Page 99 of Fourth Base with the Alpha
I pull back to gaze into her eyes. They are full of vulnerability and pain.
“Before I lost Maria, I was this carefree girl who loved far too quickly and too hard. I gave my heart away happily, freely. I was in love with the idea of being in love. But since she’s been gone, it hasn’t been like that.” She swallows wetting her lips with her tongue. The sun dips lower and shadows lengthen in the room. “It hurt so fucking much when she died, Hunter. I don’t want to feel pain like that again. I don’t want to love someone as much as I loved my sister and then lose them.”
“Do you think …” I hold her in my arms, tight to my chest, to my beating heart, “you could love me that much?”
“I think I already do. I tried really hard not to,” she chuckles, “but you’re pretty damn irresistible.”
“Isabella, I won’t break your heart. I will treasure it as the most precious thing I own.”
“I know,” she says gently, “but we don’t know what will happen in the future. You could get sick. You could get hurt in an accident and … we’ve both seen it happen. To my mom. To your dad.”
“You’re right. We don’t know.”
We are both quiet, the traffic humming in the background and footsteps sounding in the apartment above.
“The pain has been so intense since she went. I thought it would fade, but it didn’t. It lingered on and on. I guess I was learning to live with it … and then I met you.” She smiles and a tear trails down her cheek. “When I’m with you, Hunter, I forget about the pain. It’s still there, it always will be, but you lessen it, you make it bearable. I was worried you would break my heart even more than it already was. But I think you mended it. You and Mr Teddy.”
I shake my head with an indulgent grin.
“Isabella. I don’t deserve you.”
“Oh but you do. You deserve someone who will love you as deeply and as passionately as you love them. Who will shake you out of your silly moods, who will make you laugh and force you to eat more flavorsome food.” I chuckle at her. “This thing between us is special – I have seen enough romance movies, read enough romance books, been on enough dates, to know that. When I’m with you, I feel light-hearted and carefree again. I feel alive. So what I’m saying is, I’m prepared to take that risk.”
“What risk, Cupcake?”
“The risk that maybe it won’t work out the way we want it to, that we won’t earn our happy ending, that I’ll lose you like I lost her. I’m prepared to risk all that for moments like these. Because these moments make me feel happy, truly happy, and I haven’t felt that way for a long time.”
“Me neither. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this deliriously happy. It’s bad for my image.”
She pinches me and I kiss her shoulder.
“So,” her gaze locks with mine and I see the way the brown of her irises lighten near her pupil, how the rim at the edge is so dark it’s almost jet, “when I asked you to bite me, I meant it.”
My breath catches in my lungs. My ears ring.
“You meant it,” I repeat.
“I was heat-dazed and crazy, but I meant it, Hunter.”
“Shit, Isabella. Do you know how hard it was not to bite you in that moment? I wanted to do it so badly. To make you mine. To claim you. It took every last drop of my will power to stop myself.”
“And now?” she whispers.
“I still want to claim you, little one.”
“Then claim me, Alpha.”
She sinks her nails into my shoulder and I groan, closing my eyes. I’m hard for her and she’s right there beneath me, parting her thighs and inviting me inside.
I sink into her warmth, groaning again as I do, circling and grinding and kissing her mouth.
I show her just how much I love her for as long as I can. But then the alpha takes control.
I withdraw from her, flipping her onto her stomach and pushing away her hair from her neck. Her mating gland quivers in the half light and her scent lifts, a note sweeter as if tempting me closer.
I plunge back inside her, my thrusts violent and punishing now, driving her straight to orgasm. As she comes, as her cunt clenches around me, I lean in, forcing her head forward.
“You want this, Omega?”
