Page 52 of The Alpha Experiment
“Well, it is bigger than your—”
“Okay, that’s it!” He dug and wriggled his fingers into my ribs, and my nervous system went haywire. I writhed, laughing and kicking and cursing, yanking at his arm and getting nowhere. Stupid fucking alpha strength, it wasn’t fair—I elbowed him hard in the ribs, and he grunted and rolled us face-down, pinning me under him and going after me with both hands, pinching and poking the sides of my waist until the sounds I made got so desperate that he took pity on me and stopped.
“I hate being ticklish,” I gasped into my pillow, where my face had gotten smooshed. “I freaking hate—you. I hate you so much right now.”
I tried to buck him off, but it didn’t work. It just shoved my ass right back onto his cock, which had gotten dislodged from between my legs in the struggle.
Colin leaned down over me, his face appearing in my peripheral vision. I couldn’t turn my head, so I got a weird, blurry half-view of his frowning mouth. “You don’t, though, right? You don’t actually—you said you couldn’t ever hate me. Have you changed your mind?”
I blinked up at him. “Jesus, Colin, I wasn’t being serious! I do hate being tickled, though.”
“I know you weren’t being serious about that. ButI’mbeing serious.”
I realized I’d neglected point two in my logical analysis of Colin’s behavior. He was clearly in denial about the effect his body chemistry was having on his mental state, but surely he knew most of his reaction earlier had been about his jealousy of Meredith’s and my close friendship. I could at least put his mind at ease where that was concerned.
“Meredith’s not my girlfriend, I think you got that, right?” He nodded, and opened his mouth, but I cut him off. I had to get the words out before he derailed me somehow. “She’s my friend, and I’m not interested in more,” I said quickly, “but she’s also not my best friend, either.Youare. She’s a friend. Just a friend. You’re—” Shit,more than a friendwould sound so wrong, with his cock poking against my ass. “You’re my best friend, and you always will be, even if we spend some time busy with other stuff. Even if we don’t talk all the time. Nothing’s changed that. For me, anyway.”
I finally managed to twist my neck enough to get a better view of his face. His expression softened, almost turning into a smile. And his eyes were glowing. Not a supernatural alpha glow, though. Just natural, human relief.
Okay, maybe there was little bit of that alpha glow, too. I couldn’t look away.
“For me, either,” he said softly. “I’m really fucking sorry about what I said to her. It just sucked, sitting out there by myself while the two of you bonded over all those tests and graphs and chemicals, because I’m not smart enough to keep up. I mean. It’sourexperiment, right?”
I grinned up at him, lopsidedly, because half my face was still buried in a pillow. “It is. And it freaking worked, Col. At least partly. I mean, I don’t have claws or anything, but some of my RNA definitely re-spliced to produce proteins I didn’t have in my blood before.”
“I don’t really know what that means, but that’s a good thing?” I nodded enthusiastically. “Awesome.” He hesitated, licked his lips, hesitated some more. Finally he asked, “Was that from the blood sample you took after…what are you calling it? Part two of the experiment? Where I hunted you. Or from yesterday, when we…part three of the experiment.”
“From yesterday. I don’t know if what I felt on day two was psychosomatic or not, and I’m starting to think maybe it was, because that blood sample didn’t show anything.”
“So itwasthe knotting,” he said, his voice getting lower, and the glow in his eyes brightening, his cheekbones flushing dull red. “The…alpha semen proteins. You think?”
I’d used those words without thinking twice about it, but Colin saying ‘alpha semen proteins’ in that gravelly voice had a totally different effect on me than saying it myself. I could feel my own face getting as red as his, and that tight, heavy feeling was back in the pit of my abdomen. Jesus, I was such a freak.
“Yeah, that’s what I think,” I said. My own voice had gone all low and growly—at least the human version of growly. “That was probably the catalyst.”
He’d braced himself on his arm, and his bicep and tricep flexed and stretched the sleeve of his t-shirt to the limit as he leaned down a little closer, like he wastryingto show off.
“You told Meredith you still had work to do. More…experiments?”
“Yeah,” I breathed. “More experiments. Definitely necessary.”
Colin rotated his hips very slightly, enough to shift his cock against my ass. I clenched involuntarily. Fuck, I’d almost forgotten it was there. I’d gotten used to it.
“How about now?”
My brain whited out for a second, and I had to blink rapidly to come back online. “Now?”
“Yeah.” He nudged me with his cock again. “Right fucking now.”
I hadn’t mentally or physically prepared to run another experiment. Did I even have another phlebotomy kit? Yeah, there was one more I’d stuck in the bathroom cupboard, but…now?
Colin bent his head down even more, until his face was almost right against mine and—and he turned his head at the last second, burying his nose in my hair right behind my ear and inhaling me, his lips just brushing my earlobe. “We’re in a bed, Newt. A lot more comfortable than on the ground. If it wasn’t the forest and the chase that made the difference, it’s not like we need to go anywhere for part four of your experiment plan.”
Every word ratcheted that tension in my lower body a little higher, and paradoxically made the rest of my body melt into the mattress, like all the energy had leached out of me and vanished into the ether.
He nuzzled me, his nose brushing the tender skin behind my ear, his lips catching on my earlobe. Almost a kiss, but not quite. He murmured, “You want results, yeah? Quickly? No time like the present.”
Was he the angel on my shoulder, or the devil? I couldn’t quite tell. Either way, no one chimed in to argue.
