Alpha in a Fur Coat (8 page)

Storm eyed the horizon warily. It was the middle of the day, but the sun was nowhere to be seen. The clouds had grown darker and darker, going from light gray to almost black. She looked over at Grant, whose face was set in a tight line. He hadn’t said much, but Storm could tell he was getting worried. The wind was growing stronger, and the crazy weather system they had encountered didn’t show any signs of slowing down. Storm tried to remain calm, glancing over and over at the trip computer that listed their estimated arrival time.

According to the computer, they would be flying another two hours before the hovercar reached the north side of the Chicago suburbs. Drew had contacted Calum, Hope, and Mia, and instructed them to leave Chicago right away and meet Grant and Storm well outside the city limits. Hopefully, this would allow Grant and Storm to pick up the trio without having to actually fight off a bunch of police hovers.

But if this weather system kept getting worse, they weren’t going to make it across the lake. Storm bit her lower lip anxiously, chewing on it until she tasted blood. Finally, she couldn’t keep quiet anymore. She turned to look at Grant, and tried to sound as calm as possible while she spoke.

“Grant? Uh, do you have any idea how long this storm is supposed to last.”

Grant glanced over at her, his own face looking a little less sure with each passing second. “I’m not sure. This wasn’t on the weather radar when I checked a few hours ago. It literally came out of nowhere.”

Storm’s frown deepened. “I’m not sure we should keep flying into this. It seems to only be getting worse. The hover can’t take winds much stronger than this.”

Grant was silent for several moments, weighing Storm’s words in his own mind. A huge gust of wind sent the hover into a bit of a spin, but Grant quickly adjusted the controls and corrected its course.

“We have to keep going. We can’t just leave my clan members alone in the middle of this mess.”

Storm let out a long, slow sigh. “I get that. But we have no idea what we’re flying into. Both in terms of the weather and in terms of what might be going on in the city of Chicago.”

Grant only grunted in response. Storm knew that meant that he knew she was right. They had disabled all but the most necessary of the electrical systems on the hover, to avoid any chance of detection. They had no contact with Drew, and only had very basic navigation systems online. The more time that passed, the more likely it was that the chaos in Chicago had started. But they had no way of knowing for sure how bad things were, since all of their connections to the outside world were severed. They didn’t have any way of checking the weather either. Grant had looked before they left, and the forecast had called for completely clear skies. By the looks of their current predicament, the forecast had been dead wrong.

Another gust of wind sent the hover into an even worse spin. Storm’s knuckles turned white as she gripped the edge of her seat and tried not to react. It took a lot longer for Grant to correct the spin this time, and the hover lost several hundred feet of altitude in the process. Almost as soon as Grant had the hover flying straight again, another gust of wind came and threw them into another spin, causing them to lose several hundred more feet of altitude. As soon as Grant had recovered control, Storm looked over at him in a bit of a panic.

“Grant? We can’t help out your clan members if we’re dead.”

Grant let out a frustrated string of curses, but then started turning the hover around. “You’re right,” he said. “We can’t fly through this. We’ll have to try again later.”

The winds were continuing to pick up speed, and their small hover was being tossed around the sky like a rag doll. Storm gripped the seat and kept silent, even though she wanted to gasp and scream out every time they went into a spin or lost altitude. She had grown up flying through some crazy weather, but she had never seen anything quite this strange. She knew better than to panic, though. The last thing Grant needed right now was the distraction of trying to console her or tune out her screams. After fifteen minutes of being tossed around in the sky over Lake Michigan, Storm breathed a silent prayer of thanks when she saw the dark shoreline in the distance. Grant was flying them straight back to the Michigan coast. They were in a wild, unpopulated area, which was just as well. Hopefully he could find a safe spot for them to land and wait out this weather. And hopefully Grant’s clan members would know enough to just sit tight and wait for him to show up.

As they neared the shoreline, the hover continued to be tossed around, although the winds here were a little bit weaker. Grant found a small, open space in the trees and started descending toward it, fighting to keep the hover steady on the way down. Storm wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn’t look away as they headed rapidly toward the earth. Tree branches brushed against her window as the hover was tossed sideways a few hundred feet above the earth, but Grant managed to correct its course before they actually crashed.

And then, just as quickly as everything had started, it was over. The hover touched down on solid ground, and Storm realized she could let out the breath she had been holding. Next to her, Grant ran his fingers through his hair and let out a long breath of his own.

“Well, shit,” he said.

And then the rain started coming down. A few drops splattered against the hover’s windshield, followed moments later by a torrential downpour. Storm looked over at Grant and whistled.

“Looks like we landed just in time,” she said.

“Yeah,” he agreed, trying to look out the window, even though all that was visible right now was a blur of water. “Seems like we managed to avoid any damage to the hover, too, so that’s good. It looks like it might be a while, though, before we can get back in the air.”

His voice sounded more frustrated than Storm had ever heard it. She knew he wanted to get to his clan members, but there wasn’t much they could do about that right now. And she knew there wasn’t much she could say to make him feel better. But she had to at least try.

“We’ll get to them, Grant. The storm can’t last that long. And they’re outside of Chicago, so they’re probably okay for the moment. It will take a little while before the police get organized enough to move their attack on shifters outside of the city limits.”

Grant didn’t answer for a long time. His violet eyes were dark and angry, and Storm had a strange urge to reach over and give him a hug. But she refrained. She didn’t want to send off the wrong signal to him right now. He had enough on his mind without having to wonder about whether or not she was interested in him.

But that was actually the strange thing about Grant—when he was angry, the expression on his face made him look even more attractive than normal. There was something about angry passion in an alpha that was hard to resist. Right now, stranded in a hover in the middle of nowhere, Storm was finding Grant hard to resist. She tried to fight the feeling washing over her, but it was getting harder and harder to ignore these moments. She cursed softly under her breath, wishing she had thought more carefully about her decision to head off by herself in a hover with Grant. She should have known she would end up fighting off feelings for him. Of course, she’d had no way of knowing she would actually end up marooned on the Michigan coastline with him.

“What?” Grant asked, looking over at her and catching her staring at him a little too intently.

“Uh, nothing,” Storm said. It was the best she could come up with, and she knew it was weak.

Grant sighed, and ran his fingers through his hair again. “How long are you going to keep playing this game, Storm?” he asked.

“What game?”

“You know. Trying to pretend like you aren’t as drawn to me as I am to you.”

“We’re both alphas, Grant. It will never work. We’ll just fight all the time.”

Grant actually cracked a smile. “Yeah. And then have fiery makeup sex,” he said.

Storm’s heart started beating out of control. She couldn’t believe he had just talked out loud about them having sex. “Grant!” she reprimanded sharply, even though she was enjoying the little thrill rushing through her body right now.

Before Storm could say anything else, Grant had leaned over to her side of the hover and put his lips over hers. Storm tried to resist for a moment, but his kiss was urgent and insistent, and she couldn’t keep herself from melting into it. Fire jumped from his body to hers, and she felt herself growing weak and dizzy from the high.

His tongue slipped past her lips, and his hands reached for her face. His palms were hot and electric against her cheeks, and she gasped for breath under the intensity of the moment. Overwhelmed, she pulled back and looked into his eyes, desperately trying to convince herself that she needed to stop.

When she saw his eyes, she gasped. The deep violet color was gone, and his eyes were glowing yellow, and churning with emotion.

“Wow,” Storm said softly. “It’s true, then? That your clan’s eyes change?”

Grant merely nodded. Storm had heard many stories about the way the men in Grant’s clan had a special gene mutation that caused their violet eyes to glow yellow when they were filled with desire. Storm had never really believed the legends, but sitting right in front of her was proof that it was true. Grant’s eyes looked almost otherworldly as he gazed over at her.

“Why are you fighting so hard against your feelings, Storm?” Grant said, reaching his hand up to trace a finger down her cheek. Fire jumped from his skin to hers, leaving a hot trail down her face everywhere he touched her.

“It’s a bad idea,” Storm said, although her voice sounded unsure. He was slowly wearing down her resolve, and he knew it. He was a master at pushing her just to the point where she would truly pull away, and then giving her a chance to breathe before putting on the pressure again.

“Your excuses are weak, Storm,” Grant said. “It’s not a bad idea. It’s a fabulous idea. We’re perfect together, and you know it. Yeah, we both have fiery personalities. So what? We’ll burn twice as hot together.”

“We’re in the middle a war,” Storm said, trying to look stern. “We have bigger things to worry about then…then…mating. Or love.”

Grant smiled and leaned back for a moment. “On the contrary, Storm. What better time to love than in the middle of a war? Times like this are a good reminder that tomorrow isn’t guaranteed to any of us. We have to live while we can. We have to love while we can. And, I’ll tell you one thing, I wouldn’t be surprised if destiny had little bit of a hand in that strange storm that stranded us out here together.”

Storm snorted and rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on, Grant. There’s not some magical destiny fairy whipping up random storms just to get us alone together.”

“I’m not so sure,” Grant said, his expression once again growing intense. Storm felt herself catching her breath at the desire etched into his face.

“Grant… come on. Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. He didn’t reply. Instead, he just looked at her, his eyes a blazing, burning yellow. The only sound in the hover was the rain beating against the windshield, and Storm’s breathing as she rapidly inhaled and exhaled, trying to calm her racing heart.

Slowly, deliberately, Grant leaned in toward her again. Just as a huge crack of thunder sounded across the dark gray sky, his lips met hers. This time, she didn’t resist. She let him reach his hands up to the back of her head, tugging at her hair until it fell loose from the tight, sensible bun she had pulled it into.

The heat in Storm’s body felt overwhelming. She was filled with a passion unlike anything she had ever experienced before.

“Grant,” she said, unsure of what else to say to him. All she said was his name, but that one word held so much meaning and emotion when she spoke it. He intensified his kiss, his hands running through her hair and his body leaning over to press against hers. A flash of lightning briefly lit up his face, followed moments later by another huge crack of thunder.

Storm could feel herself tumbling over the edge. She had wanted this for so long, but had put so much energy into resisting it. There was such sweet relief in finally giving in, and she was suddenly overcome by a sense of urgency.

She reached her hands down for the hem of his t-shirt, then pulled it up and over his head, throwing it back into the backseat. Grant grunted in approval, and reached to do the same to Storm’s shirt. He unbuckled his safety belt, then reached over and unbuckled Storm’s belt, giving them both a little more freedom of movement.

The thermometer on the dashboard indicated that the temperatures outside were falling rapidly as the storm continued to roll through, but inside the hover the heat was causing the windows to fog up. Storm let her eyes travel down to Grant’s bare chest, admiring his sculpted muscles and broad shoulders. He let out a low growl, sending a thrill through Storm’s body. Then he reached behind her and unclasped her bra, pulling it off of her body to leave her alert nipples exposed to the air. After another low growl, Grant pulled Storm into his lap.

As her legs straddled his hips, she got her first taste of what was to come. Even through their jeans, she could feel his erection, rock-solid and huge. She moaned at the realization of what she was about to experience, and then gasped as he suddenly closed his teeth over one of her nipples.

Grant was a gentleman, but he was still all alpha. And his dominant, alpha tendencies showed in the rough, commanding way he handled Storm’s breasts. His teeth came down hard on her left nipple, while he used his thumb and forefinger to twist her right nipple. The pain was intense and yet somehow left her begging for more. She screamed out his name, and he responded by biting and twisting harder, and thrusting his groin against hers.