I Don't Need No Alpha Brothers novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Not His Luna

Keir didn't move out of the doorway.

He just stood there with the kitchen light behind him and looked at me.

"Say that again," he said.

"I'm not here as anybody's Luna."

"Then what are you here as?"

I hadn't planned that far.

I'd planned the knock, and the first sentence, and then my brain had run out of road.

"As me," I said. "Lainey. Just for tonight. No bond, no fork, no deals. You don't get to tell anybody I'm yours in the morning."

"I wasn't going to."

"You told both packs I was your mate."

"That was before you knocked." His voice dropped. "Now you're just the woman standing on my porch in the cold."

"Are you going to let me in or not?"

He stepped back and held the door.

"Then come in as Lainey."

I walked past him into the warm kitchen.

He shut the door behind me.

For a second neither of us did anything.

The house was quiet. Gran's room was at the far end, and her snoring came faintly down the hall.

"She sleeps like the dead," Keir said. "She'll swear tomorrow she heard nothing."

"Will she?"

"She'll swear it whether she did or not."

I laughed.

It came out shaky.

He crossed the kitchen in two steps and put his hands on either side of my face.

He didn't kiss me yet.

He held me there and looked at me, and his thumbs moved once along my cheekbones.

"Tell me to go slow," he said.

"No."

"Then tell me what you want."

I took a fistful of his T-shirt and pulled him down.

His mouth was hot and rough and tasted of coffee.

He kissed like he'd been holding it back for days, which he had.

I'd been holding it back too.

The bond went off in my chest, so loud I almost pulled away from the shock of it.

I didn't pull away.

I pushed up on my toes and kissed him harder.

He made a low sound in his throat and backed me against the counter.

His hands went down my sides and under Gran's sweater to my bare skin.

His palms were rough and scorching.

I gasped into his mouth.

"Upstairs," I said.

He picked me up.

I'd told myself he'd never carry me.

I wrapped my legs around his waist and let him.

He carried me up the stairs without stopping.

His shoulder hit the bedroom door and it swung open.

The lamp was on low against one wall.

A big bed with a heavy gray wool blanket took up most of the room.

The window over the creek showed black water and the dark line of the far bank.

He set me down beside the bed and let my legs slide off him.

I didn't let go of his T-shirt.

"Off," I said.

He pulled it over his head in one motion and dropped it.

I put both palms flat on his chest and pushed him.

He let me push him.

He sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at me with those gray river-stone eyes.

I climbed into his lap and straddled him.

My hands went to his shoulders.

The river-fork tattoo was right there under my fingers.

"Eight days," I said. "You've been waiting eight days."

"Something like that."

"Since the river."

He nodded once.

"You put your jacket around me in the river."

"That was practical."

"This isn't practical."

"No," he said. "It isn't."

I pulled Gran's oatmeal sweater over my head and threw it on the floor.

His eyes went black between one breath and the next.

His hands came to my hips and gripped hard enough to bruise.

"Lainey."

"Say it again."

"Lainey."

I reached behind my back and unhooked my bra.

It fell away.

He made a sound low in his chest, almost a growl.

His mouth went to my throat.

Not biting.

Just hot open-mouthed kisses down the side of my neck to my collarbone.

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