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“You can fuck me again if you feel the need,” she tossed off, as if he hadn’t spoken, “before we leave in the morning.”
Fists clenched, he bore down on her with his vibrating outrage, the nerve she struck zapping and popping like an exposed wire. “Let’s get one thing straight, Omega.” Cal stabbed at the rock between his thighs with his index finger. “Just because I held off the claiming bite, don’t think for one goddamnsecondyou’re in charge of what’s happening here. You are not inanyposition to be dictating demands.”
Sliding her gaze up from his emphatic finger, Della raised an imperious brow. “Oh, I see. I was wondering when your big bad Alpha was going to show himself. What a surprise he’s as tedious as all the others.”
A growl burst out of him and ricocheted around the cave. Not a sexy growl, either. This one approximated the warning snarl one animal might give another. “You think I’m like all the others?” Several snorted breaths through flared nostrils later, he sneered, “I don’t think you want to know how differently this could’ve gone.”
“Oh, I know,” she snapped, unable to hide the wobble in her voice. She knew all about what Alphas were capable of. After a slow blink, understanding showed in his eyes, and his features softened. Della’s body felt simultaneously empty and laden with lead, and her head started throbbing again.
Cal rose to his feet, stomped one foot, and then the other into his boots. He stalked to the edge of the bedding and retrieved the jackknife, tucking it deep in his pocket. Turning his back, he stormed to the cave entrance like a black cloud, hovering on the threshold to dart one last glare in her direction. He coasted a cold look over her before saying gruffly, “Get some rest, but this isn’t over,” before disappearing into the night.
All the righteousness left her in a dismaying puff of smoke, but a heaviness centered in Della’s chest, growing with every crunching stride Cal took away from the cave. Her throat ached with bitter defeat. She’d lost sight of herself, lost track of her objective, and fumbled the entire evening. As if moving through a fog, Della laid down, arranging a blanket on her body and feeling more alone than she had in her entire life.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Della
Where in the fresh hell was he taking her now?
The thought rolled through Della’s still-sleepy brain, bringing a cross purse to her lips. Cal had roused her at not-quite dawn with a firm hand on her shoulder, hauling her out of bed and handing her a clean-smelling, Alpha-sized shirt to change into. Groggy, she’d put it on without arguing but tied a thin blanket around her waist for good measure as there was still no sign of her pants. With a jerk of his chin, he silently announced they were heading out of the cave tout de suite. Della stuffed her feet in her shoes and followed, neither of them speaking as they tromped a precarious path from the ridge down to the water.
They walked as the sun trudged out of its own bed, the forest still mostly suffused with quiet early morning peace. The bubbling creek grew as they followed its lead. Water streamed over the jutting rocks with more and more vigor, taking up the space where conversation would’ve naturally gone. Neither of them said a word.
It had been a weird night.
Alone in the cave after their blow-up, worries danced a jig on her unquiet mind. Where had he gone? Would he return? He wouldn’t leave her there, would he? How had things gotten so off track? What was she going to do? Hours spent tossing and turning and being taunted by the mingled sex scents that perfumed the cave. The fire dwindled to coals with their dull orangey glow and then faded to ash, leaving her in velvet darkness while her circling thoughts refused to quiet.
Eventually, Cal returned and threw himself onto his bedroll, mere inches from hers. Close but not touching, Della’s body honed all her attention on the hulking black lump of his form, instantly preoccupied with maintaining the scant space between them on principle. Unbothered, he fell into a deep sleep, snoozing gently as his familiar scent bathed her reassuring comfort. Warmth toasted her cheeks as she remembered how, shame-filled yet desperate for unconsciousness, she’d finally given up, traversed the darkness and the careful distance, to bury her nose in the fragrant groove of his spine. Exhausted by conflicted feelings and confused thoughts, she allowed herself that one concession. For her reward, Della inhaled one luxurious breath and then promptly passed out.
For whatever reason, Cal deferred any mention of her middle-of-the-night snugglefest thus far this morning. Yet with every step and shift of the satchel he carried, the long groove of his spine peeked in and out of visibility, teasing her for what she’d done the night before. Even worse, her fingers itched, dying to launch herself at him, to reclaim everything she’d missed during those quiet hours of slumber and complete a thorough exploration of every inch of his rich, russet skin.
These sorts of thoughts were foreign. In fact, Della’s own body felt foreign. Somewhere in their frenzied joining yesterday, something critical freed itself inside her. Some long-buried, suppressed part now wailed for attention with every breath she drew, demanding restitution for the years of ignoring her skin’s hunger for another. Their argument, as brutal as it had been, did not weaken the hunger. It grew more intense and insistent, and most concerning of all, it all centered onhim.
You want your Alpha, the need inside of her crooned, its voice so loud it bounced around her head like an echoing shout over a canyon.You need him to claim you.
Nope. She neither wanted nor needed to be claimed. With effort, Della tore her thoughts from that path and grounded herself in the now: her feet crunching over the damp, pebbly ground, the sweet early summer air lifting the hair on her forehead, the faint scent of sulfur on the breeze, and the strong, wide expanse of Cal’s back as he forged the path ahead.
She sighed. Demanding he return her to Morris Hill had been a misstep. She knew, better than anyone, Alphas’s tenacious stubbornness. Of course, he wouldn’t take kindly to a direct order. But, thrown by the sex and his question about Rakesh, she’d panicked. That itself was incomprehensible and vexing, as Della, under normal circumstances, was far from that rash and volatile version of herself. Yet the feelings crashed through her too fast to wrangle, the impotence and the bitterness so thick she could choke. She’d laid all her cards on the table and lost.
They arrived at some destination understood only by Cal. Signaled not by any explanation or verbal acknowledgment but by the unceremonious drop of his pack on the ground. With a cool glance up at her, he bent to rummage through it.
Now fully awake and not focused on walking, their argument from the night before seasoned the air like the ozone before a storm. One thing about Cal she’d observed in their short time together: he rarely shut up. Whatever he was doing, the man chattered on, the syrupy lilt of his accent smoothing everything with his easy affability. This new silence? She didn’t like it.
Della cleared her throat. “Is there a reason we’re out here?”
Without looking up, Cal grunted and produced a tangled net out of one of the many pockets. “Fishing.”
“You want me to go fishing?” Incredulity spilled from her lips. “I’m not even wearing pants.”
He tossed her a look, his expression exquisitely neutral. No teasing tilt to his lips, no crinkle at the edges of his eye, no sign of the dimples whatsoever.
It...stung.
In their relatively brief acquaintance, he’d never treated her with anything other than amused consideration, with a healthy dollop of charm on top. Even angry, he’d noticed her fatigue and ordered her to bed, never losing sight of his concern for her. This blandness and silence—sapped of all his warmth—repulsed her. Shehatedit.
“Don’t see what pants have to do with it,” he continued, his fingers working through knots in the netting. “The way I figure, if I don’t keep an eye on you, there’s no telling what you’ll get up to. Might find something else to hold against my throat.”
Hackles up, Della steeled her spine and raised a haughty chin. “You’re expecting an apology, I suppose?”
