"Here's the thing," the alpha said in a bored voice. "I'm not really asking."
He reached out to unbuckle her seat belt, and Faith screamed. His fingers grazed her hip and—even through her dress and coat—brought back the rush of feelings he'd provoked earlier.
It was as though a switch had been flipped in Faith brain. As if, having been touched by him once, her body would never be rid of the memory. How good she'd felt. How secure. How right.
All of it, the devil's work. Those feelings were lies that went against everything Faith believed in. They made a mockery of the years she'd spent preparing herself for a pious life, of the very difference between right and wrong.
The devil was trying to confuse her. Just as the church had warned, he was using the alpha as his instrument to spark the most sinful heat inside her. A longing that she knew was neither righteous nor godly. A need that was carnal and earthly.
Faith never wanted to confront that kind of evil temptation again. That was why she'd been praying for deliverance ever since the alpha had thrown her into his truck.
As the seat belt buckle released, she threw open her door and leaped down onto the frozen ground. Her plain brown shoes sunk into the snow, freezing her ankles, but Faith barely noticed. Instead, she turned and sprinted as fast as she could toward the tree line.
The cold air bit into her cheeks and seared her lungs, but she welcomed the sting. The pain meant that she was fighting. That she was doing the right thing.
And the pain also obliterated—if only for a moment—the blinding need that nearly paralyzed her when the alpha touched her.
Or came too close to her. Or even looked at her.
She had to get away from him. So far away that he could never find her. Faith gulped frigid air and tried to ignore her hammering heart. She urged herself to go faster and faster. Every step she took sunk into the pristine snow of the clearing between the alpha and the forest.
But she wasn't fast enough.
She'd barely made it into the center of the clearing before strong arms lifted her off the ground from behind, constricting her lungs and stealing her breath. She kicked ineffectually and tried to pry the alpha's arms from her body, but she might as well have been trying to lift his truck.
And even as she fought, Faith could feel his heat against her back, traveling through her clothes and into her body. His breath seeped beneath her collar, and her treacherous body relaxed into the warmth, craving more.
She stopped fighting. It was useless.
"I told you not to run," the alpha muttered, every syllable a caress against her skin.
"Let me go, devil," Faith begged, trying to muster the strength to resist his seductive heat.
"So you can bolt again? I don't think so." The alpha's hard chest rumbled with amusement. "Unless you get off on being chased. Is that what you want? Does being pursued and captured make you hot?"
Faith shuddered, and her head lolled back against the alpha's shoulder as he moved his palm to caress her belly. There was something about the way he said the word hot that turned up the heat inside her.
Dark magic—it had to be.
"So that's your thing," the alpha said. The satisfaction in his whisper made Faith shudder again for reasons she didn't understand.
Slowly, the alpha eased his hold on her. Faith slid down the front of his body, her backside intimately pressing against the full, hard length of him until her feet were buried in the snow once again.
She struggled to catch her breath before turning around to face him. "What are you doing?"
"I'm giving you a choice." There was a dangerous gleam in the alpha's eye that only confused Faith. Part of her wanted to turn and bolt, but the stronger urge had her rooted in front of him, waiting to hear what he had to say. "You can either come inside, lie down on my bed, and accept me as your alpha—or you can run again."
Faith frowned. The choice he was offering her was a no-brainer…which meant it had to be a trick question.
"And what will you do if I run?" she asked.
A smile so wicked it would put Lucifer himself to shame lifted the corner of his mouth. His tongue snaked out, wetting the top of his bottom lip, making it crystal clear he thought this the far more delicious of the two options.
"Then, I'll chase you," he said, murmuring in an impossibly low register. "And when I catch you, I'll wrap my arms around you and pull you down into the snow. And then I will kiss you so hard that you'll let go of all this stubborn resistance. You'll beg me not to stop."
Faith felt her cheeks begin to burn. She tried to look away, to hide how unsettled she was, but she couldn't tear her gaze from the alpha's stormy blue eyes.
More of his dark magic.
"Then, I'll slide my hands up your thighs," he continued, "and wet my fingers in all that slick that's been driving me crazy for the last half hour. "
He could smell that? Oh God.
Mortification threatened to swallow Faith whole. What he called slick, she called shame. She'd been doing her best to hold it back, clamping her knees together to hide the worst of it.
Faith backed up a step, trying to give herself space to think, but the alpha wasn't having it. He moved with her, closing the distance between them.
"But that won't satisfy me for long," he continued. "Not when you smell so damn good. Once I rub your slick all over my hand, I'm going to want to taste you. I'm going to need to. And I won't be able to wait until we get to my bed."
Wait—what did he mean…taste her?
There?
No. Faith shook her
