The Alpha's Human Whore

AVA

The taxi smelled like somebody had smoked inside it too many times, and normally I would have complained about that because I hate when my clothes pick up other people's disgusting habits, but I sat in the back with my bag clutched against my stomach and barely noticed the smell.

I kept looking at my hands. Then at the window.

Then back at my hands. There was still blood underneath my fingernails.

Damien's blood.

I rubbed my fingers against each other and felt my stomach twist because no matter how many times I told myself I had only stabbed him because he would not let me leave, the image would not fucking disappear from my head.

The knife had gone into him. He had bled a lot.

Then I had touched the wound because I was scared and confused and apparently had completely lost my mind, and the damn thing had closed underneath my hand like it had never been there.

I swallowed hard and looked out the window again.

Maybe I had imagined it.

That was the only explanation that made any sense.

Except I had seen it.

I had felt his skin move beneath my fingers.

I had watched the blood stop.

No, that was bullshit.

People did not heal like that.

I pulled my bag onto my lap and opened it just enough to see the envelope sitting inside.

The money was still there.

At least something about tonight had gone according to plan.

I closed the bag again and leaned my head against the seat, letting out a breath that shook more than I wanted it to.

I had gone to that hotel because Damien Cross had offered me money for a night, and I had accepted because I knew exactly what I was doing. I was not some stupid girl who had wandered into a rich man's room expecting him to fall in love with me because I looked good naked, and I certainly was not going to sit in a taxi pretending I had been some innocent victim who had no idea what kind of arrangement I had agreed to.

I knew.

I had wanted the money.

I had wanted him too, if I was being honest, which was probably the part that irritated me most.

Because even after everything that happened, my body still remembered him.

The way his hands had felt. The way he had looked at me.

The way he had made me forget where I was for a while.

That was the problem with being a whore, or whatever name people wanted to give women like me when they were feeling particularly generous with their judgment. I knew how to separate sex from feelings, and I was damn good at it.

Except Damien had somehow managed to crawl into my head without permission.

I pressed my fingers against my neck.

The mark burned.

I pulled my hand away immediately.

“Fuck.”

The driver glanced at me through the mirror. I forced myself to look out the window.

“I am fine, sorry, I just hit my neck earlier.”

He nodded, apparently deciding that was none of his business, which was exactly what I wanted.

When the taxi finally stopped outside my building, I paid him, grabbed my bag and stepped onto the pavement with legs that still felt strangely weak.

I looked behind me before entering.

There was no Damien. No black car.

Nobody standing across the road.

Nothing.

I went inside anyway like some paranoid idiot who had watched too many fucking movies.

By the time I reached my apartment, my hands were shaking again.

I locked the door.

Then I checked it. Then I checked it again.

I stood there with my forehead against the wood, breathing slowly while the silence pressed around me.

I was home. Damien was not here.

The thought should have made me relax, but it didn't.I dropped my bag onto the couch and went straight to the bathroom.

The woman staring back at me in the mirror looked exhausted, disheveled and slightly insane.

My hair was a mess. My lips were swollen.

There were faint marks along my skin from the night, and the bite on my neck stood out darker than everything around it.

I leaned closer. The mark looked just… wrong.

I touched it carefully. Heat shot through my fingers.

I jerked away so quickly that my elbow knocked against the sink.

“What the fuck?”

I stared at my reflection. Nothing happened.

The mark was still there.

I touched it again, slower this time, and the heat returned beneath my fingertips.

I pulled my hand back.

“No.”

I didn't know who I was arguing with.

Maybe myself.

Maybe the mirror.

Maybe the universe, because apparently it had decided I had not suffered enough tonight.

Later that night, I showered until the water went cold, changed into an oversized shirt and shorts, and crawled into bed with the envelope still inside my bag on the floor beside me.

I told myself I would sleep.

I needed sleep.

Tomorrow I would wake up, go about my life, keep the money, forget Damien Cross, and never again accept a job that involved a man who apparently healed from knife wounds like some fucking horror movie character.

I turned off the light.

For several minutes, nothing happened.

Then sleep took me.

I was standing somewhere I had never seen before.

There was grass beneath my bare feet, pale and damp, stretching in every direction without a road, house or single light anywhere around me.

I turned slowly, trying to find something familiar.

There was nothing.

Then I heard something moving behind me.

The sound was low and heavy, the kind of movement that made the hairs along my arms rise before my brain even understood why.

I turned.

A wolf stood several feet away.

It was enormous.

Not the biggest wolf I had ever seen in pictures, because that sentence would have been stupid considering I had never seen anything remotely that size in real life, but this thing was fucking huge, with dark fur that seemed to swallow the weak light around it.

It stared at me. I couldn't breathe properly.

I backed away. The wolf stepped forward.

I backed away again.

It came closer.

My heart hammered against my ribs so violently that I could feel every beat in my throat, and when the wolf lowered its head, I knew what was coming because every stupid instinct inside me screamed that it was about to tear my throat open.

I lifted my arms over my face.

Nothing happened.

I lowered them slowly.

The wolf was standing directly in front of me.

It could have attacked. Instead, it lowered its head again.

Its nose touched the mark on my neck.

Pain exploded through me.

I screamed and grabbed my throat as the mark burned like somebody had pressed a piece of hot metal against my skin.

The wolf stayed there.

I could feel its breath.

I could feel the heat.

I could feel something inside me pulling toward it even while every frightened part of me wanted to run.

I woke violently in my bed, choking on a scream.

My hands flew to my neck.

The mark was burning. Not in the dream.

Here.

In my room.

My fingers trembled against it as I stared into the darkness, trying to slow my breathing.

Then something growled outside my bedroom door.

The sound was low enough to make my entire body lock up, and before I could convince myself that I had imagined it, the handle began to turn.