Page 47 of Breaking the Alpha
“What if—” He arched his head back and looked at the ceiling, his precarious control moments from snapping.“Angel, I’m really messed up tonight.I…I need the to feel the pain.”
“I told you I was going to be everything you need me to be during this,” she replied, flicking her tongue along his jugular.“Trust me enough not to hold anything back from me.”
*
Angelina clawed atthe mattress, moaning as River lifted her hips and held her in position while he continued to pound into her from behind.Her legs had given out two orgasms ago as his relentless domination over her body continued.Her skin was damp with sweat, her hair a tangled mess falling into her eyes.River’s fingers dug into her hip bones before he released her and flipped her over, hiking her legs onto his shoulders and thrusting back into her in one fluid movement.The new angle hit something deep inside her and she grasped at his hand, her spine arching off the bed while she rode the crest over the peak again.
He slowed his ruthless rhythm while she came down, his breathing rough, his eyes locked on hers with the same mesmerizing intensity he’d had when he’d taken her on his dresser and on the floor.Moving her legs from his shoulders to his waist, he crawled up her body and dropped his head into the crook of her neck.His speed picked up again, his hand winding through her hair before gripping it gently.His back arched as he let out a low groan and released inside her, finally collapsing onto his elbows and dropping his forehead to hers.
“I love you so fucking much,” he panted.“So fucking much.”
She struggled to get her own breathing under control, tuning into his until they fell into sync.“Do you think it’s too much too soon?This?Us?”
“I don’t think it’s too much or too soon,” he replied quietly as he rolled onto his back.“Being here has reminded me of some of the messed-up crap we dealt with and the first person I wanted to talk about it with was you.Not Birch, who lived it and gets it.Not Grey.Not Winter.You.And that is scary as fuck.”
He tossed the blanket over them and dragged her in tightly to his side.Within minutes he was out cold, his arm wrapped around her while she lay awake and wondered how long they had before he would return to the life he’d built a thousand miles away.
Chapter Nineteen
River ignored Jodie’scall for the fifth time that morning, his mind preoccupied with Serpent’s Tongue’s silent phone.Birch paced the shop floor, stopping periodically to whisper quietly with Jocelyn, who was trying to preoccupy herself with reorganizing the display shelves.Angelina sat beside him, her fingers absently playing with the bracelets on his wrists and her chair pulled as close to his as he could get it.
He had foregone his painkillers that morning to ensure his head was clear, a decision he was beginning to regret as his injuries continued to make themselves known with every breath he took.Shifting in his seat, he stretched his left leg out under the desk and dug his knuckles into his thigh to massage out the knots.
The move was noticed immediately by Angelina.
“Take the edge off,” she murmured, rifling through her purse and handing him a single pill.“You don’t want the pain clouding your thoughts.”
He accepted the medication without hesitation and swallowed it with a gulp of water while she set her purse back on the floor and continued to spin the beads on his bracelets.
He knew he had been a bit of an ass all morning.His mind was so preoccupied with Grey that he had barely spoken to her.And he wanted to.He wanted to unleash verbally just like he had physically last night when he’d taken her hard and relentlessly like a feral animal.He wanted to get on his damaged knees and praise the calm, sedate goddess beside him for being his beacon of light and hope.He wanted to apologize over and over for fucking her when he should have been making love to her.
And he wanted to hear her voice.
She was giving him the silence he both needed and despised.She was speaking only with her gentle hands on his skin when he wanted desperately for her to talk to him, to tell him what she needed from him.He wanted her to acknowledge Birch’s words the night before, to yell at him and ask him to stay, to leave his life in LA and stay here in Epson with her.
Because he saw the look on her face when his brother had mentioned it.Her expressive amber eyes had widened, as though she’d forgotten what the end of his foray back to Epson would mean.The lips he loved to kiss had momentarily lost the peaceful smile she always wore.He watched her calm facade crack for a moment, and it had sliced him deeper than any wound a doctor could stitch together.
He should have said something.Should have taken her to his room and told her he didn’t want to leave her, didn’t want to return to a place where she wasn’t at his side.He wanted to promise her he would protect her, that no one would ever hurt her again.
But he hadn’t.
Instead, he’d shoved it all down into the place where he kept all his failings, allowing it to fester until the option to talk was long gone and the need to claim her had surged to the forefront.
His phone buzzed on the table again and he waited for it to go to voicemail.
He could only ignore Jodie for so long.Soon, he would have to answer.He would have to tell her he was in no shape to take on the big payday campaigns she’d set up for him.He would have to spin a lie about his injuries and conjure up a plausible reason for the new scars now marring his body.
He’d have to face the reality that he may no longer even have a choice to make about LA and his career.
With the amount of damage done, it would be weeks before his face was marketable again, and months before his body was.And even then, there would be more defects and more flaws for potential clients to overlook, more reasons for them to move on to another guy who didn’t need fixing.
Angelina’s fingers skimmed the back of his neck, yanking him out of his thoughts and saving him from his own mind like she had since the day they met.
When this was over, when Grey was back in his home where he belonged, he would make it his mission to make it up to her.He would do whatever he could to ensure she knew that she was it for him.He would pay her back in any way he could for what she’d done for him.
And he would do everything he could to prove himself worthy of being saved by her.
*
