Crazy Mating: Daddy Alphas on My Bed

SET MY BODY ON FIRE

MIA

“What…what are you doing in here?” I manage to get the words out, but my voice sounds thin, even to me.

He doesn’t move, but his eyes track the way I’m clutching the sides of my towel.

“I heard you scream,” he says, his voice a low, rough vibration that settles right in the center of my chest.

“Came to see if you were okay.”

The heat that floods my cheeks has nothing to do with the hot water I just stepped out of.

My skin feels raw with the shame of what I was just doing — what I was just thinking.

“I’m fine,” I snap, trying to find some shred of the defiance I had downstairs.

“I think you misheard me. The pipes in this house are old. They make noise sometimes.”

A smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth.

He’s close now. Close enough that I can smell the motor oil and woodsmoke on his skin.

Close enough that the steam still hanging in the air feels suffocating.

I try to move away from him, but my spine hits the doorframe.

Xander doesn’t stop. He plants one hand on the frame above my head, and I’m caged.

His eyes drop to my throat, where my pulse is hammering so hard I know he can see it.

“The pipes,” he repeats.

“Who the f**k is Jakob, Mia?”

Terror spikes through me. He heard me. He heard me screaming Jakob’s name while I f****d myself in the shower.

“He’s none of your business,” I shoot back.

Xander steps even closer, crowding me against the doorframe. His hand slides down my body, bold and possessive, slipping under the edge of the towel until his fingers are almost brushing my p***y.

I gasp, the touch sending a fresh rush of slick pouring down my thighs.

He leans in, lips brushing my ear.

“If you’re going to imagine me f*****g you, let it be just me.”

I swallow hard, burning up, my p***y clenching at his words.

“When I f**k, I don’t like to share. If you’re mine, you’re all mine, Mia.”

His fingers trace the slick that’s pouring down my inner thighs, spreading it slowly.

“Do you understand?”

My heart plummets, straight into the pit of my stomach.

“I…I…I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The words rush out too fast, tripping over each other.

“I would never imagine you doing that to me, or want it,”

I force a strained, unbothered scoff.

“Why would I — that’s insane.”

“Is it?” He c***s a brow, tracing my lips with his eyes, his fingers riding up my thighs, “Cause the things you said in that bathroom, how you begged for my c**k, they said otherwise.”

“I…I don’t…”

“You were gone for hours yesterday,” his voice drops. “No phone, you didn’t take West’s car or his bike. Do you have any idea what I —”

He stops himself.

I watch as his jaw clenches, and whatever he was about to say dies behind his teeth.

“What you what?” I whisper.

He ignores the question and pulls his hand away from me.

“Don’t disappear on me again.”

It’s a command, not a request.

I want to be furious, but that part of me is drowned out by Lily, who is practically purring under my skin.

Still, I can’t let him have the last say.

“You don’t get to tell me what to do, Xander.”

“No?” His head tilts.

His raises his thumb, coated with my wetness, and grazes my shoulder — barely a touch.

My breath shudders out of me. I pray he doesn’t notice.

“You’re shaking,” he murmurs.

“I just got out of the shower. I’m cold.”

“You just took a hot shower.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Mhm.”

His thumb hasn’t moved from my body. It sits there, burning through me.

He could push the towel off with one finger.

We both know it.

By the goddess, I want him to.

I watch his breathing change. The rise of his chest slows, deepens, controlled. But his pupils are blown wide, swallowing the green, and I can see the war happening behind them.

“Don’t. Disappear. On. Me. Again. Mia.” His voice is strained, barely holding together.

He pulls his hand away, but he doesn’t step back.

He stays right there, inches from me, his body rigid with the effort of holding still.

I should tell him to leave. I should shove him again, remind him who he is to me, what we are.

I should say something sharp and final that puts the distance back between us.

But my mouth won’t cooperate.

“Why do you care?” The words slip out before I can catch them.

His jaw tightens. For a moment I think he’s going to do what he always does. I want him to shut down, pull away, leave me standing in the wreckage of my own question, like he always does.

But he doesn’t.

“I care, Mia,” he puts his thumb over my lower lip, feeling the softness.

“More than you’ll ever know.”