Chapter 5 #2
I didn’t waste a moment hanging around. Stephanie was Sara’s problem now.
The further away from the incident I was, the calmer I felt.
The lie was clearly ridiculous; Sara wouldn’t believe it.
But it didn’t change the fact that Stephanie had reacted to me in a way that required Sara’s intervention. Cole was going to be upset.
I had continued with the task of cleaning the council members' offices.
It was an easy job; only Ophelia, the youngest and friendliest council member, was in her office.
She had smiled warmly when I entered and made small talk about what the Pack House chef might make for dinner.
She was the only council member who would acknowledge me, past letting me know if they wanted the room vacuumed and dusted.
The vacuum was on and loud when I entered Cole’s office. Maybe I was more shaken up with what had happened with Stephanie than I was aware because I got such a fright when I looked up and saw Cole standing behind her desk that I dropped the vacuum and hit my elbow off the office door.
“Ouch,” I cried out, holding my elbow as I used my foot to turn the vacuum off. “Sorry, I didn’t expect you to be in here,” I said.
Cole didn’t reply; it was then that I noticed the acrid scent of anger that emanated from her. She looked me over with dark eyes, her brows creating deep lines.
“Come here,” she demanded.
She hadn’t said more than a few words to me at a time since Heaven’s Bar; she had barely looked at me since Heaven’s Bar, and now she was locked on me like prey.
“Now,” she growled out when I didn’t immediately move towards her.
“Is… is everything… okay?” I asked weakly; it was becoming more and more difficult to find my voice with each step closer to the towering alpha.
I stopped in front of her desk, and she growled frustratedly and walked in long, quick strides around the desk and across the room. I turned to follow her, and my stomach sank as she closed and locked her office door.
She stalked back towards me, and I stepped backward, my backside nudging her desk.
Cole stopped directly in front of me. She towered over me as she looked me up and down.
“Are you hurt?” she asked me.
“No,” I answered, but I sounded unsure even to myself.
Cole gripped my apron.
“Take this off,” she commanded.
“Why?” I questioned even as my hands moved to unclip the apron and pull it over my head and free from my body.
Cole took it from me and threw it to the side.
She stepped closer still and grabbed me by my elbows, and pulled me forward. Her hold was firm, and the suddenness of it, my anxiety, and the scent of Cole’s anger, combined, resulted, to my complete mortification, in my going nearly limp in Cole’s hold like a pup.
I didn’t stop her, didn’t even protest as her hands moved the hem of the top I wore and she lifted it, removing it from my body; the cold air of the office hit my chest and hitched my breath.
Cole’s eyes diligently scanned my torso.
Her hands landed softly on my hips, and she turned me around wordlessly.
I braced my hands against the desk as her fingers almost caressed my spine, gently pressing against me, creating a shiver.
Her hand stopped at the base of my neck, and I breathed in sharply at the vulnerability, the danger, the intimacy of it.
My neck in her hand. She released my neck and pushed her fingers through my hair.
I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Why was I allowing her to do… this? I dug my nails into the desk.
Her hand moved back to my neck as her other hand gripped my hip. She moved from my shoulder down my ribs, and I swallowed the sound that tried to make it past my lips.
Lower still, she went until her hand dipped around to the button of my trousers, which was when my mind, somewhere hazily, registered what was happening; but Cole was so close, so firm, steady—it was like the warmth of the sun. I was bathing in her.
She undid the first button—it was like a downpour of rain—and I gasped, and the office and my predicament came crashing back into clarity.
“Wait,” I said.
I was ignored. Cole’s fingers made quick work of the remaining buttons, and she pushed my trousers roughly down my thighs before I could make any further protest.
Ashamedly, I tried to cover my scars. They marred the skin of my right thigh and buttocks in silvery-white, thick streaks, and dents from where teeth and claws had cut to the bone. I didn’t want her to see.
Cole moved my hands away with too much ease. I tried to fight back then, my senses coming back to me, and I slapped at her hands.
She growled loud enough to shake the windows, the sound ferocious, predatory, all alpha, and took hold of both my wrists and spun me around to face her. Brown and golden eyes pierced me. She bared her teeth, and I was again, still, passive.
Her hands glided, soft, hardly a touch, mapping out each scar, each dip.
I was exposed, vulnerable; I couldn’t stop what was happening, and the delicate way Cole handled me, as if I might break, made it all worse.
Eventually, she moved on, inspecting my legs further, even going so far as to manoeuvre my ankles. I realised she was looking for signs of injury before she lifted my trousers back up and over my hips.
Her hands landed on either side of me against her desk. I pressed myself back, but there was nowhere to go. She was everywhere.
“Sara told me what happened,” she said, so close to me that we were sharing breath, and she dipped her head to my neck and inhaled. “I needed,” she said the word like it was some curse, something she couldn’t control, “to check you weren’t injured.”
“I told you I wasn’t,” I told her.
She pressed her nose against my neck, and a shiver rattled my spine.
“You have been,” she replied with a threatening growl against my throat.
“That was a long time ago,” I managed to reply, but it was barely a whisper.
She ran her nose up to my ear.
“What happened?” she asked.
“My first shift, when I learned I was an omega, I was… a-attacked,” I said, unsure if it was the way Cole’s heat bled into me or remembering that night that caused me to stutter.
Cole growled softly; the exhale of her warm breath against the shell of my ear was like fire. I moaned involuntarily.
Suddenly, Cole’s hand was at the base of my back, pulling me against her. The skin of my abdomen pressed against her mink silk shirt, and her lips brushed against my neck.
My chest heaved, gasping for air from the contact and inhaling pure Cole.
Somewhere in the back of my fog-filled mind, I registered the impact of pheromones. The sweet scent coating my mind. But I had never been hit like this. Like a freight train to the chest. Like I wanted to be folded and moulded into whatever shape would make me lock with her.
I’d recognised other alphas polluting the air, burning my nose, Ashford repulsing me. But Cole… Cole was different, warm and spicy and sweet, like mulled wine. I could drink her down and down and…
“W-w-what?” I asked, confused, as just as quickly as I was consumed, I was discarded, alone and cold.
I reached out to pull her back to me.
Cole stepped back, shaking her head.
“Get dressed,” she growled out before stiffly turning and retreating from her office, leaving me there, standing in my bra, chest rising and falling fast, a dampness between my legs.
It wasn’t until her scent began to dissipate that the fog lifted from my mind entirely.
I found my top and apron and tried my best to calm myself, to stop thinking about her.
All I could do was think about Cole.