Page 33 of Cruel Alpha

Suddenly, I was ten again, sitting on the stairs and listening to Dad and Pauline have the same argument they’d been having for as long as I could remember. He was yelling that he would never knot another woman, that he hadn’t known my mother would get pregnant, and Pauline was calling him an idiot. I’d always assumed he’d been lying, but school had never covered human or witch biology—I’d had to buy a book from the market in secret in order to learn about my own body and my own magic—it wasn’t such a stretch to think that Caleb and my father might have held the same mistaken belief.

If he had… if he had, then that changed everything.

“Please tell me what you’re thinking,” said Caleb.

“I-I don’t know what I’m thinking,” I said, honestly. “Everything I believed for the last three years is just…”

The tiniest smile curled at the edges of his mouth.

“Tell me about it,” he said, and I couldn’t help huffing a laugh in return. Somewhere in my throat, though, the laugh became a sob, and Caleb rushed forward, his big, warm hands cupping my face, trying to wipe away my tears even as they fell.

“You have to believe that if I’d known—if I’d thought even for a second that they were mine, I would never have—”

“Don’t,” I choked. “I don’t want to think about that right now.”

“Then tell me what I can do. Anything, Baby. I swear, whatever you want. I’m so fucking sorry, Alyssa. I’ve been sorry for three years, and I’ll probably be sorry for the rest of my life. You deserve so much better.” His hands dropped from my face to my waist, pulling me against him. His scent enveloped me, and I couldn’t believe this was really happening. I’d dreamed of this, dreamed of apologies and declarations and softness. “You’re perfect,” he breathed against my hair. “They’re perfect. I want—I know I don’t deserve it, but if you let me, I’ll spend forever making this up to you.”

If I were smart, this would be the time I’d sit us both down and write out a laundry list of demands, starting with public acknowledgment of our bond and the twins’ legitimacy. I wasn’t smart, though. I’d never been smart when it came to Caleb.

“Let me, Alyssa,” he whispered, gripping me tighter as I raised my face to his. “Let me make it up to you.”

My eyes fluttered shut as he leaned down, expecting to feel his lips on mine, but the kisses I received were dropped onto one eyelid, then the other. My forehead was next, then each of my cheekbones and the tip of my nose. When I could finally feel his breath on my lips, he hovered there for several drawn-out seconds before he finally put both of us out of our misery.

This kiss was nothing like the one we’d shared at that fateful party. That had been nothing but raw desire, the pull of the bond too strong for either of us to resist. The desire was no less present in this one, but there was tenderness, too. As hard as he held me to him, his mouth was soft and searching on mine.

The hot flash of his tongue against my top lip had me whimpering, melting into his embrace as I opened up for him. One of his hands abandoned my waist to fist in my hair, tipping my head back so he could lick into my mouth, sending shockwaves straight to my core. I was utterly lost in his touch, in the euphoria of finally being known, being accepted, and I could hold nothing back. When he slipped a knee between my thighs, I gasped, grinding down on the hard muscle of his leg. I was so wet already, and the slide of it was maddening.

I could have come right there, riding his thigh, but Caleb clearly had other ideas. Returning both hands to my waist, he walked me back until I felt the hard edge of the kitchen counter digging into the small of my back.

With a last nip to my bottom lip, Caleb abandoned my mouth to begin kissing a trail down my neck and down onto my chest. At the same time, his hands played with the hem of my tank, his fingers beginning to stroke my belly beneath it. As his lips moved down, kissing along my clavicle and onto the tops of my breasts, his hands moved up, dragging the fabric of my shirt with them, caressing every inch of skin along the way.

I probably should have cared that, at any moment, the twins could wake up, or Julia could return home from her run and discover us, but that part of my brain had shut up shop when Caleb first kissed me. I let him push my shirt up over my breasts—neither of us patient enough to take it all the way off, leaving the material bunched under my arms—so he could take one of my nipples in his hungry mouth. He sucked hard, raking his teeth across the sensitive flesh, and I had to stuff my hand in my mouth to muffle my pleasured whine. He didn’t let up, though, moving across to my other breast, pausing for a moment to leave a dark bruise on its underside before he took my other nipple in his mouth. Every pull of his mouth and scrape of his teeth sent sparks of pleasure straight between my legs, and my hips bucked impatiently, my thighs pressed together in a vain attempt at friction.

When he finally let up, it was to drop to his knees. My heart hammered in my chest as he took in the roundness of my belly and the white stretch marks that had marred the skin since the birth of our children. His fingers traced the patterns of it, followed by his lips, and my eyes filled with tears. Kneeling before me, his face bruised and battered and so damn beautiful, Caleb looked like a fallen angel. His icy blue eyes blazed with want, and I still couldn’t quite believe that all this desire was for me. There could be no doubt about it, though, when he rasped,

“You’re perfect.” Then his gaze turned dark. “And these shorts should beillegal.”

Without waiting for a reply, he yanked them down my legs, exposing my dripping pussy, and I flushed with embarrassment. I’d never been so exposed; our first time together had been frantic and rushed in the dim light of his bedroom. Now, though, he was looking at the most secret parts of me as though I was a meal he wanted to devour. As his tongue parted my folds, hot and perfect against the sensitive flesh, all the breath left my body in a moan that I could not hold in.

My hand flew to his hair, anchoring myself in the black strands as he drove me to the edge of madness with his tongue; long licks with the flat of it had me bucking mindlessly against his face until his firm grip on my thighs forced me to stop and submit as he flicked my clit with the pointed end. My legs were turning to jelly when he finally slid a finger inside me, and I gasped. I wanted to plead with him for more, to tell him how good it felt, but he’d broken the link between my brain and my mouth, leaving me unable to do anything but writhe and moan and whimper under his onslaught.

When I looked down, he was watching me intently, the lower half of his face obscured where he was still dedicated to his task. As he slipped a second finger in beside the first, he drew my clit beneath his lips and sucked, driving me wild as I desperately rode his long fingers. A ruinous coil of pleasure was building inside me, and I had to grip the edge of the kitchen counter to stay on my feet as my orgasm crashed through me. My toes curled as waves of pleasure rolled over me, Caleb’s sinful mouth refusing to let up until I was gasping and trembling and spent.

For a few moments, the afterglow was calm and tender; Caleb pressed lazy, open-mouthed kisses to the insides of my thighs and the roundness of my lower belly as I panted, hazy and blissed out. Then he rose to his feet—his lips shiny with my slick, his gaze ravenous—and I realized he wasn’t done with me.

Chapter 16 - Caleb

I’d dreamed of this so many times that I almost couldn’t believe she was real. None of those dreams had so perfectly captured the taste of her on my tongue, though, and my subconscious had certainly never chosen my sister’s kitchen as the setting.

Alyssa’s mouth was open in a sinful little “o”, her hazel eyes dark with desire, color high on her cheeks. I let my eyes rake down her body; her chest was still heaving as she panted for breath, the bunched-up material of her tank framing her breasts like the priceless art they were, with tight pink nipples hard and still shining with my spit.

My hands came up to trace the white stripes that stretched across her abdomen, and my heart ached. I bet Alyssa was beautiful with a round belly full of my pups. If I was lucky, if she let me, I would get to see the process with my own eyes one day. For now, though, I kissed her hard, trying and failing to convey how much I wanted her, admired her, adored her.

She was perfectly pliant in my hold, and it was easy to scoop her up and sit her on the kitchen counter. Alyssa blinked at me, surprised, and I pulled her against me so she could feel the hardness of my dick as it strained against my sweatpants. Her pussy was so hot, and I could feel how wet she was even through the fabric. I felt a proud growl growing in my chest, knowing that I was responsible for it.

“I want to be inside you,” I whispered against her lips, and Alyssa whined in return, rocking her hips against the marble. I was pretty certain that meant “yes”, but I wasn’t about to take any chances. Leaning in, I pressed a gentle kiss to her top lip and another to her bottom.

“Tell me what you want,” I breathed between kisses, and Alyssa pulled away to take several gulping breaths. Her eyes were glazed, and it looked as though it took considerable effort for her to say,

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