The Alpha's Sun-Blessed Mate

Chapter 6

I couldn’t sleep.

The flight attendant had dimmed the cabin lights two hours ago. She’d brought me a blanket, a pillow, a glass of water. Luca had told her not to disturb us again for the rest of the flight. She’d nodded like that was a perfectly normal thing for an Alpha to say at midnight while a twenty-two-year-old girl sat across the aisle looking like she’d been hit by a truck.

Luca was still reading. Or pretending to. His leather folder was open, papers spread across the small table he’d pulled out, a glass of something amber beside his elbow. He’d taken off his jacket. Loosened his tie completely. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone and I could see the hollow of his throat, the beginning of his collarbone, a hint of chest that my eyes kept finding no matter how many times I told them to stop.

I pulled the blanket tighter and closed my eyes. Tried to will myself to sleep. Counted backward from a hundred. Got to sixty-three before the image of his hand between my thighs crashed through my concentration and made my whole body clench.

This was ridiculous. I was a grown woman. I could control my own body.

My body disagreed.

Around hour three, I gave up. I needed to move. Needed to get out of this seat before I lost my mind. I unbuckled quietly, slipped my shoes off, and padded toward the back of the plane.

There was a small hallway behind the main cabin. A closet. A bathroom on the left. The bedroom door at the end, closed.

The bathroom door was open. Light spilling out.

I should have turned around. Should have gone back to my seat and stared at the ceiling for eight more hours like a normal person.

But I didn’t.

Because the sound coming from the bathroom stopped me dead.

A low groan. Rough. Controlled. The kind of sound a man makes when he’s trying to stay quiet but can’t quite manage it.

My feet carried me forward before my brain could intervene. The door was cracked. Not closed. Not locked. Just slightly open, enough that the light cut a yellow stripe down the narrow hallway.

I looked.

Luca stood in front of the sink, his back partially turned, one hand braced on the counter. His shirt was untucked. His belt hung open. And his other hand was wrapped around himself, stroking in long, measured pulls.

He was big. Even from this angle, even in the harsh bathroom light, that was the first coherent thought my brain managed to produce. Big enough that my stomach did something complicated that was equal parts intimidation and want.

His head was tipped forward, the muscles in his forearm flexing with each stroke. His breathing was rough. Ragged. The kind of breathing that said he’d been at this for a while and was nowhere close to being finished. His jaw was clenched and a vein stood out along the side of his neck.

I should have looked away. I knew that. Every decent impulse I had was screaming at me to step back, go to my seat, pretend I’d never seen this.

But my feet had turned to concrete and my eyes wouldn’t move and my wolf was pressing against my ribs with an urgency that made my knees weak.

His head turned.

Blue eyes locked on mine through the crack in the door.

I froze.

He didn’t.

The corner of his mouth curved up. Slow. Deliberate. The kind of smile that said he wasn’t surprised to find me there. Like he’d known I was watching the entire time. Like maybe that was the point.

He turned his body toward me fully. Leaned back against the counter. Let me see everything.

All of him. Hard, thick, his hand still wrapped around the base.

“Like what you see?” His voice was low and completely steady. Not a man caught. A man performing.

My mouth opened. Nothing came out.

“You’re staring, Annabelle.” His hand moved. One slow stroke from base to tip while his eyes held mine. “Are you turned on?”

Yes. God yes. My body was screaming yes so loud that I was shaking with it. My core clenched, my n*****s were hard against the thin fabric of my dress, and the ache between my legs that had been building since the car was now a full-blown throb that matched my heartbeat.

“Get in here,” he said. Not an invitation. A command.

My feet moved before my brain gave permission. I stepped into the small bathroom and the door swung shut behind me. The space was tiny. Barely big enough for one person, let alone two. He was right there, close enough that I could feel the heat pouring off his skin.

He released himself and reached for me. Both hands found my hips, lifting me onto the narrow counter beside the sink. The cold marble made me gasp but his hands were hot where they gripped me and the contrast made every nerve ending fire at once.

He stepped between my legs. Pushed my dress up my thighs. I felt the cool air and then his fingers, trailing up the inside of my thigh with the same slow patience he’d shown in the car.

“Luca...” His name came out broken.

“Shh.” His fingers reached the edge of my underwear. He didn’t pull them aside gently. He didn’t ask permission. He hooked his fingers into the waistband and tugged them down my legs in one fluid motion, letting them drop to the floor.

His hand came back up. Settled between my thighs. And when his fingers made contact with slick, swollen flesh, my head dropped back against the mirror with a thud.

“So wet,” he murmured, his fingers sliding through the heat of me, spreading me open, finding my c**t with a precision that made my back arch off the counter. “All this from watching me?”

I couldn’t form words. His fingers circled my c**t once, twice, then dipped lower, pressing inside me. One finger first. Testing. Then two, stretching me with a slow, deliberate push that punched the air from my lungs.

“That’s it.” His free hand gripped my thigh, holding me open. His eyes were locked on my face, watching every reaction, cataloging every sound. “Don’t hold back.”

He curled his fingers inside me and found a spot that made my vision blur. His thumb found my c**t at the same time, pressing in tight circles while his fingers worked me from the inside. The dual sensation was too much. My hands flew to his shoulders, gripping the fabric of his shirt, my nails digging in.

“Luca, I’m going to...”

“I know.” He didn’t let up. If anything he pushed harder, his fingers moving faster, his thumb pressing with more intent. “Let go.”

I shattered. The orgasm ripped through me so hard that I cried out, my thighs clamping around his hand, my body bowing forward into his chest. He worked me through it, his fingers gentling but not stopping, drawing out every last tremor until I was boneless and gasping.

When I finally opened my eyes, he was watching me. His jaw was tight. His pupils blown so wide his eyes looked black.

Then he pulled his hand from between my legs.

His fingers glistened under the bathroom light. He looked at them. Looked at me. Then he wrapped those wet fingers back around himself and started stroking.

My arousal on his hand. He was using my wetness to get himself off.

I watched, still trembling on the counter, as his jaw went slack and his eyes half-closed. His fist moved faster now, slick with what I’d left behind, and the sight of it was so raw, so obscenely intimate, that my core clenched all over again.

I reached for him. My hand moving toward him on instinct, wanting to touch, wanting to help, wanting to be part of this.

He caught my wrist.

“No.” The word came out rough. Strained. His fingers tightened around my wrist and he moved my hand back to the counter. “Just watch.”

He came with a groan that he muffled against the crook of his own arm, his body going rigid, his free hand slamming flat against the wall beside me. I felt the heat of it on my thigh where it landed.

For a long moment the only sound was both of us breathing. Hard. Ragged.

Then he cleaned himself up with efficient, unhurried movements. Tucked his shirt back in. Buckled his belt. Ran a hand through his hair. When he was done, he looked exactly the same as he had before. Composed. Controlled. Not a single hair out of place.

Meanwhile I was still sitting on the counter with my underwear on the floor, my dress bunched around my waist, and his release cooling on my skin.

He picked up my underwear. Held them out to me. When I reached for them, his fingers didn’t let go right away.

“Go back to your seat,” he said. His voice was even. Measured. Like he was telling me the time. “Get some sleep. We land in a few hours.”

He released the fabric and stepped past me, pulling the bathroom door open. I heard his footsteps down the hallway, heard his seat creak as he settled back into it.

I sat there for a full minute before I could move.

He’d gotten me off. Then he’d used what was left of me on his hand to finish himself. He hadn’t kissed me. Hadn’t let me touch him. Had literally caught my wrist when I’d tried and told me no.

Why?

I slid off the counter, pulled my underwear on with shaking hands, and tugged my dress down. My reflection in the mirror looked wrecked. Swollen lips I’d been biting. Wild mint eyes too bright against flushed cheeks. Caramel hair that had gone from smooth to tangled.

I looked like a girl who had just been thoroughly used by a man who wouldn’t even let her return the favor.

Was I not enough? Was this all I was to him? Something to get off with but not something he wanted touching him? He had three years of pent-up desire for me, apparently. But when I reached for him, he’d pushed my hand away.

He’d rather use his own hand coated with my orgasm than let me wrap mine around him.

What kind of man did that?

The kind who wanted control. The kind who took what he wanted and gave what he chose and kept you off-balance so you never knew where you stood.

I walked back to my seat on legs that barely worked. He was reading again. The leather folder open, the amber drink refreshed. He didn’t look up.

I pulled the blanket over myself, turned toward the window, and stared at the black nothing outside.

My body was still humming. Still warm. Still feeling the ghost of his fingers.

But something cold had settled under all of it.

He’d called me his companion. His property. He’d touched me like I belonged to him and then shut me out the second I tried to touch him back.

I was twenty-two years old, flying to a foreign country with a man who treated me like something to consume. Not something to love. Not something to hold. Just something to consume.

My wolf purred, content and satisfied, curling up inside me like everything was exactly as it should be.

My wolf was an i***t.