Rise of the Alphas Read online

  He ran his tongue up her neck as she came, sending a rush of goosebumps down her body. She clung to him as her orgasm began to recede. She gasped for breath as Nix slammed into her one more time and then she felt his cock twitch, and heat filled her as he came as hard as she had.

  He stayed on top of her for a moment, his muscles taut as he moaned loudly, and then he slipped out of her and rolled to the side. She felt as though he had taken a part of her with him as he pulled out of her, and already, she craved his touch again.

  He got up off the bed and pulled the duvet back. Eve smiled up at him and shuffled into the space he had made for her. He pulled the duvet over her and walked around to the other side of the bed. He got in and they lay together, both of them still trying to get their breath back.

  Eve fell asleep in Nix’s arms, listening to the rhythmic sound of his breathing, already anticipating the morning sex she knew they would have when they awoke.

  2

  Nix yawned as he awoke. Even in the darkness, he knew he was somewhere unfamiliar to him. He came fully awake, his dragon senses kicking into gear and he knew instantly where he was. Eve’s place. He could smell the sweet scent of her lying beside him, and he could feel the heat coming off her body in delicious waves.

  He waited until his eyes had adjusted to the darkness and then he turned his head to look at Eve. Her skin was so pale it was almost translucent. It was unblemished, like porcelain. Her cheeks had a slight pink hue. Her eyes were closed, but Nix could picture their color perfectly. They were the color of the sea on a cloudy day, grey and bright, wild and stormy. Her blonde hair was fanned out on the pillow around her head, framing her face like a halo, so blonde it was almost white.

  My angel, Nix thought, smiling to himself. That’s what she is.

  His dragon senses told him everything he needed to know about Eve. She was meant to be his mate, brought to him by destiny to make his own. But the realization was a bitter one for Nix.

  Eve was human, mortal. He couldn’t risk pulling her into his world. His world was dangerous. He was powerful in his own right, royalty, but his pack had been hugely diminished by King Xavier, and Nix knew the rival king wouldn’t rest until either the rest of his pack were dead or they defeated him. Either way, it wasn’t the place for Eve to be. Had she been a dragon, he might have risked it, but as a mortal, it was far too easy for her to get hurt or killed. And there was no way he could risk either of those things happening to his angel.

  Of course, Nix could be killed. He wasn’t truly immortal; there were ways to kill a dragon. But it was a whole lot harder to achieve. There were so many easy ways to kill a human, and if anything happened to Eve because of him, he didn’t know what he would do.

  It didn’t matter that he craved her with every fiber of his being. It didn’t matter that both his human and dragon sides recognized Eve as someone special. All that mattered now was keeping her safe, and Nix knew the only real way to do that was to stay away from her. He never should have come back here in the first place, but when Eve had asked him to come home with her, he hadn’t been able to resist her. He knew he had to have one night with this girl—one night that he would cherish forever.

  But now he knew he had to leave. He couldn’t tell Eve any of this stuff. He would just have to disappear from her life. And he didn’t think he would be strong enough to do that if she looked him in the eye and asked him to stay.

  He sat up and rubbed his hands over his face. He was reaching for the duvet when Eve stirred beside him. She looked up at him, smiling sleepily, and he felt her gaze in his heart, in his soul, and in his cock. His cock jumped to life before she had even spoken.

  “Hi,” she said, still smiling at him. “Were you trying to sneak out?”

  “No, of course not,” Nix laughed. “I was just going to the bathroom. But now, well, I have a better idea.”

  He leaned down and kissed Eve. He knew this was wrong, that he should just go, but what could another hour or so hurt? He knew this had to be the last time he saw Eve, and he wanted to make the most of it.

  He pushed Eve onto her back, still kissing her, feeling the way her body fit against his like it was meant to be. Even their mouths fit together, their kiss coming in perfect harmony. Nix cleared his mind, concentrating only on Eve. There would be plenty of time to feel the pain of walking away from her later, but right now, she was still here, still his, and he wouldn’t ruin their last time together by thinking of walking away from her.

  He kissed down her neck and between her breasts, pushing the duvet back. He ran his tongue over her stomach and then he pushed her thighs apart, kneeling between them.

  He reached out with both hands and pulled Eve’s closer to him before he ran his tongue along her exposed labia. She made a long, drawn-out mmm sound, spurring Nix on, and he moved his tongue through her warm folds, finding her clit and licking it gently. She moaned, a sound filled with desire, and Nix felt heat between his legs.

  He upped the pressure of his tongue on her clit, moving it in circles, pressing down on the most sensitive part. Eve writhed beneath him, gasping and moaning as he brought her body back to life.

  He kept working her until he knew she was on the verge of orgasming, and then he sucked her clit into his mouth, stretching it out until Eve gasped. Her body went rigid, her thighs moving in and pressing on the sides of his head. She moaned his name as he felt her body clenching and relaxing. His cock was going wild, the dragon within him responding to the scent of Eve’s lust for him.

  He released her clit and a shudder went through her body. He kissed his way back up her body and to her mouth, where he pressed his lips tightly against hers. Their tongues snaked around each other, wrapping together and becoming one as Nix plundered Eve’s soft, sensuous mouth with his own. Knowing she could taste her own orgasm on his tongue almost pushed Nix over the edge himself.

  Nix could feel his dragon growing restless, and he knew he couldn’t wait much longer before he claimed Eve once more. He deepened their kiss, making it more passionate. He really couldn’t get enough of her—the way she tasted, the feel of her lips on his. She was driving him so wild that he felt shaky inside. He had never felt anything like this before, and at almost two centuries old, he had thought he had seen, heard, and felt everything this earth had to offer.

  Eve moved her hips beneath him, rubbing her body against his, and he knew he had to have her now. He reached down and lined his cock up with her center, and then he pushed his way inside of her, feeling her tight cleft wrapping around him and pulling him further into her warm depths.

  Nix heard himself moan as he entered Eve. It was a long moan that sounded almost pained. He began to pump his hips, moving inside of Eve. She sucked in a gasping breath beneath him, her hands moving all over his back and sides as though she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

  Nix kept moving, feeling the heat and the rush of wetness as Eve came hard beneath him, her roaming hands twisting his flesh for a moment as she was pinned to the bed with pleasure. Nix could feel that his own climax was just seconds away, and he closed his eyes as he felt them starting to change, his dragon eyes emerging as the lust took over his senses.

  As Nix’s climax built up hard and fast, he felt his eyes fully change, and he kept them closed, not wanting to have to try and explain away the yellow eyes of a reptile. Eve gasped in a breath and began to pant as her orgasm faded and Nix’s muscles tightened as his own climax hit him. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe. His body was taut, tight, and then his release came and pleasure flooded him, turning his hard muscles to soft Jell-O.

  He rolled off Eve and lay beside her, staring up at the ceiling, his eyes open now that they felt normal, human, again. He gasped for breath, feeling his heart racing. His body felt heavy, his muscles spent and relaxed, and he wanted nothing more than a safe, danger-free life, a life where he could allow himself to fall asleep beside Eve and wake up beside her every day.

  He felt Eve move beside him. She shuffled
closer to him and although he knew he had to let her go, he couldn’t resist holding her one more time. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and she put her head on his chest. Her arm was around his waist now, and he pulled her closer, wanting to feel every part of her against him one last time before he had to walk away from her for good. Eve’s head moved slightly against him and he felt the warmth of her lips on his chest as she kissed him.

  “That was awesome,” she said quietly beside him.

  “It was better than awesome,” Nix said, smiling sadly into the dark of the room.

  It was the best sex he had ever had and now he knew for sure that his dragon was right. Eve was meant to be his. But he knew he would never drag her into his world. He could never do that to anyone whom he felt so strongly for. Nix knew letting Eve go would be the hardest thing he had ever had to do, harder maybe even than losing his parents to King Xavier’s army. He also knew he didn’t have a choice. When it came to Eve and the way he felt about her, he couldn’t let himself be selfish. He couldn’t risk her safety, her life, just so that he could have her again.

  He felt like his heart would break as a cold dread filled his stomach. He didn’t want to walk away from Eve and never see her again, but what choice did he have? He shook his head and sighed quietly.

  Part of him wished he had never met Eve. If he had never met her, then he wouldn’t know what he was missing. He wouldn’t know how good he could feel, how right it could feel to be with someone this way. But deep down, he knew he would never wish away the night he had spent with Eve. Leaving her was going to kill him inside, but the thought of not spending this night with her hurt him just as badly. He realized that as painful as this was, he was glad he had experienced a real connection, even if it could only be for tonight.

  He waited for Eve to fall asleep. It didn’t take long, and then he waited a little longer, wanting to be sure she fell into a deep enough sleep so that his leaving wouldn’t disturb her. That had happened the last time he’d tried to slip away from her, and he knew if he woke her again, he wouldn’t be strong enough to walk away from her while she was awake and could ask him why he was doing this. He couldn’t tell her the truth, and he didn’t have the strength to tell her he didn’t want to see her again.

  When Nix was convinced Eve was in a deep enough sleep for his movement not to wake her, he gently moved his arm from beneath her. She made a muffled muttering sound, and Nix froze, holding his breath, but she didn’t wake up. He got up from the bed and looked down at Eve one last time, needing to memorize every little detail of her beautiful face.

  He resisted the urge to reach out and stroke the hair back from her cheek. That would surely wake her. Even as he thought it, his dragon stirred, trying to convince him to wake her, to hold her, to never leave her side again.

  With an inner strength Nix hadn’t even known he had until that moment, he turned and moved away from Eve. He retraced his steps from last night—their steps as they stripped each other, kissing, caressing, exploring each other—and gathered up his clothes.

  He dressed in the living room and with a picture of Eve in his mind, he ignored the instincts of his dragon, and instead of moving closer to the girl his dragon had claimed as his mate, he walked away from her, slipping out of her apartment without looking back.

  3

  Eve woke up slowly, rising up through layers of sleep like a diver coming back to the surface. She felt warm and content, her body equal parts sated and aching. She became aware of the tenderness between her legs as she came almost fully awake, and she smiled to herself as the memories of last night came flooding back to her.

  She had brought Nix home, and they’d had the most amazing sex of Eve’s life. It wasn’t even just that the sex was good and Eve had more orgasms in that one night than she’d had in a month or two with anyone else. It was more than that. She and Nix had connected on some deeper level. She had felt it in every fiber of her being. It was like Nix had awoken some strange sixth sense inside of her, a sense that was completely certain Nix was the one.

  She reached out with one arm, searching for Nix, hoping he, too, was awake so they could have sex again. She groped around, searching with her outstretched hand, but there was no sign of Nix. She opened her eyes, wondering if he had gone to the bathroom, but already, a part of her knew he was gone. The bed where he had lain was cold and when Eve sat up and looked around, she could see Nix’s clothes were gone from the bedroom floor. She tried to tell herself he could be in the living room waiting for her to get up, but she already knew he wasn’t. She somehow knew that if he was there, she would be able to feel his presence, and she couldn’t feel him there. All she could feel was the pain that gripped her, making her heart hurt and her stomach churn.

  A spark of hope came to life within Eve. Maybe Nix had to leave early for work or something and he just didn’t want to wake her. He could have left her a note somewhere in the apartment. She knew she was clutching at straws, setting herself up for more disappointment, but now that she had been given a bit of hope, she wasn’t ready to let go of it just yet.

  She got up from the bed, grabbing her robe from the chair in the corner of the bedroom and putting it on. She tied the belt and made her way out to the living room. The stillness of the apartment, the emptiness of it, bothered her in a way it never had before, and Eve realized with a start that what she was feeling was loneliness. She missed Nix so much already.

  She cursed herself out for being so stupid—she hadn’t even known Nix for twelve hours—but all of the rational thinking in the world couldn’t change the way Eve felt. Nix was her soulmate. She knew it with a fierce certainty that left her reeling.

  She searched the living room and then the kitchen, but there was no note. In fact, there was nothing to suggest that Nix had been anything other than a dream. If it weren’t for the aching between her legs and the pain inside of her at the loss of Nix, Eve thought maybe she could have convinced herself she had dreamt the whole thing.

  She was horrified to feel tears welling up in her eyes. She told herself to stop it at once, that this was crazy. She turned and hurried to the bathroom, getting into the shower so that when the tears spilled down her face, she could tell herself they weren’t tears at all, they were just the spray of the water.

  By the time Eve had finished in the shower, she had stopped crying, although she still felt an ache inside of herself. She got dressed and went to the living room with her laptop. She tried to concentrate on her emails, but it was no use. Her mind kept going back to Nix, to the way his hands had felt on her body. She kept trying to tell herself that he had just had to leave early and that he would call her later on in the day. But she knew it wasn’t going to happen—he didn’t have her number and she didn’t have his.

  She opened up Facebook and searched for Nix’s name. He had to be on social media, she thought to herself. She scrolled through the results, and she felt her heart do a double slam in her chest when she spotted Nix’s profile picture on the page. She clicked into it, but the profile was private and she couldn’t see anything except his profile picture and his name. She felt a little disappointed. It would have been nice to be able to look through his profile and learn a little bit more about him, but at least now she had a way to contact him.

  She opened up a new message to Nix and sat staring at the empty box for a moment, wondering what to say. Would he think she was desperate or weird if she messaged him? She thought for a moment. Maybe he would think she was desperate, but if that were the case, then she had nothing to lose because it wasn’t like she would see him again anyway. On the other hand, maybe he felt exactly the same as her; maybe they would be missing out on something amazing because they were both too shy or too stubborn to make the first move.

  Eve made her decision and began to type out a message to Nix. She kept it casual, thanking him for a fun night and saying how much she had enjoyed herself. She finished off by saying that she would love to do it again sometime. She read b
ack through the message and nodded to herself. She had given enough away to let Nix know she would be up for another night like last night, but not enough to make it sound like she had done nothing but think about him since the moment she had opened her eyes. She hit send before she could change her mind.

  She let out a long breath after she sent the message. She waited, eager to see if Nix would respond. After a couple of minutes, she clicked out of Facebook and began scrolling through Twitter, resisting the urge to search for Nix on there too. She didn’t want to seem like some crazy stalker type, and all the thinking of Nix she was doing was upsetting herself further.

  She waited for half an hour, forcing herself to try and think about anything except Nix. She even found herself doing stupid quizzes online to pass the time. She now knew what cake she was (chocolate fudge), what dog she was (a labradoodle), who her celebrity soulmate was (Liam Hemsworth), and which city she should move to (Seattle—she disagreed with that one).

  Eve tortured herself, wondering why Nix wasn’t responding to her message. Maybe my Messenger has stopped working, she thought to herself, feeling another surge of hope run through her body. Yes, that must be it. It was always temperamental.

  She clicked back into her Facebook tab. Her heart sank when she looked at the Messenger box that remained open at the bottom of her screen. Just below her message was a tiny sentence—a sentence that made her gorge rise and the tears threaten once more: seen at 9:15. Just three minutes after she had sent it and there was still no response.

  She felt the sadness inside of herself start to be replaced by anger. He had seen her message. Would it have killed him to respond? If he didn’t want to see her again, fine, but a simple “I had a great time too” shouldn’t have been too much to ask.

  Annoyed, she slammed the lid of her laptop closed and picked up her cell phone. She texted Tammy to see if she wanted to meet for coffee. Tammy responded quickly, saying she would love to. They arranged to meet in June’s, their favorite coffee house, in half an hour.