Page 69 of The Alpha Experiment
Nothing seemed to help. I’d almost stopped jerking off, because every time I tried to picture gorgeous, curvy women, imagine sinking into a warm, wet pussy, I’d get half-hard, stroke unenthusiastically…and then I’d remember what it felt like to have Colin’s knot stuffed into me, hard and huge and stretching me to the limit. Colin’s voice, murmuring filthy encouragement in my ear while he held me close.
My cock would go rock-hard so fast it made my head spin.
And then I’d drop it like it’d burned me, because—how the fuck could I do that? Get off to thoughts of Colin, knowing how disgusted and horrified he’d be?
After a few interrupted, humiliating masturbation attempts, I gave up and let my mind and body run with it. I ended up slumped weak-kneed against the shower wall after coming my brains out to a vivid fantasy of Colin holding me up against that same shower wall and biting my neck while he pounded me into jelly. I hadn’t even jerked off, really. I’d shoved two fingers into my ass and fucked myself as much as I could, my cock held loosely in my other hand. That was all it took, with Colin filling my mind, if not my body.
And afterthat, I hated myself so much I stopped trying.
It took another week following that orgasm for me to realize the truth, sitting on my couch semi-aroused and half-drunk and miserable: Jerking off to thoughts of Colin didn’t hurt him, and that was a pathetic, tissue-thin excuse. It only hurtme.
Because I wanted him so much I couldn’t stand it sometimes, my stomach twisting and my head throbbing. And because I’d never have him again.
He’d texted me when he got home, to let me know he’d made it safely. And I’d sent him a couple of update texts a week later, after I got a quick call from Greenwald’s assistant informing me coldly that any possibility of a job offer at Initech had been rescinded, that I had nothing they wanted, and to never contact them again.
Colin sent back a thumbs-up emoji.
It wasreallylucky I didn’t have werewolf strength, or my phone would’ve gone all the way through the wall when I threw it.
We hadn’t communicated at all since then, except for a brief text exchange on Thanksgiving weekend.
Which had been its own kind of hell, even without that.
I’d bitten the bullet and called my family after the plan to get rid of Greenwald worked, confirming that Fiona wasn’t in any danger and taking the tongue-lashing I got for allowing the situation to occur in the first place…and biting my own tongue rather than protest it wasn’t my fault. It took a lot of convincing, and a dangerously-close-to-truthful explanation, but finally they sent her back to school and chilled the hell out.
Which meant when Thanksgiving rolled around, Fiona hitched a ride home with me on the Wednesday night.
We stopped for coffee on the way out of town, put on some Queen, and rode in companionable silence for the first half hour—conversational silence, anyway. No human or other being I’d ever met could resist singing along with Freddie Mercury.
Finally the playlist ended, and Fiona reached over and turned the volume down, putting the next song in my random queue, whatever it was, quiet enough to be a whisper of sound over the engine and the wheels on the road.
“Why isn’t Colin coming?” she asked.
My hands tightened on the steering wheel until my knuckles went white. Hearing his name, spoken in mylittle sister’svoice, should not be making me very slightly hard, for so many goddamn reasons. And that tight, heavy flutter in my gut wasn’t freaking cool either.
“Why would he?”
I glanced at Fiona long enough to see her staring at me, looking as disdainful of my idiocy as only a nineteen-year-old could look. “Uh, because he always comes to Thanksgiving?”
“Not always! There was that year I couldn’t come because I was so busy with my master’s thesis and couldn’t afford to travel, and he drove down to see me instead.”
Too late, I realized that I’d made her point for her ten times over rather than refuting it.
And she had the gall to laugh and rub it in. “Exactly. So why isn’t he coming this year?”
I gritted my teeth and said, “He’s busy. He’s the pack leader now.”
Fact was, I’d checked my phone over and over again for a message telling me when he’d be arriving, either at my place to meet up for the drive or at my parents’ place. I’d almost called him a dozen times.
“But we’re his family,” Fiona said simply. “Pack leader or not, he should be here. He sucks.” She pulled out her phone. “I’m going to send him a message telling him what a douche he is for missing—”
“No!” I took one hand off the wheel and slapped at her phone. “No messages!” Shit, shit, she would think I’d lost it. “Fiona, he’s busy. I’m sure he’d be here if he could. Leave him alone!”
Fiona sat silent for a long, long moment, as I stared out the windshield at the yellow line stretching along the center of the asphalt, at the pine trees whipping by, at the shadows cast by the moon.
“Okay,” she said quietly at last. “If you guys had a fight, I won’t get in the middle of it. I’d just make it worse, huh? Even though I want to text him and tell him he’s being a douche even more now.”
Vicious anger boiled up, bitter and searing. How dare she be so mature and thoughtful…and horribly insightful? And pretty and female and shifter, and…I wanted to snarl at her that she should text him, because he and his fucking pack council would definitely be too busy for me, but that an invitation from an almost-of-mating-age female alpha werewolf would be received withpleasure.
