Alpha's Last Fight: A Paranormal Shapeshifter BBW Romance (18 page)

Chapter Seventeen

Hutch

I uncurled my contorted body from the passenger seat of Nat’s shitty little car and took a couple of minutes to try and get the blood circulating in my legs again. I hate cars. I hate being caged. A couple of hours in this miniature deathtrap felt like an eternity.

“Are we there yet?”

“About halfway.”

“You got to be kidding me.”

“Don’t be such a baby. Anyway, you didn’t have to come. You volunteered.”

“I thought…”

“Hmmm?”

“You’d like…”

“Hmmm?”

“Hey, cut it out.” The new Nat was cute. Cute but annoying. Annoyingly cute. When she’d asked if I wanted to head back to her apartment for the weekend so she could do a few chores, I’d agreed. Partly out of curiosity, partly because we’d been an item for a couple of weeks now and it seemed like what I was supposed to do, but mostly because I wanted to be around her.

The new Nat wasn’t just cute. She was sassy. She was
insatiable
. In some ways I guess she was making up for lost time. But maybe this was just her. The real her. The one she’d kept caged for the last five years.

Either way, I wasn’t complaining. It wasn’t just the sex though. I felt better around her. Just… better. She brought out the best in me.

“Seriously, why did you come, Hutch? I thought you hated cities.”

“Yeah… but I like you.”

She pranced over to me. I felt like I’d been locked up in some kind of torture chamber, but she was as fresh as a daisy. She smelled amazing.

“Oh… you like me? You like me. Just like. Or
like
like? I mean, I seem to remember something… something you said about an alpha needing a… what was that word, begins with...”

“OK, enough already. Guys say loads of stuff when they want some. In the heat of the moment and that. You know how it is.”

“Oh, guys say stuff when they want some? Is that all it was?”

She reached out and put the flat of her palm against my thigh. I could feel the heat through my jeans.

“You want some now, Hutch?”

Her hand inched upwards, smoothing out the material in its wake. Searching me out, finding the curve of my manhood and then stopping, her hand resting against me.

Cars flew past us at sixty miles an hour but the rest stop was deserted for now. Hell yeah, I wanted some.

“Why don’t you say some
stuff
and see where it gets you?”

I raised my eyebrows, darting a quick glance over at her. She smiled pertly.

“Come on. You’re a guy. You want some. Talk to me. You never know what might happen.”

While I was trying to figure out what she was on about, she began to trace a line around the bulge of my cock with her thumb. I felt a twinge of growing desire as I began to stiffen. These jeans were tight, and this was going to get uncomfortable pretty quickly if she kept this up.

And then she gave me a pat and stepped away.

“I’m serious Hutch. You want some? Talk to me. I don’t just like it when you growl and fight. I want a partner I can talk to.”

“I uh… you’re really pretty?”

She rolled her eyes.

“That’s the best you got? What about the other girls? What do you say to them?”

“Maybe… ‘You want to fuck?’ And then they say ‘yeah’. And then it’s mostly just growling and panting and them calling out my name.”

“You really suck at this, don’t you?” She crossed her arms.

“Sorry!”

“And speaking of sucking...” Nat dropped to a crouch in front of me and I felt the muscles across my abdomen tighten instinctively in anticipation. But for now, she just played with me through my jeans, tracing the outline of my rapidly stiffening cock with her fingernails in delicate swirling patterns.

“Say something nice about me. I don’t just want a buffed out guy to shove his dick in me without ever talking. Say something that lets me know you want me, that lets me know what you want. Say something that makes me feel good about what we’re doing here. What we’ve been doing for the past couple of weeks.”

This relationship was difficult and confusing. Sure it had only been a couple of weeks, but we’d fucked plenty and she’d never made me play twenty questions first.

I was tempted to just take control. Grab her… kiss her… make her mine. She liked that. She loved that. But... stupid fucking Gina with her stupid fucking advice. Ever since Nat and I had gotten serious, that girl had been all up in my face constantly trying to re-educate me and turn me into boyfriend material.

You gotta mix it up a bit, Hutch. You got to let her take the lead as well, Hutch. Make sure she knows you’ve got feelings and crap like that, Hutch
.
If you screw this up, I’m going to make sure you never walk again, Hutch.

I didn’t want to screw this up. But I didn’t want it to be this complicated either.

“You know I’ve fucked a lot of women right—ow, what the fuck?”

I hadn’t even finished my sentence when she gave my cock a violent squeeze, and not in a fun way.

“Are you kidding? That’s your opener? Are you going to tell me about all the diseases they’ve given you next?”

“Shifters don’t get those diseases.”

“You say that as if it’s your species’ biggest accomplishment.”

I shrugged.

“
Our
species. And you didn’t let me finish. A lot of women. And none of them made me feel the way you do.”

She reached up and began to undo my belt. She didn’t need to tell me to go on.

“You make me feel better.”

“Better?” She asked, as she tugged at my waistband, pulling my jeans down over my hips so I sprung free. My cock bobbing and weaving in front of me like it had just entered the ring.

“I… yeah… just better. When I first met you… and by the way, when I first met you, before all this, the first thing I thought was ‘she’s pretty’. And we don’t get a lot of pretty at the fights. We got hot, we got sexy, and I never cared much for beautiful. I mean a broken and bloody nose is beautiful if it wins you the fight.”

I could feel myself flagging a little. I was rambling. She wasn’t losing interest, though, so I kept it up.

“I mean it, I thought you were pretty. I still think you’re pretty, Natalie.”

I had to thank Gina for that one.
Call her Natalie now and then, not just Nat, it’ll make her believe any old shit you tell her
. Except it wasn’t ‘any old shit’. I meant it all. When I first saw her. That dress, those eyes and those hourglass curves that just didn’t quit.

“Since then I just thought that if I was around you, you’d make me better. Better man, better wolf, better fighter, better lover.”

She toyed with me as I spoke. Sometimes she barely even touched me, her fingers like wind against the heat of my flesh. Sometimes she just looked at me, as if I was like a work of art or something. Sometimes she inhaled me, as if… I don’t know what. Whatever it was, it was working. I felt an infuriatingly delicious need. And every time she parted her lips, to moisten them, or even just to draw another breath, I felt a surge of heat swirling outwards from somewhere deep inside the pit of my stomach.

“And I don’t know. I was right, I guess. You make me better. I can feel it whenever I’m around you and it’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before and I don’t want to stop feeling it. Is that good enough? It’s all I’ve got, Nat.”

It was good enough. She told me with deeds rather than words. Her lips parted and she leaned toward me, taking me into her soft, warm mouth. I groaned, but resisted the urge to thrust forward. I didn’t need to take her like that. Not when she was willing to take me.

This wasn’t completely uncharted territory, but it was never like this. Out here in the open, her showing me what she could do and asking for nothing in return except the truth.

I felt her hands on my ass, cupping my cheeks and pulling me forward. Pulling more of me into her mouth. I lifted my head and exhaled a hiss of pleasure through my teeth.

I placed my hands on either side of her head. Not to take over or guide her; she had that well under control. I just wanted to feel her hair. Strands of it sliding through my fingers. So soft, so beautiful.
Dammit
. I found myself wishing I understood why she made me feel like this.

I was glad I didn’t have to speak any more. My mouth was dry and she had to make do with the grunts and groans of a man whose ability to speak had been eradicated by a desperate need for release.

She kept me in her mouth when I came. My strangled howl met with a muffled yelp of surprise, and then a deep satisfying moan as she kept toying with me, with teeth and tongue, until I was spent.

When we were done, we both cleaned up a little. And, in the middle of getting ourselves sorted, she got the giggles. I just stood there grinning. I was wondering if I should offer to return the favor when a car pulled into the stop. This set off another fit of giggles. I didn’t really get the joke, but I liked that she was happy.

She took me by the hand and led me back to the car. “Thanks for coming with me, Hutch. I mean it. And just… thanks in general.”

“Uh… you’re welcome.”

It kind of felt like it should have been the other way around, but who was I to argue? All the way to her place, I thought about what I might say the next time she asked me to… say
stuff
.

***

“Is this it?”

I was confused. Her apartment was tiny. Barely bigger than my trailer. But I could sense her relief when she walked into the door anyway. This… this was home to her. How could anyone be happy in a place like this?

“Yes, this is it.”

“But it’s so… small.”

“You’re one to talk. You live in a trailer.”

I shook my head. That was the dog in her speaking. “I
sleep
in a trailer. Sometimes. I don’t live there. I live out—”

I gestured towards her window, but all I could see was glimpses of a gray sky through towers of concrete, steel and glass.

“You can see the park.” She pouted, clearly disappointed by my lack of enthusiasm for the shoebox she called home.

“Where?”

She pointed to a sliver of green, glimpsed between two office blocks. I’d seen enough. I wanted to go home, but I’d promised Nat we could visit for the weekend and I don’t think I could have faced the drive again so soon anyway. Just a weekend. I could survive that.

I paced restlessly about the room while she binned junk mail and watered plants that had seen better days. When she was done, she fished a beer out of the fridge for me.

“So what are you going to do? Sell this place?”

“What do you mean?”

“You can’t stay here. I assumed you’d move in to my tr… well into the camp anyway. Or maybe just live with your Dad; that could work.”

“I still have a job, Hutch. Technically anyway. This is my home. I mean, we don’t even know where this… us… is going yet. I’m not in a rush.”

“You can’t stay here.”

She paused.

“That’s really not up to you, is it?”

I didn’t want to start a fight, but I don’t think she understood. I tried to explain delicately.

“This is not only about us. This is not about me telling you what to do. I promise. It’s just… you’re in touch with the animal inside you now. You may not have embraced it yet. But it’s there, it’s free. You’re not a do… a—
y’know,
anymore. I’d be surprised if you weren’t climbing the walls by tomorrow. In a week, you’d be as crazy as a loner.”

“What exactly is a loner anyway? I’ve heard you say it before. Is it like a dog?”

I welcomed the change of subject. Maybe I just had to let her learn the hard way that she couldn’t stay here.

“More like the opposite of a dog. Wolves are supposed to live in packs, right? Some choose to live like this...”

“
Dogs
,” she said, not bothering to hide her contempt for the word.

“Yeah. But even then you’ve got all sorts. Some do the whole nine to five thing, then head for the woods as soon as they clock off on Friday. Weekend Wolves.”

That one got a smile out of her.

“Others just want to be at one with nature and give up on civilization entirely. There are packs like this out there in the wilds. But even they find a balance between their two selves. But if you’re out there by yourself, living like a lone wolf, with no one to talk to and no one to remind you what it is to be human… after a while you begin to forget.”

“Forget what?”

“Everything. You forget everything. You forget what it is to be human. You forget what it is to be a wolf. Your body finds a new balance… and so does your mind. That’s what a loner is.”

“I still don’t get it.”

“Well… ever see a werewolf, like in a movie or something? Half-man, half-wolf. Maiming and killing and generally scaring the shit out of everybody? Back in the old countries, a hundred years ago, shifters were hunted to the point of near extinction. Some escaped to other countries. Other continents even. But some got left behind hiding in the woods. They became loners. And what came back down from the woods was bigger and uglier and a fuck of a lot crazier than what went up.

“So that monster you see in the movies, werewolf, wolf man, whatever you call it. That’s what it’s based on. Mean motherfuckers. Tough to kill.”

While she took all that in, I finished my beer and headed to her fridge to see if I could find another.

Chapter Eighteen

Natalie

We spent half an hour arguing about where we should go for the evening. Nothing I suggested seemed to appeal to Hutch. I could tell he was trying, but he was uncomfortable. He didn’t like it here. The apartment
or
the city.

I had to admit, I was feeling it too. It was a small apartment, but in the past I’d found it cozy. Now it felt claustrophobic, like the walls were closing in. I was secretly glad that we weren’t spending more than a couple of days here, and I wondered if I would have felt the same way if Hutch hadn’t put the idea in my head.

In the end we agreed to a compromise. I would choose the destination if Hutch got to choose what I wore. Of course, this turned out to be a trap.