CLAIMED BY MY ALPHA STEPBROTHER AND STEPFATHER: MC EROTICA

CHAPTER 37 - THE ALPHA

IVY’S POV

I’ve never seen Knox afraid.

I’ve seen him possessive and aggressive and feral and half-shifted with his claws buried in plaster, but I have never seen the colour leave his face the way it does when his eyes land on the silver-haired man in the corner booth.

His entire body changes in a single heartbeat – the post-s*x looseness in his shoulders solidifies into something rigid and his hand moves from the small of my back to my hip and he shifts me behind him with a motion that’s so instinctive it looks like a reflex.

The fact that Knox Voss – who walks into rooms like he owns them and stands over me like I’m something he conquered – is putting his body between me and another person tells me more about the man in the corner than any introduction ever could.

“Knox–”

“We’re leaving.” His voice is flat in a way I haven’t heard before, stripped of the low heat and the cocky drawl and the filthy undertone.

He steers me toward the door with his hand on my hip like a rudder, and I glance back over my shoulder and the silver-haired man hasn’t moved – he’s watching us leave with a stillness that makes Dominic’s composure look fidgety, and his glass is raised slightly in Knox’s direction in a gesture that might be a toast or might be a warning.

On the bike Knox drives too fast. His body between my thighs is rigid where it’s usually relaxed, and the engine is screaming at a pitch that matches whatever is happening inside his chest because the double heartbeat I carry is hammering so hard that I can feel it in my teeth.

“Who was that?” I shout over the engine.

“My uncle. The Alpha. Stay away from him.” Each word lands like it was cut from something harder than language, and the finality of his tone tells me this conversation is over for now.

At the apartment he doesn’t go to his room.

He paces the living room – back and forth across the hardwood, checking the locks on the front door, the back door, the windows, running his hands through his hair in a gesture I’ve never seen him make.

The Knox I know doesn’t fidget, Knox doesn’t show uncertainty, Knox walks through the world like it was built for him and anything that disagrees can get in line.

But tonight he’s standing at my bedroom window looking out at the dark street with his jaw clenched and his hands braced on the windowsill and his breathing uneven, and the fear coming off him is so unfamiliar that it scares me more than Mara’s claws did.

I put my hand on his back and he flinches like I burned him, and when he turns around his eyes are gold-ringed and his expression is something I can only describe as a man trying to hold a door shut while something enormous pushes from the other side, and the something isn’t his wolf – it’s the terror of whatever Viktor represents.

He grabs me.

There’s no pause and no journey to the bedroom because we don’t make it to the bedroom.

We make it to the living room floor, and my back hits the hardwood and his body covers mine with his full weight – heavier than usual because the shift is pressing through and his muscles are denser than they should be – and his mouth is on mine with a desperation that tastes like fear converted into the only language his body speaks.

He tears my shirt up and over my head and his hands are everywhere and his claws are out, not fully but enough that I can feel the points dragging against my skin as he strips my clothes off.

The hardwood under my shoulder blades is cold and unforgiving, and his body on top of mine is burning hot, and the contrast makes every nerve ending fire in both directions at once.

He pushes inside me without checking if I’m ready and I AM ready because his fear has done something to my arousal that I don’t have the psychological training to explain, and the stretch of him fills me so completely that my spine arches off the floor and my hands fly to his back where I can feel the muscles shifting wrong under his skin.

His hips drive forward with a roughness that goes past anything he’s given me before – something raw and unfiltered that runs on the same fuel as the pacing and the locked doors and the way he looked at Viktor across a bar like he was seeing the end of something.

His claws dig into the hardwood on either side of my head and I hear the wood SCREECH as four parallel lines are carved into the floor, and the sound is so visceral that my p***y clenches around him and he snarls against my neck in response.

He pins me with his full shifted weight and each thrust shoves me an inch across the floor and I’m going to have rug burn on my shoulder blades except there’s no rug, just hardwood, and I don’t care because the intensity of scared Knox is doing something to my body that transcends physical sensation and enters the territory of something almost spiritual.

I reach up and grab his jaw with both hands and his face is hot and the bones are sharper than usual and his golden eyes are wild with something that isn’t lust but is running on the same circuit, and I hold his face and say the only thing I can think of that isn’t his name.

“I’m here.”

He bites me.

His fangs sink into my shoulder – the same spot as the old mark, the spot that’s become his territory on my body – and the pain spikes so sharp that my vision flashes white, and then the warmth comes.

That same liquid heat from the half-shift night, spreading outward from the bite through my veins like molten honey, and the warmth hits my bloodstream and the pleasure that follows is so intense that I c*m without warning, my body arching off the hardwood while his teeth are still in my shoulder and his hips are still driving forward and the combined sensation of pain and warmth and fullness wipes my consciousness clean for a full three seconds.

He pulls his fangs out and I feel the wound close – the skin knitting itself together under the warmth and the pain dissolving into a heated throb that pulses in time with the double heartbeat in my chest. The healing bite. His wolf’s saliva closing what his wolf’s teeth opened, and the wound that should need stitches is smooth pink skin within seconds.

He goes harder after the bite, like the taste of my blood unlocked something in his wolf that the fear was holding back, and his thrusts are so deep that I can feel him in my stomach.

His claws are carving new lines in the hardwood beside my head and I’m going to have to explain those scratches to my mom, but I cannot think about my mom right now because Knox is cumming inside me with a sound that rattles the windows and his entire body is shuddering with the kind of release that feels more like a collapse than a climax.

We lie on the hardwood floor in the dark living room with claw marks in the wood and my clothes in shreds around us and his body still inside mine.

His breathing slows against my neck and for the first time since we left the bar I feel the tension leave his muscles one by one like locks being released.

His phone rings.

The sound cuts through the silence like a knife and he lifts his head and reaches for his jeans on the floor and pulls the phone out and looks at the screen, and everything that just released locks back up in an instant.

His face goes dead – just empty in a way that’s more terrifying than any expression I’ve seen him make because Knox’s face is never empty, Knox’s face is always broadcasting something, and the absence of signal means whatever is on that screen has shut him down entirely.

“It’s Viktor,” he says.