Page 17 of Breaking the Alpha
What he couldn’t handle was being seen, because being seen meant being used.
He’d spent most of his twenty-five years ensuring no one saw more than what he wanted them to see—the body, the face, the hair, the attitude.And for a good chunk of those later years, he’d made sure no one had a reason to look further.As long as he posed on command, purred against the right neck, and projected the perfect mixture of cockiness and sincerity, everyone around him got what they wanted.
So without so much as a wave or a fake smile in return, he did the smartest thing he could do.He turned tail and jogged to Serpent’s Tongue to hide until sundown.
Chapter Seven
“Now that isthe walking, purring definition of sex,” Zoe said, her tone brokering no argument as she watched River jog away from them.“He does purr, right?He looks like he purrs.”
Laughing, she swatted at Zoe’s arm.“How on earth would I know?”
“Because if you haven’t ridden that stallion, I’m reporting you for animal abuse.”
Shaking her head, she turned her door sign over and walked to the till.“You’re impossible.You know that, right?”
Zoe sat down on the floor cross-legged and used one of her long nails to slice the paper tape holding a new delivery closed.“Is he a biter?With those teeth, he probably leaves museum-quality marks.”
Refusing to take the bait, Angelina checked the receipt dispenser and gave her cup of tea a test check for temperature.“How was your weekend?”
“My weekend doesn’t matter, because it didn’t include a model with a penchant for spanking.He’s a spanker, isn’t he?Just a little tap-tap-tap here and there?Tell me he’s a spanker.”She looked over her shoulder as though hopeful River might be coming through the door.“He looks like a spanker.Or a handcuffer.”
Angelina could barely swallow her first sip, waving her hand in front of her face as she fought to keep from choking.“You’re killing me.I seriously wouldn’t know.I didn’t sleep with him.”
It was a little white lie.They’d slept together.But they hadn’tslepttogether.And she was banking on interpretation to keep her words somewhat honest.
“Sometimes I’m reminded that you and I are very different people,” Zoe replied, her expression solemn.“You probably built some mystic galaxy connection with him when you two took off together.I would have mounted him like a bucking bronco and gotten my full twenty-five cents worth.”She reached into her purse and pulled out her phone, loading up a photo app.“How do your panties not disintegrate around this?Look at this guy.Look.At.This.Guy.”
She leaned forward to see pictures of River from what looked like a sunglasses photo shoot.He was shirtless in most of them, barefoot on a beach and wearing different frames in each picture.Every muscle was defined, accented by what she assumed was oil meant to give that fresh-from-the-ocean look.
Sitting back, she shrugged.“He may be hot, but he also happens to be sweet.How did you find him online?”
Smirking, Zoe set her phone down.“I was out with a few of the women from housekeeping at the hotel and asked who the hottest guy in Epson was.Turns out there’s a whole family of them.The Baker boys.”She crossed her legs and leaned back with a sigh.“From what I could gather, all four of them are the tastiest treats ever made on the wrong side of the water tower.The oldest, Winter, is rotting away in jail for killing their dad.The second-oldest one runs the tattoo shop at the end of the mall here, but he’s hooked up with some gorgeous blonde everyone at the table was fawning over.River has been living the high life modeling in LA, but I think he’s off-limits since he and my hippie-dippy friend seem to have decided to have some boring-ass soul connection instead of mind-blowing sex.”
Rolling her eyes, Angelina laughed.“What about the fourth?”
“I have not robbed a cradle yet, but if his twenty-three-year-old ass looks as fine as his hotshot older brother, I may need to reevaluate.”Sitting back up, she glanced toward the closed door and lowered the volume of her voice.“But seriously, you should have heard some of the stories they were telling.From the sounds of it, River was an absolute nightmare when he was younger, getting arrested every second weekend for things like vandalism, theft, joyriding.You might want to be careful about getting mixed up with him.”
She thought about the tattoos she’d gotten a glimpse of while River had her splayed out on his hotel room counter.The light hadn’t been enough for her to study them, and her mind had definitely not been in a place to focus on anything outside of the pleasure he’d been giving her.But now that she thought about it, there was something about the ink covering him.Something about the placement.She’d grazed her hands over the ones on his chest once but had stopped when he’d tensed and instinctively flinched away from her touch.
She hadn’t tried again.
But her fingers remembered the changes in the texture of his skin, the divots and craters hidden beneath the designs.
And she found herself wondering exactly what kind of scars they were hiding.
*
Angelina rubbed hertired eyes with a sigh then closed her laptop.
Figuring out how to do the bookkeeping for her little business was the steepest learning curve she’d encountered since first opening her doors.The spreadsheets, expenses, receipts, orders, and taxes always became a blur of numbers every time she sat down in her little backroom office and did her best to input data she barely understood.
With the decision to go home to bed firmly planted in her mind, she grabbed her purse and keys and checked the time.
Eleven.
Morning would come fast, so she locked up the store and walked to her car, ever vigilant of the darkness stretching out past the poorly lit parking lot.
It wasn’t often she was alone in the small strip mall.If anything, she was usually the first shop to close.The spa two doors down stayed open into the early evening, the town’s only good pizzeria at the other end shuttered its doors around eight, and Serpent’s Tongue rarely closed before nine.But on nights like this, there was nothing but the faint snapping of the pizzeria awning in the wind and the rustling of dry leaves on the ground.
