Chapter Five

Cullen tossed the keycard onto the table as soon as they walked into their hotel room. “Fucking worthless,” he muttered.

Damon walked past him, picking up the keycard from the table as though it mattered anymore. “Be careful with it.”

“Why? Grimes can’t do a thing with it.”

“He isn’t the only person who can work on this. We’ll find someone else.”

Cullen lifted his lip, not annoyed with the young alpha, but he was as good a spot as any other to place his frustrations.

Reese closed and locked the door to their suite, then shrugged off his jacket. “Would you two stop fighting?”

They’d been at each other’s throats for days. Ever since Kara had walked away, if he had to be honest. It was as though, when she’d left, this uncomfortable tension had started to grow.

Cullen couldn’t settle. He couldn’t sit still, couldn’t sleep. His body remained alert and tense, as if waiting for something he couldn’t identify.

And judging from the snarls passing between the other alphas through the day, he wasn’t the only one.

How could that female still be affecting them?

Part of him wanted to find her. They’d found her once, so they could find her again. No matter how she might have objected, he’d smelled her, knew she wanted them, too.

Just a little more, and she’d give up whatever stupid reasons she’d had for turning them down.

Fuck, he wanted to see her naked. The picture of her stripped to nothing, that wild blue hair and those even wilder blue eyes beckoning him. He’d take her until she was too tired to toss any snark his way.

Would she be sweet? Once worn down and sated and blissed out after he’d made her come a couple of times, would she purr for him like a contented pet?

Probably not, but fuck if I don’t want to give it a try anyway.

Cullen carded his fingers through his hair, ready to snap back at Reese just to release some of the pressure building inside him. He drew in a breath and went still.

Reese mirrored the action, as if they were connected and he’d caught wind of the same thing. Damon was the last, but the moment he’d done it, the same predatory look came into his eyes.

Kara.

Her scent was faint, but it was there. Had she broken in?

A deep growl vibrated from his chest at the challenge it posed to him, at the desire to hold her down and fuck her for the insult.

Reese was first, always better with his nose than Cullen had been. They entered the room the scent was strongest in, where it seeped from the closed door.

Damon’s room in the suite.

Once they walked in, something else struck him.

Blood?

It leashed some of the lust, but damn if a rage he was unaccustomed to didn’t take its place.

On the bay window sat Kara, the light from the desk lamp illuminating her.

He stopped in his tracks, something unfamiliar swamping him as he stared at her.

“What the fuck did you guys drag me into?” She twisted to look at them, and the sight of her swollen, darkened cheek squeezed his chest.

The more he looked, the more he saw.

Her lip was split and fat, and her shirt was torn, the strap hanging loose and showing off the lines of her bra.

Reese moved forward first. He caught her chin and turned her face.

Kara reacted like an angry kitten, hissing and swatting the touch away.

“What happened?” Reese asked.

“You assholes lied to me. Whatever this is about, it’s bigger than one missing omega. People don’t send brutes to my apartment over one little missing omega.”

Reese exchanged a loaded look with Cullen. This is our fault?

He didn’t care for guilt, but guilt over this? Even worse.

Damon spoke up, his steps slower than Reese or Cullen’s had been. “Someone attacked you in your apartment?”

“Nice job keeping up. His name’s Thompson. I don’t recognize the name, so he probably works privately. He wanted to know who hired me to steal the keycard.”

“That doesn’t make sense. The keycard couldn’t even be read. No one would have known about it unless you were caught stealing it,” Damon interjected.

She cast a withering glare at the youngest alpha. “Trust me, pup, no one caught me.”

The two faced off, and Damon dropped his gaze first.

Interesting.

“It wasn’t when I stole it. It had to be when I had these made. To make a copy, my tech guy had to break into their system to code them right so when the company scanned them, it all showed aboveboard. They must have caught him, because I found him dead.” She reached behind her and lifted something, holding them out to Damon.

He took the items and flipped through the keycards. “How did you get these? Why did you get them?”

“I knew Grimes wouldn’t be able to do the job. Believe it or not, I’m pretty fucking good at this sort of thing, and I know everyone who needs to be known.”

“But why have these made?”

“I figured I could sell them to you after Grimes failed.”

Vicious. Cullen hated to admit that he really liked it. He shouldn’t, especially since he normally hated cutthroat people, but hell… Kara looked good when she was scheming.

And now that they knew she wasn’t seriously hurt, his libido decided to start ramping back up.

Damon took the cards from the room, as though the rest of them had become unimportant when he’d gotten a new piece of the puzzle.

Which was impressive, because Cullen couldn’t think about anything beyond the female seated there.

Reese sniffed, then frowned. “What have you drunk?”

“Raided the minibar. Enjoy the hundred-dollar bill, because you owed me at least that much.”

Reese stood. “I’m going to guess you haven’t eaten, and you’ll want ibuprofen for when that all starts to hit you after the liquor wears off. I’ll get some food.”

Once he left, Cullen took a seat on the bay window beside her.

He nodded at the gauze on her arm. “Cut?”

“Bullet graze.” She shrugged then winced. Her cavalier attitude about the wound set his teeth on edge. Exactly how much trouble is she usually in?

“Is the man who attacked you dead?”

“Nope. Broke his nose, though.” She curled her lips into a vicious smile that gave him a hard-on so fast it made him dizzy.

“Why is it I can’t seem to stop thinking about you?” The words came out before he could censor them.

“Because you’re an alpha, and they’re pretty much led around by their dicks.” She leaned backward, stretching her feet out until they rested beside him.

“Other females don’t distract me like this.” The words came out like an accusation, but he couldn’t help his annoyance. “Other females don’t smell like you do, don’t do this to me.” He wanted to understand exactly why she did this to him. Reese might be happy to be smitten with her, but Cullen needed to know why.

She sighed as she lifted her tiny bottle of pilfered mini-bar liquor and gulped it down. The way she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, with a slight grimace as it probably irritated her split lip, was anything but classy, yet it fit her.

She didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought, and that was the exact sort of woman he normally disliked.

Finally, she met his gaze again. “I don’t know what you’re expecting, but let’s be clear. This isn’t a long-term thing.”

“I’m not looking for forever.”

“We’re going to discuss your case, figure out what the hell you dragged me into, and then I’m gone.”

The words made an objection simmer inside him.

Because he knew she was right—this wasn’t going anywhere—he leveled a look filled with all the heat that had clawed around inside him since he’d first caught sight of the wild woman days before. “Sure, Kara, that sounds fine. During that, though, make no mistake. We will fuck you.”

Her eyebrow lifted, and he expected her to argue. She’d argued with everything else, and if there was anything a sane woman would argue against, it was a declaration that they’d be fucked by three alphas, against the assumption that they’d let three alphas do it.

Instead, she smiled, the action pulling her split lip despite even though it had to hurt like hell. “That’s the first smart thing you’ve said so far.”

Good thing I don’t fall in love, because this woman is fucking dangerous.

* * * *

Kara stared at the ceiling, the fold-out couch in the living room of the suite surprisingly comfortable.

Each alpha had offered her their bed, despite the tension when it had happened. If she’d have picked one, she could have guaranteed a fight.

Which wouldn’t have been all bad. Those three all sweaty and rolling around? Sign me up for that show.

The only reason she hadn’t agreed was that she wanted to remove herself from as much of their scent as possible. Lying in one of their beds, with their masculine, lust-creating smell, was the last thing her overworked body needed.

Instead, she’d planted herself on the spacious couch, which shifted into a bed, and tried to ignore the demands her body made.

Silence pulled at her. At home, she’d have played music or just stayed up until morning, when the traffic and noise of the city could lull her to sleep. The suite was so nice—however, she couldn’t hear a peep from anywhere else.

Instead, her brain ran rampant. It drifted to Justin’s still body, to the man who had dared break into her apartment, to the alphas asleep in their rooms.

She shifted on the mattress, the action dragging her already stiff and aching nipples against the sheet.

She slid her fingers down her stomach, pausing on the raised scars there, the evidence of the reason her body didn’t work right.

For a split second, she remembered the piece-of-shit beta who had made those cuts, his sadistic grin as she’d screamed and cried. That was what stuck with her some of the time—maybe because it was easier to remember that than the pain—but the beta had enjoyed it so much.

Worse than any of that, though? Lying there, barely awake—hell, barely alive—and seeing Kane walk in.

The memory of him hurt, of the knife plunging into his chest, was the last straw. She’d just lain there and watched it happen, watched as her only family had nearly been ripped from her while she’d been able to do nothing. The laughter of the men as they’d waited for Kane, telling her how they’d carve him up too…

She couldn’t do anything to shake loose the nervous energy inside her created by stress and hormones and the maddening scent of the alphas.

Instead, she rose from the bed and crept into the room on the left, the door open like an invitation.

She could have picked any of them, all of them, but she made her choice with ease.

Cullen.

The hard-ass, the one she liked the least but who could give her what she needed.

Reese was funny, sweeter, easier to fall for. Damon? The pup would have bent for her, and while she enjoyed putting an alpha in his place beneath her, it wouldn’t wipe clean the ugly images in her head.

For what she needed, Cullen was the right choice.

The light from the rising sun poured in through the window. The room was almost identical to Damon’s, except Cullen had no computer set up and didn’t use the desk.

The scent of him and gun cleaner struck her, both alluring.

He rested on the bed, body still, blankets pulled up to his waist, his broad, solid chest on display.

God, that man is beautiful.

Maybe beautiful wasn’t the right word, and she’d bet he’d bitch if he’d heard the thought, but what else could she say? Tribal tattoos crawled up his right arm from wrist to shoulder, then spread over that pectoral, black against his tanned skin. When she’d met the alphas, she’d never have expected that he’d be the one to have tattoos beneath his suit. His hair was messy, the longer part on top no longer perfectly falling backward with the help of gel. Instead, the light brown hair had a wave from the shower he’d taken before sleep.

Kara shimmied out of her already drenched panties, her body beyond ready. She could have crawled on top of him and mounted him without any foreplay.

She’d been ready for hours as she’d lain in the living room, trying to do anything else.

But why resist? Why keep trying to avoid it?

This wasn’t the pathetic thing she did with Liam, with Justin, with friends who didn’t really want her or, worse, wanted things she couldn’t give them. This was just like any hook-up, and they’d both walk away from it happier for the few moments of stolen pleasure.

What the fuck is wrong with that? She told herself the same lies she told herself every time.

She moved forward, crawling onto the bed and over him in a quick motion that let her steal her first kiss before he woke.

When he did, he came to ready to fight. Fight, fuck or flight, that was what bodies did when stressed, and his first reaction was violence.

Cullen flipped them, his hand around her thin throat, his green eyes fierce.

What the fuck was wrong with her? If he’d woken with a sweet kiss, she’d have snarled, but like this? That fire and violence and the threat of his hand at her throat had her all but purring as she wrapped her legs around his waist, the blanket tossed aside in his attack.

Awareness came to his eyes, his forehead creasing and his eyebrows pulling in. “Kara?”

He removed his hand as though her skin burned, but she took advantage, as she always did, and leaned up to take his lips in another kiss.

A deep growl left him, and she swallowed it. Even if it had taken him a minute to catch up, the grinding of his cock as he rolled his hips forward said he’d figured shit out.

More, her mind cried at how his hard dick fit against her cunt, nestled there and grinding against her clit in a delicious spark of pleasure.

It seemed he hadn’t worn anything to bed.

Did he always sleep naked or was he just hopeful? Maybe if she’d been someone else, his assumption that she’d show might have bothered her. She wasn’t someone else, though, and Kara only basked in the coursing pleasure as he thrust against her drenched pussy.

“You’re so damned hot,” he growled as he moved his lips from hers and attacked her throat. His facial hair scratched her, but even that only lit her up, only energized each nerve ending of her body. “Fuck, how can your cunt smell this good?”

Because it was broken. Because a fire raged inside her that never fully went out.

Kara reached between them, dragging her nails down his chest and abs until she could stroke his cock. She didn’t wrap her fist around it, not willing to lose any of the contact between it and her needy clit. Instead, she danced her fingers along the top of his shaft, teasing the head and collecting the wetness there. She didn’t bother to hide the way she took the pre-cum smeared on her fingers between her lips and licked them clean.

A more vicious sound left Cullen, as though the action had woken something deeper inside him, something primal. He reached for her shirt, but Kara swatted his hand away.

She never removed it during sex.

He stilled above her, though his chest rose and fell in heavy breaths. “What’s wrong?”

Words stuck in her throat, words she almost wanted to say but wouldn’t dare. Deflect. “Are you going to fuck me already?”

His emerald eyes hardened at the challenge. “Why don’t you want me to take off your shirt?”

“If you can’t manage this, there are two other alphas in this suite who can.”

That snapped his control, stole away his questions. It seemed he didn’t care for her threats, but the way his cock, impossibly harder, pressed to her sex said maybe he did.

Kara’s eyes slipped closed at the feeling, as she prepared for that wonderfully full stretching when a hard dick would plunge deep, taking up every inch of space inside her and driving everything else away.

His warm breath still held the tang of mint from his toothpaste as it fell over her face. The moment she waited took forever, as though the seconds turned to hours, before he slammed into her with a thrust so strong it stole her breath.

The tightness of Kara’s body nearly made it so Cullen didn’t hear her lusty cry. He struggled to pay attention to anything beyond the clutching wetness of her pussy and the way her scent drove all rational thought from him.

She’d not let him remove her shirt, but maybe she was shy. In the end, the call of her body had been more important than one little obstacle. Let her keep the damned shirt on if it meant burying himself this deep inside her sweet cunt.

Her face twisted into almost pained lines of ecstasy, like his dick was the only thing she needed right then.

She came to me. That stroke to his ego helped—when she could have gone to either other alpha, she’d crawled into his bed. He didn’t mind sharing with Reese, and hell, he had every intention of fucking her right along with his best friend, but it didn’t erase the possessive pleasure at her choosing him.

Damon? Well, they hadn’t taken a woman together before, but he had a feeling it would happen. The kid was becoming more family than coworker.

None of that mattered right then, though. That was for another night, another time.

Cullen waited as her pussy squeezed down around his cock, trying to give her time, not wanting to risk hurting her. He wasn’t a gentle alpha nor a small man, and Kara was a tiny beta.

Tiny and the hellion Reese called her, it seemed, because what couldn’t have been more than a handful of heartbeats later, Kara rolled her hips toward him and gouged her nails into him to urge him to move.

Verbal demands accompanied the physical ones. “Fuck me already,” she ordered in a voice that held the same authority as any alpha he’d dealt with.

“Gladly, thief,” he responded, using the name like a reminder, pulling back until only the tip of his thick cock remained.. He paused, the sensation as her greedy pussy seemed to pulse around him to keep him inside too wonderful to ignore. He grasped the short blue strands of her tresses to tip her head backward before he plunged into her again.

He took her hard and fast, his grip on her hair keeping her still as he fucked her with everything he had.

His knot ached, the sensation strange and familiar. He was driven by a need inside him that made him feel out of control, as though he had to sate her, had to spill deep inside her and nothing in the world could pull him free.

Kara responded with the same frenzied motions. Her eyes never opened, and she never looked at him, but the flush on her pale skin, lit up by the rising sun, made her look like some filthy fantasy. Her small breasts, covered in a thin top, bounced as each brutal thrust moved her, as she took everything he had to give, trapped beneath his larger body as she was.

Cullen didn’t bother with more kisses, instead using his teeth on her throat, tasting her sweat from her heated skin. She was divine. Wild and untamed and as lost to lust as he was.

Her hips moved on their own, her hands clutching in the same way, as though each part of her fought for him. He’d have scratches down his back when they were done from where she’d raked her nails over him, and he’d fucking love it.

Her body went haywire when she came, her cunt tightening around him so much he sank deep and remained still, enjoying the way it seemed to want to pull him deeper.

He lost his battle to stave off his release as her back arched and he caught a nipple with his teeth through the fabric of her top.

It wasn’t the orgasm that shocked him, though. It was way that aching in his knot became all too clear, how the base of his cock swelled and locked him inside her, behind her pubic bone, deeper than ever. Each squeeze of her cunt, accompanied by another gasping whine from her, milked his knot as he emptied hot seed into her body.

It took him until his brain started working again, until a shift of his hips tugged his solid knot against her entrance, that he realized the truth.

Kara was an omega.