Breed Me, Daddy Alpha novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Mill at Dawn

Everly follows Kellan to the sawmill and kisses him against his truck; he says no and says he will open the Courting to the pack.

I didn't sleep.

By four in the morning my skin felt like it belonged to someone smaller.

I lay on my childhood bed in Mom's house with the window open and every muscle clenched.

Heat does not feel like anything the movies tell you.

It feels like being hungry in every part of your body at once.

My mother had put a glass of water and a cold washcloth on the nightstand without a word.

She had looked at my eyes in the hall light, said "Oh, baby," and gone downstairs to put on a pot of coffee.

She did not ask who.

She knew it was a man, and she knew I wasn't going to tell her yet.

At five I gave up.

I pulled a flannel shirt over my tank top and climbed out the window onto the porch roof.

Then I dropped into the yard.

I knew exactly where he would be.

The Pinegate sawmill started its first saw at six, and Kellan MacAskill had unlocked the gate himself at five every morning since his father died.

I walked the three miles in the grey light with my wolf pacing inside me the whole way.

It knew the road.

It knew the way to him better than I did.

He was alone in the yard, hauling a chain across a stack of logs.

His shirt was already wet through.

He heard me before I came around the corner, and his back went rigid.

"Go home, Everly."

"Good morning to you too."

"I mean it." He didn't turn around. "Go home. Your mother will want you there."

"My mother made me coffee and told me to be careful."

"Then be careful."

"I am being careful. I walked three miles to tell you something to your face."

He turned around.

He looked terrible.

His eyes were red-rimmed and he'd missed a patch shaving his throat.

He looked at me.

"I'm forty-one years old," he said.

"I know."

"You're twenty-two."

"I know that too. I'm a grown woman, I've got a degree and a student loan, and I know what I want."

"You don't know what you want. You're in heat."

"That's why I'm awake. It's not why I'm here."

He took a step back.

I took a step forward.

His nostrils flared and his chest rose, and I watched his control come up.

"I taught you to ride a bike," he said roughly. "I pulled a tooth out of your mouth in my kitchen."

"You did, and I kicked you in the shin."

"I changed the oil in your mother's car. You called me Mr. MacAskill until you were twelve."

"I'm not twelve."

"Marlee is my daughter."

"Marlee is my best friend and I love her and I'll fix it."

"There is nothing to fix because nothing is going to happen."

I closed the last of the distance.

He was so much taller that I had to tip my head all the way back.

I put my palm flat on his wet shirt, over his heart.

It was going like a drum.

"Then why is this doing that?" I said.

He grabbed my wrist.

I thought he was going to push me away.

Instead his thumb pressed into the soft inside of my arm, right where my pulse was.

He made a sound low in his chest that was half growl and half groan.

"Everly."

"Say it again."

"Go."

"Say my name again, like that."

He lifted me.

I don't know how it happened.

One second my feet were on the gravel.

The next my back hit the door of his truck and his mouth came down on mine.

I had been kissed before.

Not like that.

He kissed like a man who had been starving for six years and had just smelled bread.

His beard scraped my chin and his tongue pushed into my mouth, and I made a noise I had never made in my life.

My legs came up around his waist all on their own.

He held me there with one forearm under my ass like I weighed nothing.

His other hand knotted in my curls and pulled my head back so he could drag his teeth down my throat.

"You smell like," he said against my skin, and couldn't finish.

"Say it."

"Like mine."

The word rolled through me.

I rocked against the hard line of him through his jeans, shameless.

He swore and slammed his hand flat on the truck beside my head.

The metal rang.

Then he stopped.

It was like watching someone drag a wolf back by the scruff with his own bare hands.

His whole body shook with it.

He set me down.

He stepped away, and he didn't touch me, and the cold air rushed in where he had been.

"No," he said.

His voice was wrecked.

"Kellan."

"I said no." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"I'm not doing this to you. I'm not doing it to Marlee. I'm not doing it to Anne."

Anne had been Marlee's mother, and she had packed my school lunches too.

"Your wife has been dead six years," I said gently.

His eyes flashed gold.

"Don't."

"I'm not trying to hurt you."

"Then you picked a bad way to start."

He picked the chain up off the ground and held it in both fists.

When he spoke again it was in his Alpha's voice, flat and final.

"Here is what's going to happen. You're in heat."

"By pack law, that means the Courting, seven nights."

"Any unmated male in this pack can come stand at your fence."

"You can choose whoever you want to choose, or no one."

"I choose you."

"I'm not going to be one of them."

"That's the coward's way to say it."

He took it like a slap.

"I'll announce the Courting at noon," he said. "Tonight it starts."

I stared at him.

"You're going to line up every man in this pack outside my mother's house."

"I am going to do what the law says, and I am going to do it so I don't do what I want."

I laughed.

I could not help it.

"You want me," I said. "You just said it."

"Yes."

He didn't even dodge it.

"I want you more than I've ever wanted anything. And I'm still going to say no, Everly, for as long as it takes."

He walked into the mill without looking back.

The first saw started up and screamed through the morning.

I stood in the yard with my lips swollen and my knees shaking and my wolf howling in my chest.

For as long as it takes, he'd said.

I wiped my mouth and looked at the wet shape of my own back printed on the door of his truck.

Fine, I thought.

Then we'll find out how long that is.

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