Taken by the Alphas Page 9

  He did.

  Chapter Six

  Days passed and Addie grew stronger. The effects of exhaustion were soon overcome with plenty of rest, warmth, and some of the best food she’d ever tasted in her life straight from Marnie’s kitchen. She spent most of her time with Adam, the man who would entertain her many questions and gave her access to his books as well. His office was full of rare and unique books, and when she was not chewing his ear off with her curiosity, she could be found with her nose in one of his tomes.

  One afternoon, Addie and Adam stood on the balcony where he had first shown her the village. Adam was telling her more about the place, his arms wrapped around her as he stood behind her, sheltering her from the worst of the cold.

  “The village has fifty people living here full time,” Adam said, the stubble on his chin tickling the back of her ear as he talked. “There are around two hundred who could claim it as home, but most of them will never come back.”

  “Why not?”

  “This life is not for everybody,” Adam replied. “Even those born to it can find it… boring, I suppose.”

  “I could never be bored out here,” Addie sighed.

  “But you want to go back to your college. You want to escape the valley.”

  “I…” She screwed her face up. “I just don’t want to be told I have to stay one place or another. I don’t like being told what to do.”

  “I think you do,” he said, running his hand over the curve of her bottom slowly. “But I think you enjoy defiance even more.”

  A little shiver of excitement ran through her. Adam had an electrifying effect on her. Every time he touched her it was as if circuits she hadn’t known existed were suddenly activated. As much as his commanding presence could rile her, it made her feel more alive than she ever had before.

  She felt his hand cupping her cheek, squeezing possessively, and then reaching up to her waistband to pull her pants down. Addie squirmed on the balcony as he disrobed her from the waist down, pulling her pants to her mid-thighs, and pushing her forward enough to allow him to rub his fingers between her thighs, little swirling teasing motions.

  “Not out here,” she moaned.

  “Oh, definitely out here,” he growled as he stepped behind her and murmured the words against the back of her neck.

  “But someone might see!”

  The village square was largely empty, as far as she could tell. Most of the villagers were either indoors or out on the plains hunting or foraging. She still felt incredibly vulnerable as Adam’s fingers parted her lower lips and slid inside her tight pussy, swirling slowly in her inner heat.

  “So what if they do see?” Adam growled against her neck. “They’ll see a female in heat being mated by her alpha. There’s nothing more natural.”

  She was at the peak of her cycle, the days where her juices ran more copiously, where her sex drive was at its height. How he knew that, she didn’t know. Some animal instinct, perhaps scent, perhaps something else. It was impossible to think about; his fingers were driving her to distraction as they plunged in and out of her.

  “Your mother lives here… what if she catches us?”

  “My mother has moved to the house next door,” Adam said. “She knows we need our privacy, especially you, my shy little mate. It’s just us…”

  “Just us and the entire village…”

  “I think you like the idea of being seen,” he murmured. “Every time you talk about it, your pussy grips my fingers harder. I think you like the idea of being fucked in front of everybody, displayed before the village as my mate…”

  Addie bit her lower lip to stifle the moan that threatened to burst out of her mouth. Adam’s fingers were working harder inside her now, in and out, in and out. She arched her back and lifted her hips, offering herself to him in erotic surrender. She might have come but for the cool air on her pussy lips, the soft down of her hair protecting her mound a little, but not quite enough. She was starting to shiver with the exposure; even Adam pressing close behind her couldn’t quite take the chill away.

  He sensed that too, wrapped an arm around her waist and picked her up off the balcony, his fingers still deep inside her. Addie let out a squeal as she was carried, impaled, into the warmth of the bedroom and tossed down on the bed.

  Adam wasted no further time. His cock was soon free and he plunged it inside her, pinning her face down on the bed as his hips pounded against her chilled bottom, slapping it warm with thrust after thrust. It was rough, urgent, and primal, and Addie’s body responded to it the same way. She let out her cries of passion into the bedsheets, her mouth muffled.

  “God, you’re perfect,” he said, holding himself deep inside her, his teeth grazing the back of her neck. “You were made for this.”

  His hand slid up under her belly, his fingertips found her breasts and her nipples, pinching between thrusts.

  “Made for my cock,” he growled. “And my cum.”

  Addie could only gasp and moan, her arousal expressed in high-pitched feminine cries. He was stretching her wide, his cock finding the little sensitive spot at the front of her vaginal wall, his weight pressing her clit against the bedding so that every stroke made pleasure triangulate through her body.

  Nobody fucked like Adam. When Adam took her, he took absolutely every part of her. She was soon coming in a protracted orgasm that he rode her through, his cock pounding her quivering wet pussy as she writhed beneath him, gasping and begging for more.

  Adam fucked her hard and long and left her leaking his cum, her legs still spread, her lower lips swollen from the rough lovemaking. He had been utterly merciless in his lust and left her totally satisfied. There was no doubt that she had been claimed again after her time with Armel…

  Armel.

  As the erotic haze cleared, her mind turned to Armel. She wished it wouldn’t. It would be easier to be with Adam. Adam wanted her and he wanted to share his life and his knowledge with her… but there was a yearning deep inside her that would not be satisfied without the bear.

  Chapter Seven

  Addie sure could hold a grudge. In Armel’s moodier moments, he gave real thought to simply stepping aside and leaving her to Adam. She seemed happier with the pack alpha, and she was definitely cold toward him.

  What stopped him was the fact that in spite of her mood and her behavior, there was a bond between them, and fleeing at the first sign of trouble was not his style. Relationships were difficult. Relationships between three people were very difficult, and Addie was a scared, spoiled brat.

  He had tried to explain to her the reasons for being unable to tell her more about his history, and she had refused to listen. What she was doing was a little spiteful, an extended temper tantrum that Adam was rather enjoying as she spent a good amount of time draping herself over him, presumably in an attempt to make Armel jealous.

  He responded simply by doing what he could: working around the village. There was wood to be felled in the nearby forest, and dragged back to replenish the wood stores that were being depleted in many of the village houses not as well built as Adam’s.

  The pack was grateful to him for his help, and he was not short of people to talk to. He’d known most of them since he was a boy, and it was quite nice to be part of a community rather than holing up in in his cave alone for the winter months. Some of them asked him about Addie, but he did not give them much in the way of a reply. That was Adam’s news to share, though he did not seem inclined to share it as of yet. Armel noticed the pack gathering in corners and talking to one another in hushed voices. His and Addie’s presences were causing a huge stir, one that grew by the day. Adam would have to address it, and soon, if he could take his hands off Addie long enough.

  As it turned out, Adam was not the only one with a blind spot. In their estrangement, Armel did not notice Addie’s anger growing. He figured she wanted space and he gave it to her, which made for quite a surprise when she came storming up to him at the edge of the forest one aftern
oon. He had been chopping wood when she approached with her eyes narrowed, her jaw clenched, her gloved hands curled into fists, which he found adorable as she tramped through the snow, having to lift her knees high like an angry stamping cub.

  “Hello, Addie,” he greeted her warmly. “How are you?”

  She gave him a withering look, as if he had said something wildly offensive. “Don’t talk to me like that!”

  “Talk to you like what?”

  “So condescending.”

  He looked at her, standing there with her face all screwed up, practically vibrating anger and he knew why she’d come to him. She’d come to pick a fight.

  “Check yourself, Addie,” he warned her. “I’m not Adam, but that doesn’t mean you can talk to me however you like.”

  “Oh, really? Do you care if I talk to you at all? Because you haven’t talked to me in days.”

  “I’ve talked to you, Addie,” he replied. “You have refused to talk back.”

  “Well,” she grumped. “You haven’t said anything worth answering.”

  Armel turned the sharp blade of his ax to some of the smaller branches of the tree, cutting off a few long, whippy branches not quite as thick as his finger at their thickest parts, and tapering to twigs at the very ends. As Addie fumed at him, he casually began to strip the smaller twigs from the length of the branches.

  “Well!” She stamped her foot in the snow. “You don’t even have anything to say to me now, do you. Or is there nothing you can say to me because everything about you is a secret.”

  She was in full blown brat mode, but didn’t seem to realize it. The misunderstanding from days earlier had festered and was now exploding out of her with indignant curses.

  “Not everything is a secret, Addie,” he said calmly as his fingers worked on the branches. “I’ll tell you as much as I can.”

  His reasonable response only served to make her angrier. “You don’t even care that I’m mad at you!” She stamped her other foot but only succeeded in getting herself deeper into the drift.

  When she didn’t get the response she wanted, she picked up a scoop of snow in her hands and started packing it into a ball.

  “Don’t,” he said in warning tones. Not because he was scared of the snowball. If she’d been playing with him, he would have played along. But this wasn’t play. This was aggression in the guise of something playful, and he wasn’t going to allow that.

  She cocked her hand and held it there, looking him dead in the eye, challenging him. It would have been kind of cute if there wasn’t so much intensity to it. She was holding that snowball as if she was holding a grenade.

  “You don’t want to throw that,” he said, knowing full well that she really did want to throw it. She could be an ornery little thing. He knew that from watching her in camp by herself. He’d once seen her get into a fight with a tree stump that she’d kept tripping over walking to and from her tent. It was such a comical scene he’d had to cover his mouth so as not to burst out laughing and let her know that she was not alone.

  Her wrist snapped forward and the snowball went flying over his head.

  Armel reached out and grabbed her wrist.

  “Hey!” she whined. “I didn’t even touch you.”

  “I told you not to throw that,” he growled at her, pulling her forward.

  “Lemme go! Ass!”

  She was a snarling, spitting hellcat, throwing a temper tantrum that he understood came from a place of fear. Adam had made it clear to her where she stood. Armel knew he was a lesser known quantity and she was testing him. He had to show her that she wasn’t going to get away with anything with him that she wouldn’t with Adam. It wasn’t fair on either of them that the relationship was being compared this way, but that didn’t change what he had to do.

  Armel snatched Addie up by the front of her jacket. Her feet left the ground and dangled in the air and Armel watched as her eyes widened at realizing just how easily he could handle her. He was much physically larger than Adam, and his strength was reflected in his size.

  “Remember, Addie,” he said. “You wanted this.”

  Without another word, he tossed her over his knee, his leg propped up on a rock beneath the snow.

  “Fucking no!” Her cry didn’t make much sense even with just two words, but that didn’t matter because he wasn’t listening to her cursing. He was peeling down her snow pants and her thermal underwear and the panties beneath them and baring her butt to the cold wind. It was difficult to keep her top pulled well down as she wriggled and squirmed, but he did his best to keep her back warm as he started to warm her butt a different way.

  His gloved hand met her butt in a hard slap, covering most of it and protecting it momentarily from the cold as long as it was pressed against her tender skin. She let out a yelp as it landed and then gasped as his hand swept away and the cold came rushing back as his palm flowered red across her skin.

  “Why are you doing this? You don’t even care!”

  “You want to see how much I care, Addie? Do you want me to show you like this over my knee—or in my bed?”

  * * *

  She’d made a huge mistake, but it was way too late to correct it now. As Armel growled the words that made her stomach clench low down and sent little bolts of excitement rushing through her lower midsection, the flashes of pain that burst through her with every slap made her regret how she’d approached him. Armel had seemed like the nice guy, the soft guy, the guy who wouldn’t do anything. Now she realized he was the strong silent type that you really had to watch out for.

  His hand came down on her butt hard, his fingers long enough to cover her cheeks entirely. He was spanking her about as hard as she could tolerate, making her cheeks ache and burn with each and every slap.

  Addie cried out for clemency, but she’d pushed him too hard, and when he tired of spanking her with his hand and made some muttering sound about not wanting to bruise her, he grabbed one of the whippy branches he’d been working on from the beginning of their conversation and took that to her bottom as well, switching her backside with the implements he’d been crafting from the moment she’d started giving him attitude.

  From the first lash of the switch, Addie squealed. It burned like hell, a little thin line of Hades, not like the prints of his hand that spread out the force and left warmth behind. Armel plied the switches hard and fast, covering her butt in little welts in a matter of minutes as she gasped and writhed and cried and desperately tried to come up with something she could say to make the punishment end.

  “This isn’t fair!” She finally found words that managed to stop him for a second.

  “Why not?”

  “Because…” She searched her brain for a reason and couldn’t find a good one. She went with a bad one instead. “Because I didn’t know this would happen.”

  “I bet you didn’t,” he said with a short laugh. The branch came whipping through the icy air again and met her bottom right where her cheeks met her thighs. Addie let out a howl that barely sounded human as the switch found the most sensitive part of her skin with perfect aim.

  “I’d rather not be doing this,” he said as he lifted his arm again and whipped the switch diagonally across her cheeks. “But this is what you need, isn’t it, Addie.”

  She wanted to say it wasn’t what she needed, but she really wasn’t sure anymore. It hurt and she definitely hated the pain, but the torrent of anger that had sent her storming up to him in the first place was abating now. In the weirdest way, she felt better. Physically she felt incredibly sore. The spanking and the switching had left her bottom a hot mass of welts, but the anger was gone.

  “You don’t have to say yes,” he said, rubbing his palm over her bottom. “I know.”

  Addie let out a long sigh, a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. “I’m sorry,” she said in a little voice she barely recognized as her own. “I don’t know what came over me. I mean, of course you don’t have to tell me everything about you. W
hy would you? We really only just met, and what you are is something that’s been hidden from the world for… forever almost.”

  * * *

  Armel felt sorry for the brat over his knee. She was so confused. Poor thing didn’t understand her place at all. And that was his fault.

  “You know why you really hate this? Because you’re scared. That’s why you come out here alone too. You’re scared of what your heart feels. You’re scared of being loved. You have to know everything because if you know it you think you can control it. Well, you know what, Addie? You can’t know everything. Even if you think you do, you don’t. And you can’t control much besides yourself.”

  “You’re trying to control me,” she sniffed.

  “Only because you’re not controlling yourself,” he pointed out. “And because you came out here and practically dared me to do this.”

  He pulled her pants up over her butt to protect her from the cold. Getting spanked out in the snow was not any kind of fun, and it wasn’t as if she was getting off lightly now that her pants were up. He knew that the way her thermals and underwear would be sitting tightly against the little welts from the switch would not be comfortable.

  She was still sniffling, and as he wrapped his arms around her she buried her face in his chest and let out a little sob that make his heart ache for her. She was a lost little thing out there in the wilds, grasping for something she didn’t understand. He doubted she even knew what it was that made her so angry and so fiercely independent. Armel couldn’t tell her either. She would have to discover her truth for herself. What he could do was hold her tight and comfort her until she settled in his arms.

  And then he had an idea.

  * * *

  “I want you to have something,” Armel said suddenly.

  Addie tried her best to dry her eyes and look up at him without feeling like a naughty brat. There was something about being spanked by Armel that made her feel much worse than being punished by Adam. Maybe because Adam was a hard ass, whereas Armel really had to be pushed to show that side of him. If he was thrashing her, she really deserved it.