Too Late, Alpha, I'm Your Pen Pal novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Ledgers

In his study after closing, Maja leads him down false trails until a kiss against the bookcase burns through both of them, and she stops it.

"You could have said no," Gerda said, when the last customer was gone and the sign was flipped.

I was counting the drawer.

"He's the Alpha."

"He's a man with a key to a box."

She locked the front door and leaned on it with her small arms folded.

"You could say it's you. Right now. I'd close my eyes."

"No."

"You're not hiding, Maja. I know hiding."

"I'm not hiding."

"Then what do you call it?"

"Waiting to be picked," I said. "Not handed over."

Gerda shook her white head, but she handed me my satchel.

At nine I walked up Larch Ridge in my cardigan, with the co-op ledgers under my arm and my heart in my teeth.

The Alpha house was logs and glass at the top of the road, with a light on in the study.

He opened the door before I knocked.

"You came."

"You said you wanted help."

"I do."

He stood back, and I walked past him into pine smoke and cold lake water.

My wolf rolled over inside me.

I told her to behave.

The study had a desk the size of a rowboat, a fire, and a wall of books.

He had cleared the desk and laid out forty-one slips of paper, one per household with a box key.

"The postmaster's list," he said. "Everybody who could reach box 9."

"I'm on the list."

"So you are." He glanced up. "Are you Moth?"

My mouth went dry.

"No," I said. "I can't type."

He studied me for a moment, then laughed, short and surprised.

"Fair. You'd be too rude."

I did not know what to do with my face, so I pointed at the list.

"Three women on here have typewriters. The librarian, the doctor's wife, and the school secretary."

"Moth doesn't sound like a school secretary."

"What does she sound like?"

I should not have asked.

He sat on the edge of the desk, close enough that I could see the stubble coming along his jaw.

"She noticed I'd stopped eating," he said. "From a letter. From one line about coffee."

I stared at the ledger.

"She never says sorry for my mother. She says she's sorry I'm tired."

"That's a nice thing to say."

"It's the only thing anyone's said that didn't make me want to leave the room."

My eyes had gone hot.

I put my head down and added a column that didn't need adding.

"You don't talk much," he said.

"I talk."

"You talk to the register."

"The register listens."

His mouth twitched.

"Look at me, Maja."

I looked up.

His green eyes were on my face, and for the first time in three years I held them.

The room went very small.

"Why won't you look at me?" he said.

"Because you're the Alpha."

"That's not it."

"Because I don't want to like you."

It was out before I could stop it, and it was true, and it hung there between us.

He moved off the desk.

I stood, and the chair went back against the shelves.

"Maja."

"Don't."

"Tell me to leave you alone and I will."

I took one step and kissed him.

He made a low sound against my mouth and had me up against the bookcase before I finished breathing in.

His hands came into my hair, and he kissed me hard and deep, like a man who had been holding something in for years.

I fisted his thermal in both hands.

The books dug into my back.

His thigh pushed between mine, and I ground down on it before I knew I was moving.

"God," he said, into my neck.

His hand slid under my cardigan, hot against my ribs, and then over my breast, thumb dragging across the nipple through my bra.

I arched into it and bit his lip.

"Say you want this," he said.

"I want it."

"Say it again."

"I want you, Lennart."

He growled, and his teeth scraped my throat, and I felt him hard against my hip.

I got my hand under his shirt and found his stomach, flat and tight and shaking.

Every part of me said yes.

And a small, stubborn voice at the back of my head said, he thinks you're a stranger.

I turned my face away.

"Stop."

He stopped at once, and his hands came off me.

He was breathing like he had run up the ridge.

"Not tonight," I said.

"All right."

"It's not that I don't."

"I know," he said, and his voice was rough. "I can tell you do."

I straightened my cardigan.

My hands wouldn't work the buttons.

He did not help, only watched me, with his hair in his eyes and the whole room smelling of both of us.

"I'm in love with a woman I've never met," he said quietly. "This isn't her."

"I know."

"I need you to know that."

"I do."

I picked up my satchel, and at the door I said the truest thing I had said to him in three years.

"I'd like it anyway."

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