Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint-Chapter 90

Alpha Terrell’s POV

I kept my voice completely even.

"What questions?" I asked.

She was still curled against my chest, her fingers loosely holding the fabric of Merrick’s - of my - shirt, completely unaware that the man beneath her had gone as still as statue.

Merrick gave her that book.

My brother. Who had known - had known at the time, when it was still assumed she belonged to the Alpha, to me - had put an erotic novel in my mate’s hands and told her to come to him with questions.

I breathed in slowly through my nose.

Alright, I thought. Alright then.

I shifted slightly, tilting her chin up just enough that she’d know I was paying attention, and said: "Tell me. I’ll answer whatever you want to know."

The pause that followed showed that she was trying to gather her courage.

"There’s a part," she started, "where Lorenzo - when Gloria is in the garden and he comes up behind her and he..." She stopped. Started again. "He does something. With his hands. Before she even realises he’s there and she..."

"She loses herself," I said quietly.

A small intake of breath. "Yes. That. How does..." She pressed her face briefly into my chest. "How does that work? Is that a real thing or is it just... I mean, is that something that actually..."

"It’s real," I said.

"Oh."

Something in that single syllable did things to my self-control that I had not signed up for.

"It requires," I continued, keeping my voice low and measured and paying dearly for every word, "knowing where to touch. And how much pressure. And the right..." I stopped. Cleared my throat. "Patience. Mostly patience."

She was quiet for a moment.

"And the part after," she said, softer now. "When he..."

"Angel."

"I’m just asking..."

"I know what you’re asking." My jaw was tight. Various other things were also tight. "Ask it."

She asked it.

I answered it.

She asked another.

I answered that one too, and by the third question my voice had dropped, and my arm around her had tightened with every word and I was rapidly approaching the part where I cannot maintain control.

"Could you..." She hesitated. "Could you show me? What you mean?"

The question landed in the quiet like something dropped from a great height.

I looked at the ceiling.

At the fire.

At the dark window.

"Yes," I said, and my voice came out considerably rougher than I had intended.

She went very still.

Then: "No. Forget I asked. Forget... no." She pulled the covers up over her head in one swift motion, disappearing entirely, a lump of mortified human under the duvet. "Goodnight."

I sat there.

I looked at the shape of her under the covers.

I looked at the way the firelight moved across the bed.

I looked at the specific, detailed, agonising outline of her body against the sheets - all softness and warmth and the most maddening silhouette I had ever encountered in a thousand years of existence - and understood with complete clarity that if I remained in this bed I was going to do something that could not be undone.

I got up.

Crossed to the chair by the fire.

Sat down.

The covers moved. One eye appeared over the edge.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing. Sleep."

"You’ve had an extremely long day. Come to bed."

"I’m fine here."

"Merrick." The use of his name was a specific kind of pain. "You’re going to wake up with your back destroyed. Come to bed. I promise I won’t ask any more questions."

I looked at her.

One eye. Peering over the coverlet with genuine concern.

For Merrick.

I stood up and came back to the bed and got under the covers and lay on my back staring at the ceiling.

"Can I..." I stopped.

"What?"

"Can I put my arm around you?"

A pause. Then the covers shifted and she moved back against my side, tucking herself into the space between my arm and my chest with a naturalness that felt like something being placed into the slot it had always been meant to fill.

"Better?" she said.

"Yes," I said, which was both entirely true and a profound understatement.

I closed my eyes and breathed her in - vanilla and warmth, all of it, directly into my lungs at close range - and I held her with the carefulness of a man defusing something, every muscle in my body performing a discipline I had never had cause to practice before.

Her breathing slowed.

Her hand relaxed against my stomach.

She slept.

I stared at the ceiling with her tucked against my side and my dick getting harder by the minute, and I thought:

Merrick is going to pay for that book.

At length.

With interest.

I woke before dawn.

For a moment I simply lay there - her warmth against my side, her hair under my jaw, the room grey and still and quiet -,and I existed in the few seconds before my brain fully assembled itself into the man who had things to deal with.

Then the seconds ended.

I moved carefully, extracting myself from the warmth of her, and stood in the dim room looking down at her.

She slept with her cheek pressed into the pillow, her lips slightly parted, her hair spread out around her like something arranged by someone who cared about the composition. The coverlet had slipped from one shoulder. She looked... I looked away.

I left.

My own room was grey with early light.

Merrick was asleep in my bed, which was an absurdity I chose to set aside, and he woke the moment I came in the way we had both always woken - immediately, completely, alert before the eyes were fully open.

He took one look at me and sat up.

I pulled off his coat in silence. Set it on the chair. Reached for my own shirt.

"What happened?" he asked.

I kept my back to him. "She had questions about the book."

Complete silence.

I turned around.

Merrick had gone completely still. He looked like a man whose body has decided freezing is the correct response to incoming danger. He looked at my face and whatever he found there made him begin - slowly, carefully - to move toward the far side of the bed.

"Terrell..."

"You gave her that book," I said, "when she was still assumed to be mine."

"I can explain..."

"She came to you with her questions." Something had been building since the moment she’d said mentioned it, pressed against my chest, innocent of everything. "You gave my mate an erotic manuscript and told her to come to you if she wanted to understand it." I crossed the room. "While knowing she was the Alpha’s Luna."

Merrick had run out of bed to retreat across. He held up both hands. "I wasn’t in my right mind. I wanted... I was already... Terrell, I’m sorry, I genuinely..."

I had him off the floor before he finished the sentence.

One hand grabbed onto the front of his shirt. I didn’t plan it. It simply happened, the way things happens subconsciously.

I looked at him at eye level - my own silver eyes looking back at me, wide now, the composure entirely gone - and I said, very quietly: "You knew."

"I know," he said. "I know. Put me down. Please. We can talk about this. Everything doesn’t have to be solved with violence."

I held him there for three more seconds.

Then I set him down.

Very roughly. Hoping he crashes to the floor and probably loose a tooth.

I turned away and pressed both palms flat on the surface of the dresser and stood there with my head down and breathed.

The exhaustion hit me then - properly, all at once, the weight of the entire night settling into my bones. The chase. The ceremony. The beach. The restlessness. Her arms around me in the dark, meant for him.

"I’m tired," I said. To the wall. To no one. "I’m tired of fighting over the same ground over and over again."

Merrick was quiet.

"Go back to your wife," I said. "Take her to your castle. I wish you..." The words stuck briefly. I pushed through them. "I wish you well."

"Terrell."

"Go, Merrick."

A long pause.

"She’ll come around," he said, quietly. The composure back but gentler than usual. "You know she will. She’s... whatever she’s feeling right now isn’t the final answer. You know that."

I said nothing.

I heard him move toward the door.

I heard the door close.

I stood at the dresser in the early grey light and I looked at my own hands and I thought about the way she’d felt tucked against my side and the way she’d smiled when she thought she was looking at him and the way my name in her voice sounded different from every other name I had ever been called.

I thought about a very long wait ahead and the fact that she’ll never come to me. She’ll probably never think of me.

Then I straightened.

And I got dressed.