Wanted by the Alphas(23)

“Well, you could have called,” she says.

And the moment she said this, she wishes she could take it back. The last thing she wants to do is to sound like a whiny girlfriend. They just had sex for one night, for goodness sakes! They are very far from actually dating.

“I mean,” she adds hastily, “you are not obliged to call, of course. What we had was great . . . that was what it was.”

Why does everything that is coming out of her mouth feel so lame? She half-wishes a great big hole would open up and let her dive into it. Lucien’s presence is reducing her to her tongue-tied, trembling-kneed roots, and that is the farthest from what she wants to be in front of him.

He doesn’t seem to be as composed as he usually is, either. But then, she doesn’t know him that well. She doesn’t know him at all. He gave off the veneer of a devil-may-care, sophisticated player at first meeting. It may not be who he truly is.

“Well,” he says awkwardly, “you did leave the next morning. You didn’t even leave a note. I was going to take you to breakfast and ask if you wanted to stay longer at Pine’s Bluff. Until you can get your feet on the ground, of course.”

“Oh. Thank you. That’s very nice of you.”

“You are welcome.”

A silence again. A very stretched, uncomfortable silence. Shannon senses that Lucien is not used to being silent on such subjects. Or maybe he is not used to having his lover leave him without a word or a note in the morning. She reckons that it is him who usually does the leaving.

Of course, that is probably unfair. She doesn’t know what he does in situations like these.

He looks up, seeming to recover his usual spirits.

“You going shopping?” he says.

“Just picking up some groceries.”

“Well, I need to pick some up myself. Do you want to go in?”

“I didn’t know you picked up your own groceries,” she teases. The awkwardness appears to have lifted some.

“Oh, but I do.” He smiles. “I pick out my own wines and cheeses. I’m quite a connoisseur.”

“I believe you.”

Together, they walk into Safeway’s. There is no hand-holding, just a comfortable companionship – as if they have both made a mutual decision not to push anything but just let things go at their own pace, if there’s even anything there at all.

She is flattered that he has actually tailed her car and come to this place with her. She is flattered that he is going grocery shopping with her. She is flattered that this extremely handsome, sophisticated scion of a multi-million dollar real estate empire is even with her at all.

They make small talk as she pushes a trolley down the aisles. He goes to the cheese section and gives her rundown on the different cheeses from different places.

“Do you like Brie?” he says.

“I have never tried it before.”

“It’s French. A little crumbly if you like that kind of texture.”

“I prefer Italian cheeses in my pasta. This is what I mix when I make a cheese sauce.”

“I like fruits like apricots and raspberries mixed up in my cheeses,” he says. “I usually eat them with water crackers.”

She finds herself warming up to him again in that easy camaraderie they seem to share. Almost as if they are boyfriend and girlfriend.

When they pass a door with the sign ‘STAFF ONLY’ somewhere between the dairy and frozen sections, he suddenly grabs her hand and pulls her through it.

“But what about my cart – ?” she begins, but the rest of what she was about to say is lost when he presses her back against the tiled wall and kisses her ferociously.

Ohhh!

His mouth devours hers with insatiable hunger. It is as though he is so penned up with physical need for her that he cannot contain himself. His kisses are hard on her mouth, and she cannot help but respond to them. Her loins are turning into mush.

Someone will see us, she thinks in a haze. But he doesn’t seem to care.

“God, I need you now,” he murmurs against her mouth.

He fumbles with her skirt. She is fully dressed. Her jacket is in the push trolley together with the rest of their groceries just outside this door. He hikes her skirt up and gropes for her panties. She is already very wet, and her juices have soaked through the thin strip of material which forms her crotch.

“Lucien, someone will see us.”

No one in the little storeroom, which is white-tiled. The air smells of refrigeration and the room is filled with racks laden with goods and deep freezers. A passage leads to somewhere else, and Shannon can hear voices in the next room.

“I don’t care. I need you too much,” he says heavily.

He unzips his jeans. Out springs his enormous erect cock. He takes out a condom in a foil wrapper and quickly snaps it onto his hot flesh. Her arms are around his shoulders as he lifts her up and sandwiches her against the wall. The entire act is rough and urgent, and it is also thrilling and filled with the danger of public discovery.