Savage Alpha (Alpha 8) Page 5

  Not nearly enough. The more Jonas revealed about himself, the more Lily wanted to know.

  And the more resentful Jonas became.

  “Thank you for telling me.” She reached out a tentative hand, intending to touch the heat of his chest through his T-shirt.

  “Don’t.”

  Her hand stopped only centimeters away, fingers trembling slightly in her need to touch him. “I was only—”

  “Don’t.” His arms dropped to his sides, but he didn’t push her away from him.

  The air was so thick with the tension between them, it was like trying to breathe through soup, and impossible for Lily to resist the pull to move closer. To step completely into Jonas’s space, one of her legs between his parted ones. The difference in their heights meant her breasts were pressed against his hot and muscular abdomen, with the muscled hardness of Jonas’s thighs against her hip as she leaned into him.

  The hardness of Jonas’s arousal, long and thick against the softness of her belly.

  No matter what Jonas said or how he acted, his body didn’t lie, couldn’t lie. As it hadn’t lied last night. And he wanted her as much as she wanted him. Then, and now.

  Lily was standing so close to him, she was breathing in the same heavy air as him now, could feel the tension in his muscles, and the shallow rise and fall of his chest as he breathed in and out.

  Her breath caught in her throat as she looked up at him and saw the desire blazing in those stormy blue eyes, his cheekbones sharp angles in his tensely set face, jaw clenched. “Jonas…” It was an invitation, not a question.

  Jonas tried to resist, God knows he tried. But Lily was so—so—

  In my fucking face, is what she is!

  Which was exactly where Jonas wanted her.

  She had taken her boots off as soon as they entered her apartment, and was wearing another one of those overlarge sweaters, red tonight. But she wore black leggings beneath it rather than jeans, and they molded to every lush curve of her ass and clearly defined the mound between her thighs. And he wanted his face there. Wanted to lick and suck and taste her pussy until she cried out, and then he would drink her down as she came all over his face.

  Savage by tribe and savage by nature?

  Yes, damn it, savage was exactly how Lily made him feel.

  Her perfume had invaded his senses in the car during the drive to the supermarket and then to her apartment, and each sway of those lush hips was a temptation he was finding it harder and harder to resist. And she kept pushing, damn it, wanting to know about him, his past, his present, when all he wanted was his face buried between her thighs and to thrust his tongue inside her pussy until she was pleading for release.

  “Jonas!” Lily cried out, fingers gripping his shoulders as Jonas put his hands on her hips and pulled those leggings and her panties down to her thighs, before lifting her up and turning to sit her bare ass on the work surface behind him—not one of the ones they had been preparing food on, thank goodness—before stripping off the leggings and panties completely.

  Jonas nudged her legs apart as he leaned forward with a hand either side of the work top where she sat. “Say no if you don’t want this.”

  She blinked up at him, obviously unsure of the situation—and him—but her lips remained stubbornly closed as she continued to meet his gaze unflinchingly.

  “Good choice,” he growled as he went down on his knees in front of her before lifting her sweater and baring her pussy to his hungry gaze. “Beautiful.” The dark curls were trimmed about those glistening, ruby-red lips, the tiny nubbin peeping out temptingly from beneath its protective hood.

  Jonas’s groan echoed Lily’s as he stroked his tongue along those lips and tasted her for the first time, sweet nectar and delicious musk. He was aware of her response as he continued to lick and taste, those lips swelling, parting to the invasion of his tongue, the nubbin above beginning to pulse as he caressed her there with the soft pad of his thumb.

  God, he could live on the taste of her alone, drown in the heady sensation of tongue-fucking her.

  “Yes!” she gasped, hands moving up so that her fingers were now entangled in his hair. “Oh God, Jonas…!”

  Jonas looked up at her as he continued to thrust his tongue in and out of her channel, capturing and holding her gaze with his. Her eyes looked green now rather than blue, dark and feverish, her cheeks flushed and her lips slightly parted.

  Jonas pressed his thumb harder against her clit, watching as her back arched, pushing her breasts forward. He couldn’t wait to bare those too and gorge himself on the ripe nipples he could see pushing against her sweater—

  “No…!” Lily groaned in protest as the musical ringtone of her cell phone sounded in the quiet of the kitchen, causing Jonas to slowly sit back on his heels and look up at her enquiringly, his lips wet with her juices. “Ignore it,” she encouraged desperately. Damn it, she had been so close. So close…

  The ringtone stopped.

  Only to start up again immediately.

  “Seems urgent,” Jonas drawled.

  Her need to come was more urgent.

  She had never been as aroused so quickly. Or so desperate to have a man’s mouth and hands on her. She wanted more, damn it!

  Except her cell phone didn’t stop its musical intrusion this time, the continuous—and previously favorite—tune, grating on her in a way that made her decide to change the ringtone as soon as possible. Or throw the damned phone across the kitchen in a fit of pique.

  “Lily?”

  To her chagrin, Jonas rose to his feet in front of her, a sure indication the moment was over, despite the ache and throbbing of Lily’s body and the hunger still coursing through her.

  She pulled her sweater back down over her thighs, self-consciously aware she wasn’t wearing any clothing beneath the waist and her cell phone was all the way across the kitchen on another work top. “Would you mind?” She grimaced, not quite meeting Jonas’s gaze.

  “No problem.” Jonas crossed the kitchen in two long strides to pick up her cell phone and hand it to her.

  He seemed unruffled by the interruption, at least. Too unruffled, considering Lily’s state of arousal.

  “Yes?” she snapped as she answered the call.

  Jonas watched through narrowed lids as Lily’s eyes widened, becoming even rounder, her face paling the longer she listened to whoever was on the other end of that call.

  Saved by the bell?

  Or, in this case, the ringtone?

  What the hell had he been thinking, half stripping Lily and then going down on her like a ravenous beast? He hadn’t been thinking, only feeling, wanting.

  He suppressed a groan as he made the mistake of licking the taste of Lily from his lips. He could become addicted to that taste. Could become addicted to Lily.

  Women came and women went in his life, most of those encounters as fleeting as a one-night stand. Jonas knew his mixed heritage was a lure, his outer calm a challenge, but once those women realized they weren’t going to get beneath that façade, they usually backed off.

  Lily didn’t back off.

  Instead, she kept chipping away at his outer shell a bit at a time. Hell, he’d already told her more about himself, his parents, than even his closest friend knew. She—

  “What is it?” Jonas’s tone was sharp as Lily ended the call, her eyes once again full of those haunted shadows that turned them a dark green similar to Gabriel’s. “Lily?” He moved swiftly across the kitchen to take her in his arms as she seemed precariously close to falling off the work top.

  Tears swam in her eyes as she looked up at him. “That was Giles, the director of Desperation. Tonight’s performance has been canceled.” She drew in a ragged breath. “Everyone is being called back in to the theater, though, so the police can talk to all of us.”

  “Why?”

  She began to tremble in reaction to whatever she’d been told. “Someone… Someone broke into the theater after we left earlier.” The trembli
ng deepened. “Charlie—the doorman… He… He’s dead, Jonas, beaten with his own walking stick! And—and—”

  “And?” Jesus Christ!

  The tears began to cascade down her cheeks. “And Evan is in the intensive care unit, in a coma after being hit on the head too.”

  Chapter 5

  Jonas glanced across at Lily as he drove them both back to the theater. “There’s absolutely no reason to think these attacks are connected to what’s been happening to you.”

  Lily’s hands were clenched on her thighs. She didn’t believe that, and she doubted Jonas did either. It was surely too much of a coincidence this had happened at the same time as she was being hounded by a stalker?

  She still couldn’t believe Charlie was dead.

  In his late fifties, Charlie Driscoll had been doorman at the Majestic Theater in London for over twenty years, since he was involved in a car accident that had left him with a permanent limp and necessitated he use a walking stick. The same walking stick someone had used to kill him.

  Charlie was a widower but spoke often of his two children and six grandchildren, was always cheerful and— Was… Past tense. Because someone had hit him over the head, repeatedly, before leaving him lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood.

  And Evan… Dear God, Evan was in a coma, having suffered similar head injuries that might or might not prove fatal too. Lily had wanted to go straight to the hospital to be with him, but Jonas had insisted they had to go to the theater and talk to the police before they did anything else.

  After Lily’s initial bout of tears, when she had clung to Jonas for comfort, she now felt numb inside. All she could think of now, those thoughts going round and round in a constant loop inside her head, was that Charlie was dead and Evan seriously injured.

  And if it was connected to her stalker, then it was all her fault.

  That latter possibility consumed her and allowed for no thoughts of anything or anyone else.

  She didn’t want to think about being in her kitchen earlier with Jonas.

  “We’ll know more about what happened after talking with the police.” Jonas reached out to briefly squeeze her hands, inwardly cursing himself for having decided Charlie was one of the people he would talk to this evening rather than earlier.

  Despite what Jonas had said to Lily, he had a feeling Charlie’s death was connected to whoever had spray-painted Lily’s dressing room earlier. Charlie was meticulous in keeping a record of who went in and out of the theater, and it was highly likely whoever was responsible for the spray-painting had returned after the matinee performance in order to silence Charlie before he could add two and two together and come up with the correct answer as to who that person might be.

  Jonas was eager to get a look at Charlie’s visitors’ book.

  He was less sure as to the motive for attacking Evan Butler, but it had obviously been done by the same person, so perhaps Evan had only been unlucky enough to interrupt the attack on Charlie? Or maybe he had recognized the attacker?

  Or it could be more personal than that? If the stalker knew anything about Lily, and he obviously did, then he would know Evan was a friend of hers, and that the two of them often had coffee together after the show. Evan made no secret of the fact he had a boyfriend, but that wouldn’t stop a mentally unbalanced stalker from suspecting there was more to the friendship between Evan and Lily, which meant he could have seen Evan as a possible rival for her affections.

  Whatever the reasoning, the attack this evening was obviously meant to silence both men.

  “I think the police intend for us to talk to them, not the other way round.” Lily sighed. “And I’m so sorry for dragging you into this.”

  “It’s not a problem.”

  “I know how much my brothers hate it when they have to deal with the police.”

  “Not my favorite thing either.” Jonas shrugged. “But in our line of work, it happens all the time.” That work had occasionally brought him into contact with members of the homicide department of the British police force, and with any luck, he might know one or two of the people investigating tonight. If so, he might be able to persuade them into giving him information on the attacks. Most especially on the record Charlie kept of people entering and leaving the theater.

  For now, though, Jonas was worried about Lily. She had been unusually quiet since receiving the telephone call that had rocked her world. She now sat tensely beside him, huddled down into her coat, somehow looking smaller, and vulnerable as hell.

  “We’re booking you into a hotel once the police have finished with their questions.” His tone brooked no argument.

  Lily didn’t give him one, but her eyes widened. “Why?”

  “A precaution.”

  She slumped back against her seat. “Because you do think this attack is connected to me.”

  Jonas never lied. He saw no point in it. He didn’t placate, or sugarcoat the truth either. Except in this case, he badly wanted to. Lily was stretched so tightly right now, the least little thing could cause her to break down again. She presented such a tough exterior to the world in general, and to Jonas and her brothers in particular, and she wouldn’t thank Jonas if anything he said or did was the cause of her losing that control again.

  “As I said, we won’t know that until we’ve spoken with the police,” he answered her truthfully. “But if these attacks are connected to your stalker, then his behavior is escalating at a rapid pace.” A worrying pace, as far as Jonas was concerned.

  “Whew, that was intense.” Lily grimaced as she and Jonas left the theater two hours later, having spent most of that time talking to the police. They certainly hadn’t been pleased on learning Lily had a stalker and hadn’t reported it. “I felt more like a suspect than a victim.”

  “That’s how you’re supposed to feel.” Jonas shrugged. “It’s part of the interrogation technique.”

  “It wasn’t exactly fair, when they wouldn’t tell us anything in return.”

  That wasn’t completely true. Jonas had indeed known one of the officers investigating, and although the other man wouldn’t tell him anything specific about the attacks, he had confided that the theater’s visitors’ book had suffered significant damage. Jonas had interpreted the word “damage” as meaning the pages for today had been ripped out. Which probably meant he was also right about the attacker having signed in earlier, before spray-painting Lily’s dressing room. It sounded as if he might have returned later to destroy the evidence, once he realized his signature would be in the book.

  Jonas was fast reaching the conclusion that Lily’s stalker and the person who had killed Charlie Driscoll and attacked Evan were one and the same.

  For the moment, Jonas was keeping that piece of information to himself. Lily was upset enough already. He didn’t need to confirm her worst fear.

  “Lily, what the hell is going on?” A young man rushed up to her as they turned the corner onto the main street. His eyes were slightly panicked, his face pale, blond hair tousled. “I got back early from my trip and wanted to surprise Evan, but the people outside the theater said the performance has been canceled, and there are policemen standing guard outside the front and back doors of the building. They aren’t letting anyone in or out, and Evan’s cell phone doesn’t seem to be working. What’s happened, Lily?” His voice rose hysterically.

  Jonas saw the dismay in Lily’s face, and guessed this must be Evan’s boyfriend, Todd. And he obviously had no idea the other man was currently in the hospital, fighting for his life.

  As for Evan’s cell phone… The police officer Jonas had spoken to had confided they had already ruled out the attack being a robbery, as both Charlie and Evan still had cash and credit cards in their wallets. But both men’s cell phones had been destroyed. In all probability by being stomped on with the heel of a shoe.

  “Oh God, Todd…” Lily groaned now, confirming this was indeed Evan’s boyfriend. “I thought Giles would have called you.”

 
“Evan was going to call me earlier but didn’t, and now I can’t reach him.” Todd looked at the theater and then back at her. “What’s going on, Lily? Where’s Evan?” He grabbed hold of the tops of her arms. “Tell me where he is, damn it—”

  “Back off, buddy.” Jonas made a downward movement with his arm, effectively breaking Todd’s hold on Lily, before stepping between the two of them. He towered over the younger man by a good seven or eight inches.

  Considering Evan found Gabriel attractive, Jonas couldn’t imagine anyone less like the eldest Knight brother than the man standing in front of him. Todd was slightly built, wearing a maroon sweater and faded denims, a couple of inches under six feet tall, with a boyishly handsome face, and blond hair that had a tendency to flop forward into his eyes.

  “Something’s happened to Evan, hasn’t it?” The younger man’s eyes blazed with emotion as he glared past Jonas at Lily. “This is all your fault,” he accused. “I warned Evan to stay away from you after he told me about the letters and roses you’d received. But he wouldn’t listen to me, said the two of you are friends—”

  “We are—”

  “He doesn’t need friends like you,” Todd snarled, moving forward.

  “I said back the fuck off,” Jonas growled.

  “Need any assistance here, sir?”

  Jonas turned to see that one of the policemen standing guard had approached them and was now standing a couple of feet away. They also had the attention of the crowd gathered outside the theater. Not surprising when Todd was making such a scene.

  “It’s okay, Officer,” Jonas assured him smoothly. “Perhaps you would like to inform Inspector Adams that Mr.—sorry, I don’t know your last name…?” He looked at Todd.

  “Shaw,” he snapped.

  “Mr. Shaw is a friend of Mr. Butler,” he explained pointedly.

  “Ah.” The policeman nodded. “If you would like to come this way, sir?” he spoke evenly to Todd. “My inspector can answer any questions you might have, and we can let these good people be on their way.”