Flame of the Alpha Read online

  Chapter Five

  Dante’s body heated with the weight of Sophia’s gaze as it darted over the planes of his stomach, then drifted lower only to jerk back up to his eyes a moment later.

  “Uh…” She cleared her throat, a flare of crimson tinting her high cheekbones. “I don’t think I’m qualified for that sort of thing.”

  “It doesn’t take training, Priestess. Just a gentle touch.”

  Sadness tainted the wry smile tilting her mouth. “Now I know I’m definitely not the right person for the job.”

  “Come on,” he coaxed in a ragged whisper. “I can’t reach back there. Not as well as you could.”

  Sophia swallowed hard, her throat constricting with the effort. Her lips parted, and another jolt of lust rippled through Dante’s body in response. His cock was already as hard as he could ever remember it being. If she left, he could take matters into his own hands. Literally. He could wrap both palms around the throbbing shaft and tug on the delicate skin, harder and harder until he spilled his seed all over his stomach in a jet of warm liquid ecstasy, all the while screaming her name.

  “Lie down.” She spoke the command so softly he was afraid he misunderstood. When he didn’t move, she nudged his shoulder with her fingertips, guiding him in the direction of the bed.

  The contact poured lightning through his veins. It felt as though an electric bolt had slammed into him, sizzling every nerve ending between his shoulder and his groin. A drop of precum leaked down his shaft, making him shiver.

  Saints! If that’s what she did to him with one unfocused touch, how could he hope to get through entire minutes of having her palms rubbing, caressing, and soothing his tender flesh?

  With a grunt of acknowledgement, Dante ambled over to the bed. He wanted to say something witty, something to remind her that he was the Alpha here, but the best he could do was another groan as his cock pressed into the mattress. The blanket cradled his erection in softness and warmth, making him crave Sophia’s moist heat more than ever.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured as her fingers made brief, feathery contact with his skin.

  Dante yanked the pillow propped against the headboard and thrust it beneath his head, gripping it with both hands to keep from grinding his hips into the mattress. “For what?”

  “For this.” The cooling sensation of the balm mixed with the scorching heat from Sophia’s palms formed an almost unbearable sensation of pure rapture. It streamed through his blood cells, thrumming along his veins and into his scrotum, where it pulsed like liquid fire, licking the underside of his shaft.

  He forced a low, rumbling chuckle from his throat. “Oh, yeah. You should be sorry. Those magic fingers could kill a man.”

  “Not for this,” she said, gathering up more balm and applying it where the seam of his left buttock met his thigh. “For the wounds. For putting you in a position you should have never been in. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Dante closed his eyes, letting her soft caresses fan the flames of his desire until all his senses were honed in only on her. He could smell her arousal. It had become imprinted on his nose, flooding his lungs with every breath. Her breathing had quickened, coming out in little pants she fought hard to keep under control.

  He remembered the musky taste of her cream flowing over his tongue. It had been his anchor while the bursts of fiery pain had flicked along his flesh. He’d challenged himself to keep up with the strokes, to match the Captain’s rhythm with his own tongue.

  Although the whipping had been genuinely painful, something unexpected had happened when he’d allowed himself to give in to the experience. The pain became secondary. Sophia’s pleasure took center stage, and he’d focused all his efforts on her cries of bliss, on the way she dug her fingernails into his scalp, on her pussy’s intoxicating responses as he licked, sucked, and nibbled on her tender labia.

  He’d still felt the braided switches falling against his ass, but it no longer mattered. What did matter were the languorous, silky strokes of his tongue against Sophia’s nether lips, around her clit, and inside her tight channel. He’d licked her everywhere, pouring everything he had into the act as each stroke of the whip flashed through his system, forcing him to delve deeper, to focus harder. To please her better.

  “Dante?”

  The sound of his name on her tongue reached his ears as though cutting through a haze of arousal. It lingered in his mind, teasing him with the possibilities of hearing her voice speak his name that same way again and again, wondering if he’d ever get enough.

  She cupped both ass cheeks in her palms, squeezing gently. A sharp flood of pain returned to drift along his skin, bringing him back to the present. “Hmm?”

  She swirled the heels of her palms along the base of his spine, then slipped her fingertips sideways to brush the sides of his hips. “I said I was finished.”

  “Ah. So you are.”

  Well, fine.

  But he wasn’t finished. Not by a long shot.

  Still, she’d made it clear enough that having sex with him wasn’t something she was interested in doing. Or rather, wasn’t something she could do, despite the way her body all but screamed for him to take her. He’d seen the way her nipples pebbled when he came within touching distance, and she couldn’t mask the scent of her feminine heat. He knew that if he reached between her legs, he’d find her soaked through, her sex throbbing with the same need that flooded his own veins.

  “I also asked you to turn over.”

  Dante sucked in a breath between clenched teeth. He hadn’t heard her make that request, but then he’d been drifting in a sea of euphoria, lost in his memories, weaving his own private fantasy.

  “Priestess, if I turn over, there will be more of me that could benefit from your expert touch.”

  “Dante?”

  Ah, there it was again. He hadn’t been mistaken. His name sounded magical on her lips.

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t speak.”

  A chuckle rumbled up from the depths of his soul. He turned over, the sore flesh of his ass tingling as it rubbed against the soft blanket.

  His breathing came in shallow gasps. Blood roared in his ears and in his cock. He’d been aroused for so long that his hardened state should have been pure agony. Instead, it heightened his senses, awakening sensations of which he’d never before been aware. Was that her doing, or his?

  He didn’t know. It didn’t matter.

  Sophia looked at him with wide, hungry eyes. Her gaze drifted over his face, his chest, his stomach, and stopped at his cock. Unlike last time, she didn’t redden or avert her gaze.

  Surely, she’d seen hundreds of aroused cocks in her time at the Academy, and he severely doubted she blushed like a schoolgirl at the sight of each one. So why was he different?

  It could have been his size, he supposed, but there had to be more to it than that. What was it Ty used to say back on Enigma? Seen one, seen ’em all?

  He almost chuckled at that. The statement was particularly amusing coming from the only blind pilot in the galaxy. Dante didn’t know how many cocks she’d seen with her implants, or whether the male sex organ looked the same to her as it did to someone like Sophia. He and Ty didn’t have that kind of relationship.

  In fact, he’d never been intimate with anyone on the ship. He thought of them as family. And if there was one thing he’d learned early on, it was that you didn’t screw with family. If anything, they were likely to screw you first.

  Sophia’s fingers hovered just above his cock. Her brow furrowed and her eyes narrowed, as though she debated with herself whether to cross that invisible line she’d erected in her mind.

  He shifted, angling his hips upward almost imperceptibly. Whether Sophia caught the movement he couldn’t be sure, but a moment later she’d wrapped her palm around his length, enveloping his cock in her delicate fist.

  She squeezed slightly as her hand pumped up and down his rod, drawing a convulsive shudder from Dante. He close
d his eyes and pressed his lips together, knowing she meant it when she’d told him not to speak. The slightest word from him could cause her to run out the door, and Saints help him, he couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t spontaneously combust if she didn’t continue to touch him this way.

  Tension coiled in his gut and rolled through his body. Every muscle tensed with the effort of holding back his cum. His balls drew up close to his shaft and the familiar tingling of impending orgasm shook him to the core. He could let go, release the rigid control he had in his grip, and let his seed spill all over Sophia’s hand.

  Still, he held back. It took every ounce of effort he didn’t know he possessed to keep from coming, but he used everything at his disposal to do just that. He couldn’t watch her. Focusing on her small, feminine hand stroking his large shaft would instantly send him over the edge.

  He kept his eyes closed and fisted his hands in the blanket, straining until he could feel the veins in his arms tightening with exertion. Sophia’s scent flooded his senses, making his nostrils flare.

  He needed her. Craved her. Hungered for her with every part of his being.

  The blanket tore. He felt the fabric give way beneath his nails. The part of him that was still fully human nudged him, making it clear he couldn’t have ripped the blanket with his nails.

  Not nails, then. Claws. He didn’t know when that had happened. When had he lost control of the beast inside him? How was it possible, when he still clung on so desperately to his ability to hold back his cum?

  And then ‑‑ a miracle.

  Lips touched his cock. The questions and confusion fled his mind. He could think of nothing but the warmth enveloping the head of his shaft, the tongue sweeping just beneath the underside of the tip to drift over the sensitive skin there.

  Sophia took her time, slowly lowering her mouth over the length of his rod. She was the one in control here, and she was making that fact known with every stroke of her soft tongue against his flesh. Despite the rampant need that raged in Dante’s groin, a need Sophia couldn’t possibly ignore, she would do this her way.

  And damn, he wanted her to.

  Her fingers dipped lower as her mouth welcomed the entire length of his cock, delving into the crease between his buttocks, spreading them slightly. He moaned at the pain coursing through his limbs. A violent shiver tore through him.

  He could feel it now ‑‑ the shift lurking just beneath the exterior of his human façade. Could she feel it, too? If so, why wasn’t she terrified, or at least put off, by the fur sprouting across his stomach and his elongating muzzle?

  Writhing against her lips, Dante rocked his hips up and down, driving his cock deeper inside the wet heat she offered. She took him eagerly, sucked him fiercely, and swirled her tongue up and down the length of his shaft.

  A growl escaped Dante’s throat. Primal, animalistic need rose up inside him, drawing another cry to echo through the room, forcing his eyes open.

  As soon as his gaze landed on Sophia’s face, serene and rapturous as she sucked him, he knew he’d made a mistake. The self-control he’d wound so tightly around himself unraveled at the speed of light, flinging the remnants of his lust through his body with violent force.

  Dante howled as his climax hit, overtaking him in a potent rush. He struggled to pull out of Sophia’s mouth, but she refused to release him, her palms clamping down on his bucking hips, her lips forcing him deeper into her mouth. Spasm after spasm hit in waves of delicious agony, freeing the torrent of seed to gush and flow down her throat.

  Her fingernails dug into his skin, giving him something else to anchor on as his orgasm began to ebb. Slowly, she swept her tongue over his shaft and the head of his cock, licking him clean. When she lifted her head and released him, she wiped away the trickle of cum that had dripped from the corner of her lips to her chin with the end of her little finger, and then snuck that between her lips, too.

  Dante didn’t think he’d ever seen a more erotic sight.

  She met his gaze boldly, drawing her lower lip between her teeth as though daring him to say something. No doubt she expected another wry, arrogant retort.

  Well, she wouldn’t get it. Not this time. He’d paid attention to her warning, especially to those words she’d left unspoken.

  Dante opened his arms. The need to shift had subsided along with his orgasm, leaving him wholly in control of himself. He waited, watching her analyze him through narrowed eyelids as though she had no idea what to make of him.

  She could leave, of course. She could rise and walk out of the room as though nothing had happened, and no one would be the wiser. But he didn’t want her to. As selfish as it sounded, he needed her in his arms. He ached to hold her, if only for a moment.

  This was what the Terran government feared; what they tried to abolish through any means necessary. The need for intimacy between two people, for the connection that could only be forged through the closeness and familiarity that came with mind-blowing sex, would always lurk in the hearts of Alphas.

  “Just for a moment,” Sophia whispered.

  She still wore her robe. Drawing the belt loops tighter around her as though for protection, she lowered herself down to the mattress and tucked her body between the wall and Dante. Her head nestled in the crook of his shoulder.

  “Just for a moment,” she repeated. “Then I’m gone.”

  He tightened his hold, pulling her closer to his body. Despite her insistence that she’d leave before he could get comfortable, Dante pulled the edge of the blanket over them both anyway, enveloping them in a cocoon of warmth.

  Sophia sighed and nestled closer, the exhalation resonating with a sound so foreign that it took Dante a moment to name it.

  When he did, the smile blossoming across his lips echoed her sentiment.

  Happiness.

  That wasn’t a word Dante had ever associated with Earth. Yet right at this moment, with Sophia snuggled close in his arms, he couldn’t remember why not.

  * * * * *

  The universe stretched out on a boundless sea of black velvet, kept at bay only by a large, impenetrable window and a few hundred tons of heavy steel. The floor vibrated under Sophia’s feet. She’d expected more of a lurching motion, but the flight was smooth and even, like floating on a cloud.

  “I never get tired of the sight of you in my room.”

  Sophia’s heart skipped a beat, but she didn’t turn around. She didn’t have to. Dante’s reflection stared back at her from the glassy surface of the window, superimposed upon the shimmering rainbow colors of a nebula.

  “How was your shift?” she asked as the door slid shut behind him.

  “Uneventful. There’s only so much work for a security chief in outer space. Especially since we haven’t seen another vessel in days.”

  Sophia shook her head. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough excitement to last me a lifetime.”

  Dante’s image warped and waved as he stepped behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist to pull her against his chest. His palms traveled up the side of her ribcage to cup her breasts. “Are you sure you couldn’t use just a little more excitement? Maybe the kind that comes with lots of heavy breathing? Perhaps the occasional moan?”

  She chuckled and slid her hands over his, encouraging him to squeeze the firm globes. Even cradled in his broad, masculine palms, her breasts felt bigger than she remembered. Heavier, too.

  “If I must,” she said, feigning a heavy sigh.

  Dante chuckled. “Such a good sport you are, doing your wifely duty without a word of protest. Don’t worry, Mrs. Lotton. This will be over before you know it.”

  She laughed at that, and the carefree sound echoed through the interior of the small room, bouncing off the metallic walls and sleek steel furniture.

  Freeing her right breast, Dante skimmed his fingertips over her stomach, dragging her own hand along for the ride. She followed the reverent motions of his palm as it caressed her swollen belly to dip lower until h
e could press his hand against her mound.

  She moaned and tossed her head back against his shoulder, steeling herself for the pleasure already beginning to course through her body. “Saints, how I love ‑‑”

  The piercing sound of a door chime tore through Sophia’s mind, jerking her awake in the span of a heartbeat. She lurched to a sitting position, bringing the blanket to her chest as she struggled to make sense of her surroundings.

  These weren’t her quarters.

  Dread pooled in the pit of her stomach. Afraid of what she’d see when she glanced at the other side of the bed, Sophia flexed her shoulders and stretched out her right arm, which was tense and stiff from sleep. At last, she allowed her gaze to slid along the hills and valleys created by the blanket to the slumbering form of the man beside her.

  Her breath halted in her throat. She’d thought Dante beautiful before, but lying here in the semi-dark, a sliver of sunlight streaming through the curtains to illuminate the high ridge of his scarred brow and tumble over his leather collar, he looked magnificent. His lips were slightly parted, and the low rumble of a deep snore echoed from his throat.

  Against her better judgment, she’d begun considering nestling back in the crook of his arm for a few minutes longer, when the door chime pealed through the room again.

  This time, Dante blinked his eyes open. A broad smile curved his lips at the sight of her. “Good morning, gorgeous.”

  “It’s not morning,” she shot back, fighting to ignore the thrill that ran through her at the sound of his husky compliment. “I only lay down for a few minutes. It’s probably late afternoon, though, which means I’m desperately needed at the showing.”

  “Far be it for me to keep you from your duties.” His smirk didn’t waver. If anything, it only seemed to grow broader until all she could see was a perfect set of white teeth and a feral, almost predatory grin gleaming in the shadows.

  Sophia rolled her eyes and slid forward along the length of the bed. “Most of the Academy’s at your disposal. Feel free to wander a little and get to know the place. Any section of the building that’s off-limits will be easy to spot, as the doors won’t open to your hand imprint.”