The Alpha's Mate (6 page)

She was scribbling away when the stranger
appeared at the edge of the trees. Without thinking, her hand went
to the gun lying beside her chair. She snatched her hand back,
horrified at her actions. Shooting at vicious animals was one
thing; she reminded herself, and not a good thing at that. This was
a human being for heaven’s sake.

Just a few days ago, she would have been
horrified at the thought of using a gun. Twenty-four hours in this
place and she’d become Rambo, ready to purchase and use an arsenal.
At this rate, in another two days she wouldn’t have to worry about
white cotton undies. She’d be trading them in for camouflage.
Cassandra wouldn’t need a gun. She had other weapons in her
arsenal.

Taking a lesson from Cassandra, Elizabeth
smiled her most winning smile. “Hello there.”

Even though the stranger saw her withdraw
from the gun, he raised his hands in surrender.

“Don’t shoot,” he said, but he was smiling,
too, and what a charming smile it was. “Just thought I’d stop by
and say hello. Heard you folks had a time of it the other
night.”

“That we did. You’d never know it from
tonight. It’s so quiet and peaceful here.” Her attempt at
nonchalance needed work. She’d have to practice.

The man stopped about ten feet out from the
porch. He stood, relaxed, inside the circle of light thrown by the
electric lantern on the wall by the door. He waited patiently while
Elizabeth checked him out as if being so scrutinized was an
everyday occurrence.

He was a little taller than Marshal, though
not so broad in the chest. His hat shaded his face, but beneath it
she could see a fringe of straight blonde hair that was neatly
trimmed away from the edge of his collar. He smiled around
straight, pearly white teeth and held himself with an easy grace
that seemed vaguely familiar.

Looking the way he did, being so scrutinized
probably was an everyday occurrence.

The corner of his mouth turned up in a
naughty boy smirk. “So, what’s the verdict? May I join you on the
porch? Do I look harmless enough?”

“Yes, you may join me on the porch,”
Cassandra said through Elizabeth’s mouth, “And no, I don’t think
you’re harmless at all. I think you’d devastate any female
population you came in contact with and you know it. So, there is
no verdict. The jury’s still out.” She finished with a half smirk
and slow wink, that implied, “I’m the jury, convince me.”

Wow, that was really good. She wondered if it
would spoil the moment if she paused to write that down. Yeah, it
probably would. Her fingers itched to pick up her pen and add the
scene to her grocery list of notes.

“Oh hell,” she muttered and waved him onto
the porch, “I’ll be with you in a minute.” She grabbed the pen and
started to write.

The stranger waited patiently while she
recorded her quotes. He leaned back against the porch post,
seemingly casual, but angling his body so his profile was on
display.

“I’m sorry,” she said looking up. She gulped
and had to force her eyes away from the long, lean sculpture of his
body. “If I don’t write it down when I think it, it’s gone when I
need it.”

“I see.”

His slight smirk and raised eyebrow said he
found her amusing. Men rarely found Elizabeth amusing. This
Cassandra thing really worked!

He shifted a little and crossed his right
foot over his left ankle, resting his booted toe on the floor. Were
those snakeskin?

She’d gone through an animal rights phase
where she became a vegan and refused to wear animal skin, but she
felt as if she was slowly starving to death and when she saw an
ostrich skin handbag that she just had to have, the whole thing
collapsed. She’d had a love affair with exotic hides ever since. It
was why she joined Silverton Citizens Against Guns. They were
against hunting, but liked their steaks rare and their loafers’
Italian leather.

Elizabeth made a show of dotting the last
period and smiled sympathetically. “I’m a writer,” she explained,
“Or a would-be writer anyway. I’ve taken a sabbatical to pursue my
craft full time.”

“I see,” he said again. “Am I the hero or the
villain?”

“Oh, I wasn’t…” She paused as Cassandra came
to her rescue again. She smiled. “That’s yet to be determined. I’m
not being very neighborly, am I? I’m Elizabeth. And you are” She
held out her right hand to shake and looked up into his face.
Oh. My. God
. The man standing before her was a blonde
version of Marshall! His hair was professionally styled and
highlighted, his skin silky smooth and freshly shaven. His long,
tapered fingers ended in even, buffed nails and his hands were
uncalloused.

He held one of them out to her, but stayed
where he was and she had to rise from her chair to meet him. When
their fingers touched, she caught her breath. It was the same
feeling she’d experienced with Marshall. She didn’t want to let
go.

Unlike Marshall, this man drew her up and to
him.

“Charles Goodman.”

Elizabeth put her free hand on his chest to
keep some distance between them. His heart seemed to be beating as
strongly as her own.

“Are you related to Marshall?” she asked
weakly.

“He’s my brother, but I wasn’t looking for
him.”

Startled, she looked up into his face and was
met by a pair of vivid green eyes. Those eyes unsettled her more
than anything else.

“Didn’t you say you stopped by to say
hello?”

“I did. But not to him. To you. As soon as I
heard about a woman living here, I had to come see if it was true.
Are you and he…?”

“I don’t know,” she said inanely, because of
course she knew. She was being held close by a man who was sex
personified and yet all she could think of was, “
Personal space,
personal space. I need to move back from his personal
space
.”

Which she did, so quickly that she bumped the
rocker in which she’d been sitting. The back crashed against the
wall while the rising seat caught her behind the legs, buckling her
knees. Had the chair been of the four legged variety, she would
have made an ungraceful but secure landing on the seat. No such
luck. Her butt connected with the wooden seat at the same time as
the rocker tilted forward with the same speed with which it had hit
the wall. The seat was no longer a seat but a slide and a slippery
one at that.

“Yee-ow!” She landed on the very spots that
were still bruised and tender from the night before.

Charles helped her up with a self-satisfied
looking smile that he tried to cover with a show of concern. It was
as if he’d guessed what her reaction to his attentions would be and
was pleased to be proved right.

“Are you all right?” He asked solicitously
and would have put his arm around her.

This time, her escape was more coordinated.
She stepped back and made a fuss of brushing off her jeans and
shirt, moving toward the door as she did.

“I think I saw some lemonade in the fridge.
Why don’t you take a seat and I’ll bring some out.” She needed to
get away for a few minutes, collect her wits and figure out what
the hell was happening to her. She wondered if Charles could sense
her growing panic. He waved his hands in the negative.

“Thanks, but no. I really just stopped by to
make your acquaintance. We’ll see each other again, I’m sure.” He
gave her a salute as he backed down the stairs and a smile that
made her insides flutter. “Good night, now, Elizabeth.” Charles
somehow made his leer seem charming. “Sweet dreams.”

Chapter 6

Afraid of being awakened the way she was the
previous night, Elizabeth curled her legs up to sit cross-legged on
the couch, determined to stay awake until Marshall or Henry came
home. She wrote a little, daydreamed a lot, and tried to figure out
what the hell was happening to her.

She wasn’t a novice at this sex stuff. She
was an experienced woman. Okay, she admitted to herself, four
lovers in fifteen years didn’t sound like much and it was four only
if you counted Pauly Perkins, her lab partner in high school.
They’d made a pact as sophomores that if nothing happened to one or
both of them by graduation, they’d take care of the problem for
each other.

At the time, their virginity seemed to be the
ultimate declaration of their nerdom and they were determined to
start college with totally new and different personas. She didn’t
know then what she knew now; nerdom is a state of being, not a
state of virginity. Two nerds could go at it like proverbial
rabbits – although she’d always wondered about that since mice were
more prolific – and they’d still be nerds; with perpetual smiles on
their faces perhaps, but nerds nevertheless.

After college, Pauly gave in to nerdom and
moved to Silicon Valley where no one notices nerds. He has a very
smiley wife and six lovely children. Elizabeth, however, would
spend the rest of her life fighting against what Mother Nature had
intended.

She’d always had what she considered a
healthy interest in the opposite sex. She’d read Jung, Ellis,
Masters and Johnson and all the other big names in human sexuality
and she knew her curiosities and preferences were well within the
norm even if she hadn’t yet reached her pinnacle of ecstasy. Hell,
if you listened to the experts, she had a few years to go before
she reached her peak.

Other than Pauly, who was chock full of
criticism about both their techniques, her other lovers had seemed
pleased with her performance and she had no complaints about
theirs. No, the lack of passion that led to their mutually agreed
upon dissolutions had been intellectual in nature and had nothing
to do with sex. She rested her elbows on her knees and propped her
chin in her hands.

“Bullshit,” she said aloud and sniffed a
little in self-pity.

It had everything to do with sex. She was
intellectually compatible with all of them. That was number three
on the list of What To Look For In A Man. She wouldn’t have said
yes to the first date if they hadn’t been. They’d all scored high
on the list, even Rodney until he called her a cold fish. It was
sex all right and no matter how many books she read on the subject
or how many manuals she studied; it was a test she couldn’t pass.
And it hurt.

Two perfectly suitable gentlemen and one
creep named Rodney had turned away from her because she was frigid.
There. She’d finally admitted it. She could go through the motions,
but she couldn’t find that explosive finish. As a firecracker, she
was a dud. Sometimes she couldn’t even get the damn fuse lit.

And yet, if she couldn’t become aroused, what
exactly would you call the sensations she’d experienced with
Marshall and Charles?

Two absolutely, drop-dead gorgeous men had
peaked her interest in as many days. And it wasn’t the usual raise
your eyebrows, I wonder what he would be like kind of interest,
either. This was the suck it in, cross your legs and squirm while
suffering non-menopausal hot flashes kind of interest; something
she’d never experienced in her life.

And here’s where her inner nerd rose to the
surface. Shouldn’t she be happy with this unexpected phenomenon?
Well, yes, she was happy to a degree. It was nice to know that all
her parts were in working order, but why here, why now and why with
two men she’d barely met never mind knew? That falling in love
across a crowded room stuff was fictional bullshit. She’d read the
studies. Still, this wasn’t about love, was it? This was about pure
animal lust.

Having slept until six, Elizabeth thought
she’d have trouble falling back into sleep at her regular time. She
was mildly surprised when her eyes began to flutter and her head
began that annoying bob as her chin hit her chest. She slid down
along the back of the couch until her head was pillowed on the arm.
The doors were locked and the gun was tucked under the skirt of the
couch within arm’s reach. She’d hear the men when they
returned.

Her dreams were filled with blue eyes and
green, of broad hands and strong arms and lips that made her body
sing in ways she never thought possible. Her breasts ached with
longing and a silken fire burned between her legs. Her body yearned
for release. Fear and dread mixed with the excitement until she
couldn’t breathe and she fought to pull away from the frighteningly
erotic sensations until she found some balance between mind and
body. Her being, still tingling with yearning and hovering on the
edge, was suddenly enveloped in a cocoon of warmth and protection
where fear was banished and she knew she was safe.

When she felt the arms gather around her and
lift her from the couch, she thought it was another part of the
dream and she clung to this savior and buried her face where
shoulders and neck came together. He smelled of freshly sawn wood
and pine and faintly of sweat, the taste of him salty on her
tongue. She suckled the spot, playing her tongue against the
throbbing vein and then, with little nips and licks, she followed
the tasty trail up to the lobe of his ear. The hiss of his breath
and the tightening in the cords of his neck made her pay a little
more attention. The dream had no sound or any physical sensations
other than her own.

She ran her hand over the firm bulk of his
chest and half opened her eyes at the lack of skin. This chest was
covered in cotton chambray and felt much too solid and real and so
were the sensations rippling through her body. She struggled a
little, still confused by the fog of sleep and dreams.

“Shhh, everything’s all right. It’s only
me.”

‘Only me’ was Marshall Goodman. His warm
breath caressed her cheek and the soft murmur of his lips felt like
the touch of heaven. He carried her toward the stairs.

“Mmmm.” She continued her exploration of his
neck and ear and cheek with those lips in mind as a destination.
When she reached them and nibbled along their edge, they began to
nibble back. She didn’t remember the body nibbling part of foreplay
being quite so delightful. Foreplay? Her eyes snapped open.