Fate Picked Me, the Alpha Passed, and I Felt Nothing novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Two in the Morning

Rue sleeps well, and at two in the morning the grey, shaking Alpha is at her workshop door, still feeling everything, so she takes him against her workbench to find out what she wants.

I slept.

I got home from the landing at ten, ate cold lasagna standing at the counter, and was out by eleven.

No dreams woke me, and no heartache sat on my chest.

What woke me was somebody pounding on the shop door at two in the morning.

I lay there a second, listening to it.

Then I pulled my overalls on over my thermal and went down the stairs in my socks.

Tolland Carpentry takes up the whole ground floor of the building, and my apartment sits right above it.

The lamp over the workbench was still on from when I had stayed late sanding a window sash.

The pounding came again.

I opened the door with my hand on the hammer I keep on the nail by the frame.

Dray Wetherell was standing on my step.

He was soaked to the skin.

He was grey in the face, and his whole body shook.

His sandy hair stuck flat to his forehead, and his coat hung open over a wet shirt.

"Rue," he said. His teeth were chattering. "I'm sorry."

"It's two in the morning, Dray."

"I know. I couldn't. I tried to stay away."

"Why?"

"Because it's all still here."

He pressed his fist against his chest.

"I can feel you. I felt you go up the stairs, I felt you lie down. I felt you fall asleep."

The hammer was heavy in my hand.

"I don't feel anything," I said.

He stared at me.

"Nothing?"

"I slept eight hours."

"You slept?"

"I slept fine, Dray. I woke up because you were hitting my door."

For a long time neither of us spoke.

The rain ticked on the awning.

"Hume said the cut goes both ways," he said slowly. "The whole pack believes it."

"Then Hume's wrong."

"It cut you," he said. His voice went hoarse. "It cut your side, and it left mine."

I looked at him.

I thought about the quiet that had come into me on the landing, the clean empty click of it.

I thought about him on his knees on the boards.

"You said no to me in front of seventy-four people," I said.

"Yes."

"And I'm the one who got to walk away free."

He closed his eyes.

"Yes."

I should have shut the door.

I want to be honest about that.

Any sane woman would have shut the door and gone back up the stairs.

But I had stood on that landing a few hours ago and felt the first thing in my life that I wanted that badly.

And then somebody had switched it off, and nobody had asked me.

I wanted to know what was mine.

"Come in," I said.

He came in, and I locked the door behind him.

The shop smelled like cut oak and linseed oil.

He stood on the drop cloth by the workbench, dripping on it.

I took the towel off the sawhorse and threw it at his chest.

He didn't use it.

He was looking at me, and I realized he was looking at my mouth.

"Tell me what you feel," I said.

"Everything."

"Be specific."

His throat moved. "A pull. Under my ribs, all the time. Like a hook with a line on it, and you're at the other end."

"And now?"

"Now it's worse."

"Why?"

"Because you're close."

I put the hammer down on the bench.

I walked up to him until there was a hand's width between us.

I could feel the cold coming off his wet coat.

I could feel my own pulse, ordinary and steady, and under it something warmer that had nothing to do with the moon.

I had wanted this man for five years.

I had never said it to anyone, and I wasn't going to say it to him tonight.

But I could still do something about it.

"I'm going to kiss you," I said. "And I'm going to find out if I want to without the bond."

He swallowed. "And if you don't?"

"Then you go home."

I put my hand flat on his wet shirt and kissed him.

His mouth was cold for about one second.

Then it opened under mine, and a sound came out of him that I felt in my own chest.

His hands came up and stopped in the air, shaking, an inch from my hips.

I leaned in and bit his lower lip, and his hands landed.

He gripped my waist hard enough to make me gasp.

I felt my own heat rise, entirely mine, a plain bright rush of wanting him.

No bolt of silver and no hum.

Just a woman and a man in a dark shop, and me wanting it with my eyes open.

I almost laughed with relief.

I pulled back an inch.

"Hands on the bench," I said.

He looked at me.

"Behind you. Both of them. Now."

He turned and put his palms flat on the edge of the workbench and gripped it.

I stepped in against him and pressed my body to his, and he groaned.

"That's too much," he said through his teeth. "It's coming in twice."

"Twice?"

"I feel it. And then I feel it again. Because of the line."

I put my mouth against his ear.

"Then we'd better see how much you can take."

I unbuckled his belt.

His jeans were soaked and clinging, and I got the button open and the zipper down and pushed his wet shirt up with my other hand.

He was hard already, thick and hot against my palm when I pulled him out.

He made a rough broken noise and let his head fall back.

"Rue."

"Look at me."

He lifted his head and looked.

I wrapped my hand around his cock and stroked once, slow, from base to head.

His whole body jerked.

"Fuck," he said.

"Tell me."

"It's like." He couldn't finish. His hips pushed into my fist. "It's like everything you do happens to me twice and I don't know which one is real."

"Both of them are real."

I stroked him again, twisting at the head the way I would have liked to be touched.

His knuckles went white on the bench.

"That one," he said. "Do that again."

I did it again.

He was shaking all over, and the workbench rattled under his hands.

I watched his face, the pale lashes and the open mouth and the sweat starting on his temple.

The Alpha of the Notch pack had not asked anyone for anything in nine years.

He was begging me with his whole body, and I hadn't even taken my overalls off.

"You're good," I said quietly. "You're doing so well."

His eyes shut.

A rough sound tore out of him, and his hips stuttered.

"I'm going to," he said. "Rue, I can't."

"Then do it."

I tightened my grip and stroked him fast.

He came with a shout that rang off the rafters, hot and heavy over my hand and onto the drop cloth, his whole body bowed over the bench.

I held him through all of it, my other arm around his waist.

When it was over, his forehead dropped to my shoulder, and he breathed against my neck in great ragged pulls.

"It happened twice," he said into my collar. "I came twice. Rue, I felt it twice."

His voice was wrecked.

I had never felt more awake.

I wiped my hand on the towel and tossed it on the bench.

He was still shaking, still hard, I realized, still pressed against my hip.

I put my palm on his jaw and turned his face up to mine.

"We're not done," I said. "Upstairs."

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