are you embarrassed about what we just did?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, perhaps too sharply, but his words only confirmed my fears. He thought me weak. Backing up, I climbed off his lap to sit beside him. I couldn’t look at him, so I stared forward through the windshield. “I was curious about kissing—and now I’m not anymore. So, thank you.”