UNTOUCHED (Midwest Alphas) (Book 1) (22 page)

I hold my breath and sink to the bottom, submerging my desires under thousands of gallons of water.

Three days. Just three more days and I’ll be pinned beneath a handsome European man. Or two. Hell, maybe a woman, I don’t care.

I just have to keep my shit together before I get there.

Chapter 4

Kai

Fuck.

Piper is leaving for the rest of the summer? When the fuck did this happen?

I slam the door closed on my way inside, causing my mother’s yorkie to go bark crazy. “Shut up, Thor,” I shout at him. He nips at my heels as I pass by. I brush him off softly with my foot and take the stairs up two at a time.

Fucking
Europe
?

No, this isn’t happening. I’ve spent this entire summer cozying up to that heartless witch and I’m not going to allow her to slip away from me just before the finish line. No way. No how.

I saw the way she was looking at me in the pool. She had her little eyes on me the whole time, peaking out over the rims of her sunglasses. I even wore my tight old trunks to
really
show her the goods. I fucking
had her
. She was
mine
. I could see it in her eyes. A few more minutes and she would have been begging to suck me off.

But now she and Mandy are going to Europe for the last week of summer?

Fuck.

I pull open the curtains of my bedroom window and stare down at the grounds. The lounge chairs where I left her are empty, but I find her nearby. She’s sitting on the edge of the pool with her feet dangling in the water. Her hair, perfectly styled in an up-do just minutes before, now hangs off her shoulders with elegant chaos. Strands of black lie fused to her white skin, plastering her shoulders with a delicate zebra print.

I grit my teeth at her sizable chest, just a
little
too large for her petite body. It heaves up and down. Her round breasts bounce with each inhale, inching closer to falling out of her tight, red bikini top. She bends forward and rests her face against her palms.

I’ve always relished in these moments with Piper. The moments where she doesn’t even know I’m watching her. It’s a hobby of mine. If there’s one thing Piper gets off on, it’s being the center of attention. When all eyes are on her, she beams bright and puts on a show for her adoring public. I bet she was positively
wet
during her Valedictorian speech.

I always ignore her during those moments, because I can tell how unbelievably fake they are.

She didn’t really care about taking first place in the science fair or earning the lead in the school play. I know because of the moments when she thinks she’s all alone. This is when I
really
pay attention and I see the real Piper Lynch plastered all over her alabaster face.

She’s fucking miserable down here with the rest of us lowly folk.

As if on cue, Philip Lynch strides into the backyard with his briefcase in hand and Piper’s petite little face splits with a wide open smile before he even notices she’s there. Her voice carries on the wind as she greets him with a high-pitched call.

“Daddy!”

He walks over to her with a smile and bends over to plant a fatherly kiss on her forehead. She forces a laugh as he cracks some stiff joke. He stands up, waves a quick goodbye, and continues on his way into the back of the house.

Piper’s eyes follow him closely as he moves, her smile falling more and more with each step he takes until it finally disappears completely. Her eyes flick up at the house and I know she sees me in the window above.

I don’t move. I stare down at her without looking away. Fuck it. If this really is the end of our little game, then I want her to know I’m watching her.

High and mighty, stuck-up, pretty, little, ice princess — Piper
fucking
Lynch.

She finally looks away and pulls her legs out of the water. I watch her as she grabs her book off the lounge chair and avoids my eyes as she strides back inside.

***

“So, Piper…” My mother gathers a bit of pasta with her fork, twirling it around. “What do you have planned for your trip?”

Piper glances up from the barely touched food on her plate, her little eyes scanning around at each of us as we stare at her.

“Yeah,
Piper
,” I say. “Tell us all about it.” I shovel some noodles between my teeth.

A fake smile strikes her lips. “Oh, I can’t wait,” she says. “We’ll land in Berlin first, then from there we’ll take trains to Munich, then Rome, and finally Paris.”

“That’s a lot of ground to cover in so few days,” Philip says.

“We won’t have a whole lot of time to waste anywhere,” Piper says, nodding her head, “but I’m looking forward to seeing the view from the trains. I think it’ll be really cool.”

“Sounds
delightful
,” I mutter.

She narrows her eyes at me for a brief moment to hide the shadow of amusement passing through. “It’ll be peaceful and quiet. A nice change of pace before school starts.”

I stare back at her and bounce a passive smile. “I don’t know,” I say. “It doesn’t sound all that safe to me.”

“Safe?” she parrots back.

I sit up straighter in my seat. “Two young girls wandering around foreign countries all by themselves?” I shoot at cautious look at her father. “I mean, I’ve seen a lot of movies that start out like that and they don’t end well.”

“We’ll be
fine.
”

“Kai may be right. I’ve been thinking about that as well,” Philip says. “Maybe your stepmother or I should go with you. An extra pair of eyes won’t hurt.”

“No—” There’s a desperation in her voice, but Piper masks it quickly with a smile. “Really. We’ll be
fine
. Mandy has been to Germany plenty of times before. She knows her way around — and we’ll be on crowded trains the entire time.”

I lay on the paranoia. “It still sounds
real
risky to me. I mean, you don’t know who could be sitting next to you…” She leers at me with a death stare, one that sends a cold chill down through my toes. I can’t stop the smile from cracking across my face.

“Philip,” my mother begins. She reaches out a hand and brushes her fingers over his. “I’m sure the girls will be perfectly fine. You went on a similar trip in your youth as well, didn’t you?”

Philip sighs. “Yes, Ava,” he answers, “but the world was such a different place back then…”

“That’s right,” Piper grins with opportunity. “You didn’t have cell phones with GPS permanently enabled at all times so your wonderful and trusting father could check in on you and track where you were whenever he wanted to.”

He lowers his eyes and glances at her over the rims of his bifocals. “You’ll have it turned on the entire time?” he asks.

“Every moment.”

I flex my jaw as she looks up at him with her little puppy dog eyes. What a
bitch
.

“Okay,” Philip gives in. “But I want a complete itinerary — on
paper
— with every train car you’re assigned to and every hotel you’re staying at. I want to be able to glance at it and know exactly where you are the entire time. Kapeesh?”

Piper beams. “It’s already on your desk, Daddy.”

“Good girl.”

Her eyes slowly move in my direction. They land on mine across the table and I hear her voice ringing out in my head.

Don’t fuck with me.

I sit back and take a sip of my drink. I chug it down in disappointment while her eyes linger on me. I thought for sure appealing to Philip’s fatherly paranoia would work, but then my fucking mother had to go and ruin it.

Thanks a lot, Mom. Piper leaves for the airport tomorrow morning. Now what am I supposed to do?

“I can’t believe how grown up the two of you are,” my mother coos. “It seems like just yesterday the two of you were playing with each other in the back garden.”

I scoff silently. Mothers always have very different memories of these things. I remember playing with Piper as kids, all right. I remember how she used to sit there and read, merely glancing up at me with hatred for three hours while you and her mother drank mimosas on the lawn. “Oh, how time flies,” I say. I wink at Piper across the table and she glances away.

“And now you’re going to USC, Kai,” she continues, looking at me with pride in her eyes. “Just like I did.”

“And my little Piper’s going to Harvard.” Philip reaches out and lays a hand on Piper’s shoulder. I fight the urge to roll my eyes. I guess Piper’s knack for constantly one-upping everyone around her is genetic.

“Well, it wasn’t a contest or anything…” Piper mutters with a half smile. Oh, Pipes. Don’t play the modest shrew now.

“
Everything
is a contest, Piper,” Philip says, pointing his fork at her. “There’s no such thing as a participation trophy in the real world.”

Oh, great.
Here comes another one of Headmaster Lynch’s classic motivational speeches. I’m sure they’re plenty motivating to Piper, but to me? The B-average jock? Might as well staple a sign to my forehead that reads
“fuck you, kid.”
And my mother? Bless her heart. She reaches across the table and pats my hand as if to say,
“You’re still perfect to me, son.”

“Excuse me,” I say. “I’m meeting up with Shawn tonight. Dinner was great, Mom. Thanks.”

“Have fun, sweetie,” she says. “Don’t stay out too late.”

“We won’t.” I take my empty plate and walk across the dining room into the kitchen to lay it in the sink.

Piper’s voice carries through the house as she continues talking about her trip. My feet turn numb, stalling me in place near the sink. I lean against the kitchen counter and listen in closely as the sound travels between my ears. It’s intoxicating, really. Like a pleasant siren’s song passing through ocean waves.

But then lightning strikes and the storm arrives to fuck you and your ship up.

I push off the counter and wander across the kitchen. Her dark blue eyes meet mine for a brief second as I pass across the open doorway on my way into the hallway.

She laughs at something her father says and I fight the urge to punch a wall.

Piper is going to Europe tomorrow and she doesn’t come back until the day she leaves for Harvard. I’m screwed. There’s no way she’d fuck me tonight either, not after the completely obvious way I just tried to derail her entire trip right in front of her. The bet’s over.

I’ve lost.

I reach into my pocket and palm my phone. Shawn’s going to be a very happy man after he reads this text message.

Congratulations, asshole—

I start typing it out, but I quickly delete it and pause in front of Philip’s office door.

I twist the door open, being extra careful not to make any noise as I do it. The hinge squeaks from old age, but I hear my mother’s laughter in the other room and push it open the rest of the way before she’s gone silent again. A small lamp illuminates the room and I step through the shadows, quickly darting for his desk.

Here it is — Just sitting right on top in one of those plastic see-through folders like a fucking book report or something. Piper’s itinerary. Every hotel, every train, every map. A chiseled-in-stone blueprint of her exact whereabouts for the next week.

I raise an eyebrow and send a new message to Shawn.

Got any plans this week?

Chapter 5

Piper

“Ich liebe deine muschi…”

I giggle at his deep voice as he rocks me harder against the small hotel bed. I had worried the language barrier would make finding sexual partners a difficult task, but I guess my
come fuck me
stare is universal currency.

I caught this fellow, a young student named Lukas, taking photos of pretty girls near the Oberbaum Bridge. He looked at me with nervous eyes when I called him out on it, stealing words from Mandy’s vast German vocabulary she picked up from her Austrian nanny. His expression quickly turned amused when I mispronounced over half of them and we spent the next twenty minutes bantering back and forth until he finally took the hint.

Lukas digs his thick nails into my thighs as he rails me, igniting the pain in my skin and sending a flourish of pleasure towards my aching slit. I cry out and wrap my legs tighter around him to send his thick cock deeper inside of me. He grunts with each thrust and leans over me to hold my body in place. I moan at his domination of me as my passions double back for a second orgasm.