The Alpha Hunts Every Runner, and I Took Him Down novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Porch

Soren waits on her father's cabin porch with firewood and the order he signed; she makes him say what he did, uses his hand on her anyway, and learns Orrin has called the pack to the hall with an old ledger.

My father's cabin sits where Cutler Creek bends under the cedars, six miles below the Stone.

Nobody had lived in it for eight years, and somebody had been splitting wood on its porch.

Soren Brekke was sitting on the top step with a neat stack of kindling beside him and a folded paper in his hand.

He had pulled a dry shirt on, and he stood up the moment I came out of the trees.

My right palm began to hum.

"You beat me here," I said.

"I took the short way."

"You were told not to follow me."

"I was told that last night." He looked at the porch boards. "This morning I'm just the man who owes you a conversation."

I climbed the steps and stopped one stair below him, which put my eyes at the level of his mouth.

I did not let myself look at his mouth.

"Is that it?" I said.

He held out the paper.

It was the order, and I knew the thick black signature before I had it open.

"Read it to me," I said.

He didn't need to look.

"By order of the Alpha, the family of Halvorsen is put out of the valley."

"Its lands are forfeit, for theft from the mill fund."

His voice was level, and his knuckles were white.

"Why?" I said.

"Orrin brought me a ledger with your father's hand on it."

"He said the Council would remove an Alpha of twenty-four who protected a thief."

"So you signed."

"Yes."

"Did you ask my father one question?"

"No."

"Did you read the ledger?"

"I read what Orrin put his thumb on."

I waited for him to say that he'd been young.

I waited for the excuse, so that I could hate it.

He didn't give me one.

"I took the seat over your father's life because I was afraid," Soren said.

"I've known it every day for eight years."

"I won't hand you a reason that makes it smaller."

My chest tightened, and I hated that too.

"Don't you dare make me forgive you," I said.

"I haven't asked."

"I'm furious."

"You should be."

"I want you so much I can't see straight."

The words fell out of my mouth before I could catch them.

He went very still, and his pale eyes went dark.

"Then use me," he said, low. "However you like. I'll be here when you're done."

I was shaking, and the shaking wasn't cold.

"This is not forgiveness," I said.

"No."

"Take your hands out of your pockets, Brekke."

He did.

I turned and sat on the porch rail with my back against the post and one boot hooked on the railing.

My trail shorts were still damp from the creek.

I took his right wrist, the one with the glowing palm, and put his hand flat on my thigh.

The silver crescents touched and the hum went through me.

He drew a breath through his teeth.

"Higher," I said.

His hand slid up under the hem, rough and warm, and stopped at the edge of my underwear.

"Greta," he said, voice scraped raw.

"I'll say when."

I pushed my own hips forward on the rail and told him exactly where to go.

He slipped two fingers under the cotton and found me, and we both made a sound.

I was soaked.

I had been soaked since the creek.

"Greta," he said, like it hurt. "You're so wet."

"That's your fault."

"I know."

He stroked me, slow and flat, from my entrance up to my clit, and my head dropped back against the post.

"Slower."

He slowed.

"Again."

He did it again, a long deliberate drag, and I pressed down into his palm and heard myself whine.

His other hand came up and braced beside my hip on the rail, as though he needed something to hold on to.

"Look at you," he said, hoarse, watching my face. "God, look at you."

"Don't talk. Do what I said."

"Yes."

He circled my clit with two fingers, tight and steady, and the pleasure climbed my spine in hard bright steps.

I fisted a hand in his shirt and dragged him in until his forehead rested against mine.

His breath came as fast as mine.

I could feel how hard he was against the inside of my knee.

He made no move to do a thing about it.

"Put them inside me," I said.

He slid two fingers into me, slow, all the way to the knuckle.

I gasped.

He curled them up and found the place that made my vision go white at the edges.

The heel of his hand ground against my clit.

"Right there," I said. "Oh, fuck, right there, don't stop."

"I won't stop. Take it. Take all of it."

I rode his hand on the porch rail of my dead father's house with the cedars dripping and the creek going by.

I came with a sob that I swallowed into his shoulder, my thighs locked around his wrist and every muscle in me shaking.

He held me through it.

He kept his fingers still inside me, gentle, until the last pulse ebbed, and then he drew them out very slowly.

I was boneless.

He was trembling, and he hadn't come.

"You're still hard," I said, against his collar.

"Yes."

"You're not going to do anything about it."

"Not unless you tell me to."

I lifted my head.

His eyes were closed, and he looked like a man standing in the rain, waiting.

I thought, with a long slow shock, that he meant it.

"Not today," I said.

"All right."

He stepped back and licked two fingers clean without thinking.

He went red to the ears when he realized I was looking.

The sight did something terrible to my knees.

I got down off the rail before I could change my mind.

An engine growled up the creek road.

Dell's truck came around the bend too fast and slewed to a stop in the mud.

She jumped out with her phone in her fist and her apron still on from the night shift.

"Greta!" she yelled. "Orrin just rang the hall bell!"

"What for?"

"Everybody's to come at noon for a pack moot." She dragged in a breath. "And he's carrying a ledger as thick as a Bible."

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