My Ex Cheated, So I Chose His Alpha Uncle

Chapter 2 One Night With a Stranger

Sophia's POV

I took one step back from that cracked-open door.

It was the middle of summer, but I felt like every inch of my skin had turned to ice.

"ENOUGH." Aurora's roar tore through my mind. "I've had it. Let me out. Let me tear them apart."

No.

"Why not?" she demanded, furious. "They humiliated us! They —"

Because then we'd look even more pathetic.

I turned and ran.

My vision blurred. Tears, hot and useless, wrecking my mascara, wrecking everything.

I hit a wall. I hit someone's shoulder.

"Watch it," Aurora warned.

I didn't hear her.

There was only one thing playing on a loop inside my head:

'I've been playing the sweet, patient boyfriend.'

Playing.

So the last three years — all of it — was a performance?

"Yes," Aurora said softly. "Every bit of it. I should have pushed harder. I should have —"

Stop talking.

I shoved through the front door of the bar. The night air hit my face, sharp and cold.

"Sophia," Aurora said gently. "Let's go home."

I was ten years old when my mother taught me, with her death, that love and mate bonds are both fragile things you cannot trust.

Don't believe men. Don't expect anything from them.

"Your mother was right," Aurora said. "They're all liars."

I thought I had learned that lesson.

I thought I had built my walls high enough.

But then Wyatt happened.

He came into my gray, careful life like a beam of light through a crack in the ceiling. And I let him in. I actually let him in.

"Sophia," Aurora said, softer now. "Don't cry. We have each other."

But I couldn't stop.

The tears kept coming, one after another, relentless.

And underneath them, something else was building.

The grief was still there. But underneath it — anger. Pure. Burning. A fire that had no interest in going out.

"Yes," Aurora growled. "That's it. Stop crying. Get angry. Stay angry. Make him pay."

Who did he think he was?

Who gave him the right to do this to me?

"He doesn't deserve you," Aurora snarled. "Not your love. Not a single one of your tears."

That's when I saw it. Wyatt, crossing the lobby toward the elevators, a female hostess tucked under his arm, both of them laughing.

"He's going up to —" Aurora's voice dripped with disgust.

I knew exactly where he was going. The hotel kept private rooms upstairs.

All those nights he said he was working late. All those nights he said he was watching the game with friends. Was he here? Was he always here, with other women, while I was home believing in him?

"Sophia," Aurora said, and her voice had shifted — still furious, but sharp now, focused. "Let's make him pay."

Yes.

I wanted him to pay.

The anger burned through everything else. Through the grief. Through the humiliation. Through every soft feeling I'd ever had for him.

All that was left was one single thought:

He is going to lose.

I found a corner of the bar and sat down. I started drinking.

"Sophia, that's enough." Aurora's voice was worried.

I didn't stop.

Whiskey. Tequila. Vodka.

"You're going to be sick."

Good.

I wanted to be drunk. I wanted to be so far gone that I could do the kind of thing I'd never do sober.

Wyatt wanted to win his bet? Wanted to take what I'd never given him?

"Then let's make sure he loses," Aurora said suddenly, and her voice was sharp with something calculating. "Completely. Humiliatingly."

Yes.

I just needed to figure out how.

By the fifth drink the room was tilting.

"Sophia, stop." Aurora was genuinely alarmed now. "We need to go home."

Not yet.

I stood up. My legs had other ideas.

I grabbed the edge of the bar. Missed.

"Careful —" Aurora warned.

Too late.

I was already falling.

I expected the floor.

Instead, two hands caught me. Steady, sure, like they'd been waiting.

"You okay?"

A man's voice.

I looked up.

He was — there's no other word for it — stunning. Even through the blur of alcohol, that registered immediately. I was in heels and he still had at least a head of height on me. Six-three, maybe more. His shoulders filled out his dark gray suit in a way that had nothing to do with the gym and everything to do with the kind of frame you're born with — broad, powerful, built for dominance.

"Sophia." Aurora's voice dropped to something low and urgent. "He's dangerous. I can feel it from here. He's an Alpha. A strong one."

My breath caught.

His features were carved. A straight, sharp nose. A jaw that could cut glass. A mouth that was thin and unhurried and far too interesting.

"Let's leave," Aurora said. "Right now."

I didn't want to leave.

Right now, in this moment, I was afraid of nothing. There was only one thing in my head, burning bright and reckless:

Make Wyatt lose.

"Sophia, what are you doing?" Aurora's voice went tense.

I reached up and hooked my arm around the man's neck.

"SOPHIA, NO."

"Hey." My voice came out low and a little rough. "Do you have a girlfriend?"

"Are you out of your mind?!" Aurora was practically screaming. "You cannot —"

"No," he said.

"Well." I smiled. "Now you do. I'm giving myself to you, if you want me."

"SOPHIA, STOP." Aurora was fighting me now, pushing against the walls of my mind. "You will regret this!"

I won't.

Wyatt wanted to sleep with me? Wanted to win his nasty little bet?

Then I was going to make sure there was nothing left to win.

"This is insane!" Aurora raged. "Think about what you're doing!"

I was thinking about it. I had never been this clear in my entire life.

In the elevator, I could barely stand. My legs had gone soft, heat pooling low in my body. He noticed. He put an arm around my waist and pulled me into him without asking, my back against his chest, his arms the only thing keeping me upright.

His chest was solid as a wall. The scent of him — cold pine, something clean and deep — cut through the alcohol fog and settled something frantic inside me, even as it lit a different kind of fire underneath.

He led me into the suite. It was expensive. I didn't care.

He looked at me — really looked at me, taking in my glassy, unfocused eyes — then tilted his head toward the door, which was still cracked an inch behind us.

"You can still leave," he said.

I rose up onto the tips of my heels and looked him dead in the eye.

"What's wrong," I said, "are you not up for it?"

The answer was a door kicked shut. A dull, heavy boom.

Then his arms swept me off my feet and his breath was hot against my ear: "You've run out of room to change your mind."

He set me down on the bed. Stood back. Loosened his tie with one hand, slow and deliberate. His gaze moved over me the way a wolf surveys territory it has already decided to claim. My heart was hammering. My body answered before my mind did.

He undressed me with unhurried precision, his mouth tracing down my throat, teeth grazing the curve of my neck, leaving marks I would have to account for in the morning. His hands moved like he had all the time in the world — and every place they touched left me arching into him, breathless, wanting more of something I didn't have a name for.

His lips traveled lower, finding every place that made me gasp, every nerve that fired bright and sharp. I twisted against the sheets, hands clutching the fabric, sounds leaving my throat that I had no control over.

"Oh — God — that's —"

I sobbed through it, my whole body shaking, sensation crashing over me in waves until I went white behind the eyes.

When he finally pressed into me, slow and deep, filling me completely, my breath left me in a rush. I wrapped my legs around him and held on. The rhythm built — measured at first, then harder, more urgent, the sound of it filling the room. I moved with him, chasing each crest, balanced right at the edge over and over until I couldn't hold back anymore.

He flipped me over, hands gripping my hips, the new angle making me cry out, pleasure stacking higher and higher until it broke through me completely. I collapsed into it, shaking, the satisfaction so complete it hollowed me out.

When it was over, I lay there in the wreckage of the expensive sheets, too emptied out to think.

— except.

Somewhere in the tangle, the velvet ring box had fallen out. He'd picked it up. Opened it.

The men's engagement ring I had spent three weeks choosing sat in the center of the box.

He'd taken it out. Slid it onto his middle finger without ceremony.

It fit perfectly. Like it had been made for his hand.

"Not bad," he murmured, looking down at it.

I reached for it, suddenly desperate to take it back. "Give that —"

His mouth covered mine before I could finish the sentence. It was deep and unhurried and tasted like whiskey, and it stole every thought I had right out of my head.

I stopped reaching.