Alpha Mate (Paranormal Shifter Werewolf Romance) Read online

  Probably a coincidence, though. Coincidences weren't uncommon, especially when you were doing something strange. You start pushing on the universe, and the universe pushes back, sort of thing. That was what Brianna figured, anyway.

  The day passed as slowly as she'd expected, especially when she got spooked about the car battery running down and then had to sit there listening to the tinny music coming out of her cell. She tapped her foot on the accelerator as if it might make time go faster, but the car just allowed it without doing anything, as it would continue to do until she turned the key.

  By evening she had abandoned the idea. It was a bad one, in the first place. Nick Roe was a name to her. A name and a tough guy, sure, but he hadn't shown himself to be a murderer, and he hadn't given any indication that he could rip a man's arms off with his bare hands. Bobby White was another name on a list, except this wasn't even a list of people who knew Jeff Wilde. This was just a list of people who might know Nick Roe, and she'd wasted an entire day looking at him. With nothing to show for it, she added sourly.

  She turned the key and the car kicked to screaming life under her ass. She slipped it into Drive, and mobved out down the street. She didn't miss the fact that the brown Buick started moving at the same time, and in the same direction.

  She took a circuitous route until she was sure he was following her, then stepped on the gas, dropped the cherry on top of her hood, and took a more circuitous route until she was sure he wasn't following her any more.

  There was only one place she was going to get any answers at all, at this point, and she'd been avoiding it all day.

  Nick Roe's face had an effect on her she didn't want to think about, and she definitely didn't want to piss off the guy who had done that to Jeff Wilde. But if that was what it took then that was what it took. Solving murders was her job, and right now Nick Roe was the only solution she had.

  Seven

  Brianna Hunt had standards, and morals and she was a hard-ass and she knew all of that. Which was why it was so uncomfortable pressing the button on an apartment complex and waiting for a man's disembodied voice to answer.

  "Yeah?" One word. Somehow it seemed to fit for him, in spite of the fact that she knew nothing about Nick Roe. She'd seen his face in a blurry picture, on a dark night, and then later she'd confirmed her blurry understanding of his looks in a bar.

  But having seen a man's face wasn't any sort of indicator of what kind of man he was.

  "I need a place to stay," she said softly. "I can't go home."

  "Go to a hotel," he growled, and then the conversation was over. She pushed the tab again, and he answered it again.

  "I thought I said–"

  "I can't. There's people following me."

  "Who is this?"

  She waffled for a minute on what to tell him. She'd seem like she was following him no matter what she said, but at least she could try not to spook him. "The girl from the bar. From this morning, as well."

  There was a long silence. A long silence where in which Brianna wondered whether or not that was good enough for him.

  "Alright, come on up."

  She did. He was upstairs, in the third room on the right she discovered. The place was shabby, not at all what she expected. Or maybe it was what she ought to have expected, because nobody went into that part of town without a good reason. Living in a garbage heap was a good reason.

  The door was open when she got there. Nick was waiting for her just inside, his massive, slightly terrifying shoulders leaning up against the wall as if it were nothing at all, and to him it probably wasn't.

  "Thanks," she said, as if that were all that needed to be said. If she were serious, then he'd want to know who was following her. He'd want to know why she was following him. How she knew his address.

  Nick didn't ask anything. He shrugged and grit his big thick wide jaw tight and looked off to the side. "Yeah. Glad to see you found a shirt."

  She looked down. She had found a shirt. Her other clothes weren't that bad, she thought.

  "Hey, fuck you, man."

  He turned slowly, the tiniest hints of a smile at the corners of his lips. "You're free to go back out on the street."

  That shut her up. She was free to do that, but she wasn't about to. He had a television and he sat down in front of it, but he didn't bother to turn it on. The room was dim, lit by a single small lamp on the other side of the room, but he didn't seem to notice and she wasn't going to complain again.

  "What is it that you do, exactly? Other than rescue women in alleys, that is."

  "You get right to the point, don't you?" He shifted until he was looking at her. Or at least, in her direction, though Brianna couldn't help thinking that he was looking through her.

  "If I were getting to the point, I'd be dragging you into the bedroom." She sounded more serious than she'd expected to, and a shiver went up her own spine at the thought.

  "You don't give up, either," he said. He stood, and she watched as his head went up and up until her head barely met his chest. Big. Very big. She tried not to think about what that implied for the rest of him.

  "Not usually, no."

  "I guess that's how you get shot by some scumbag in an alley, huh?"

  "I guess so," she agreed. "But I wasn't about to let him–"

  "You could've left him to me," Nick answered flatly. "I'm usually pretty good about taking out the trash."

  She pinched her lips together. If he knew she was a cop, then he was giving her lip. And if he didn't know, she didn't want him to find out by giving into his goading.

  "You could've left him to me. I'm a big girl, I can take care of myself."

  "Yeah, I saw that, going into Big Ma's like that. You might as well lick an ashtray and share dirty needles, going into a place like that."

  "Well, what can I say? I don't give up. I thought I'd come and thank you for saving me."

  "I thought you were being tailed?"

  "I am," she said. Brianna shrugged and cocked her head. "What, you think a girl can't get up to two thinks at once? Try me, I think you'll find out I can do a whole lot more than just two."

  "Like what?"

  His tone made her eyes flutter shut at the sound of promises that he was absolutely willing to make happen. She shook her head. "What's your pleasure, big guy?"

  "I don't like being followed," he said softly.

  "Then why don't you teach me to be a good girl next time?"

  He let out a laugh, though he never smiled. "I don't suppose you're a fast learner."

  "Nope," Brianna replied. She pressed herself up against his body. His rock-hard body, she discovered, as his tee-shirt gave only the minutest resistance to her body. "I need a lot of repetition to get it right."

  Part of her was hating the fact that she was doing her God damned best to throw herself at him like some sort of common–well, whatever. There was another part, a bigger part, a much louder part, that wanted to see where this was going. That part dug its hand into the popcorn bowl and told her to wrap her arms around him and grab a fistful of his ass.

  So she did.

  His hand moved like lightning, wrapping around her throat more than she'd realized a single hand could reach, and pulled her in for a kiss. Even though he leaned down quite a bit to reach, she still stood on her tip-toes, barely able to get high enough to meet him. His hand was just tight enough around her throat to send a shiver of arousal down her spine and set her skin on fire.

  Brianna hated undercover work, but she was more than willing to make an exception for this.

  Eight

  Brianna's body was on fire when he touched her, like he was, himself, heating her up with nothing more than his skin and his intentions, and she wanted more of it. As much as she could get. Her body arched into his even as it tightened his hands around her throat.

  She could feel something stiff pressing against her belly. No need to wonder what it was. She wanted it and she wanted him and at the end of it all was the pot
of gold on the other side of the rainbow. She'd be in, and he'd have no reason to doubt why she'd come.

  She was there because she wanted sex, sure, and she was there because she wanted him, and she'd gotten what she wanted. If she stayed, it was because she wanted more. Not because she was investigating a murder. That would be paranoid as hell.

  And even though she had to admit, she had plenty of ulterior motives, that line of reasoning wasn't totally wrong. The closer she got, the more she wanted the sex. The more that if he'd offered to tell her everything she wanted to know, she'd still take him to the bedroom if she could. God, it had been too long.

  His hand slackened around her throat and she slipped a little ways down, still pressed hard against him, and she almost let out a little mewl of disapproval. Then his arms, lined with muscles as hard as steel, wrapped around her and picked her up easily off the ground. Her legs wrapped easily around his waist and hooked on the other side.

  The big man's body slammed her against the wall and his lips found hers once more. His hard cock found something of hers as well, in spite of the layers of fabric between them, and a gasp forced its way from between her lips when it rubbed at just the right spot, just the right way.

  God damn. He couldn't possibly have known what he was doing to her, but she couldn't stop thinking how fucking much he was giving her exactly what she wanted. He smiled, then, against her lips. Feral. Violent. Sexy as hell.

  That smile dipped down and a kiss pressed against her throat. A kiss that became a bite, and that bite lit her skin aflame once more, sending confused signals to the brain with the only constant being pleasure. She wanted more, and needed more, and he was going to give it to her.

  "Ahh–Fuck me." The words came out of her mouth breathy and desperate, in spite of her hopes to sound more in control. She wasn't in control, though, she knew. She was his, and she would be until he was finished.

  His teeth sunk in deeper into her throat. Signals flashed through her body that it hurt. Her brain interpreted it as pleasure anyway. He pressed her against the wall harder and ground his hips up and into her hot core. Even through his jeans and her slacks she could feel him, could feel his size. He was big, bigger than anything she was used to. She'd seen pictures on the internet, but never anything like this in real life.

  He pulled her back and tossed her easily onto the couch. Like a ragdoll. She fell and twisted and landed in a moist, aroused heap. "Jesus," she growled. "You know how to use that body, don't you?"

  He smiled and grabbed her by the neck again, pulling her up. She tried to help but he was rough anyways. Demanding. Needy. She shuddered again, and when she was aware of what was happening again for a brief moment, she was sitting face-to-face with his cock. Her mouth was actually watering a little at the thought of what was going to come next.

  Her mouth was full before she'd taken half of his length, it felt like. She tried harder, his hand encouraging her to keep trying until she had it all down. Then she started to move.

  The sound of his breath, ragged and low and approaching a moan, pushed her onward. His fingers dug into her hair, forcing her to take it deeper and deeper. To Brianna's surprise her throat relaxed more and more until she could feel him pressing down her throat and her face nuzzled into his pubic hair with every thrust. She'd never felt so completely used, and she wasn't even to the best part yet. Her insides twisted up in a knot that wouldn't untie itself until he had something that big inside her.

  And then he pulled out. She gasped for air, coughing. He didn't wait for her, and she was surprised to find that she liked it better that way. She'd had it rough before, and she'd always thought she liked it that way, but this was something else entirely.

  Her pants came off easily, her fingers moving as quickly as they could and barely managing to get the fly undone before he managed to roughly pull them down. She flipped over and he thrust inside roughly, filling her up in ways Brianna wasn't aware she could be filled up. Her vision went from blurred to black in an instant, and all she could feel was that intrusion inside her, taking everything she wanted and giving it back twice as much.

  He wrapped one strong arm around her chest and used that grip as a handle, pulling himself into her over and over again. She felt his lips press against the back of her neck. His teeth dug into her flesh until she thought she could feel him break the skin.

  For reasons she didn't have the available brain power to think about she loved that. Wanted more of it than anything. His cock drove deep into her, deep enough to mix pleasure and pain all by itself, and then she felt him spasm hard, warmth spreading through her belly. His little movements as he came sent shocks deep down into some primordial part of her and her pleasure amplified again.

  And then he pulled away and she was nothing more than a broken, ruined, orgasmic mess, and she found that was all she'd ever wanted to be after all.

  Nine

  Brianna extracted herself from the big man's arms, rubbing her naked skin where the cold hit it and raised goosebumps all along it. There was a reason she was here, of course. She hadn't forgotten that, even if she hadn't exactly been opposed to the distraction that she'd managed to find.

  Now that he was asleep, she had all the time in the world for snooping, and she was going to make the best use of it. That was why she was here, anyways. To make sure that if there were any evidence to be found, anything that Nick didn't want found, she'd know about it before she confronted him about it publicly.

  Of course, it wouldn't stand up in court. That was why you had to go back in later, and have a good reason to 'find' the evidence that you already had. Then you acted like you'd only just found it for the first time, and it was easy as that. As long as someone didn't go in and tell the DA that you'd been snooping around in the dead of night with cum dripping out of you, there wasn't much that he could do to disprove it.

  She swallowed hard. There wasn't much here. It looked surprisingly like her parents' winter cottage. Bare essentials, things that wouldn't be missed if you didn't have them all the time. But that was different from someone's home.

  Homes had lots of stuff. Televisions, computers, stuff like that, but they also had things that were most appropriately referred to as 'clutter,' and it was in the clutter where people ended up screwing up. They had photos they didn't need. Photos in their wallet of twenty-odd guys with their names on the back.

  They had gifts that meant more to them than they would to her, but nothing like that was in his front room. A table that two could eat at comfortably, a kitchen with a single pan that wasn't even kept in a drawer, just hung by some twine from a cabinet-knob over the stove.

  She was beginning to think, very strongly, that she was barking up the wrong tree. Well, aside from disqualifying herself from prosecuting Nick Roe himself, she didn't know that she regretted it. Something in her gut told her that he didn't do it.

  Brianna hated her gut, though. She wasn't going to trust it as far as she could throw it. People get feelings for all kinds of reasons. Sure, it could be that you're picking up on little clues, so subtle that your brain doesn't realize what it's got on its hands.

  But more than likely, what's really happening is that he's handsome, or he's ugly, and you're letting that affect your opinion. Or maybe you were pissed off when you met him, and now that bad first impression has spread to become everything you know about the guy.

  Maybe, in her case, he'd saved her life. Maybe he was the best-looking guy she'd ever had the pleasure of meeting. Or sleeping with, as well. She'd naturally feel indebted to someone under those circumstances. It was unavoidable. All she had to do to make it right was to not let herself believe that it meant more than it did.

  So she redoubled her search, opening cabinets as silently as possible. Three dishes. She wasn't even aware you could buy so few plates–normally you buy a dining set, comes with eight. But here he had three. The dishwasher was empty, as was the sink. So those three were what he had.

  Nothing hiding in the kitche
n at all. The fridge was the same as the rest. An unlikely lack of food. She stared at the half-gallon of milk, the six-pack of beer, and the left-over steak sitting on nothing, just wrapped up in cling-wrap.

  And as she closed the fridge, she was already trying to find answers to the question that was unavoidably stuck in her mind:

  There's no way someone lives like this. Which means, in spite of his state records, in spite of his obvious presence here… He didn't live here. He lived somewhere else. This was just a place he kept, and he was barely here long enough to furnish food for a couple days.

  If he lived somewhere else, then he'd only be wasting the food by bringing it here. He wasn't going to be eating it, after all.

  Brianna swallowed hard and tried to reason that through. If not here, then where? How was she supposed to find that out? If he wasn't living here, then why put up appearances at all? Why keep the place? It wasn't in a great part of town, sure, but it still had to have cost some money.

  He hadn't told her what he did for a living. As far as she knew, he did nothing at all. He'd been free in the early morning, though there was a big old gap of time that a job could have fit in, he looked as if he'd been sitting in that bar for a long time, practically waiting for someone.

  The fact was, whatever he was up to, none of the pieces added up. In the other room, a buzzing noise set her hairs on end and she rushed back in. Nick had apparently reached across her side of the bed and grabbed the phone that she'd kept beneath her pillow, and now he was staring at the screen.

  "You got a text," he said plainly. It took her a minute to recall that he couldn't possibly know any more. She had it set to unlock with her fingerprint, and if she didn't put in her fingerprint, all the screen would show was that a text had come in. "Were you up?"

  "Just using the bathroom," she said softly. "Why?"

  "No reason. Phone woke me, and you weren't here."

  She touched her finger to the fingerprint reader, and tapped the text icon with her thumb. It was from a private line, not a precinct phone; that was obvious from the fact that it was a text. But it was a number she recognized regardless, even if it didn't have an entry in her contacts. A young woman, one who reminded Brianna a little bit of herself. A uniform, hoping to make detective.