Alpha Exposed Read online

  He’d not forgotten a single detail about their last meeting. It hadn’t been quite nine months since she laughed in his face when he asked her to dinner to discuss a potential job opportunity. Worse, she’d done it in front of his Beta and Gamma with half the pack listening in and a quarter of the Underground watching in amusement.

  I would never be caught dead with an odious man like you, had been her parting shot.

  He was eager to find out what had changed. But not eager enough to seek her out. She could come to him with her tail between her legs.

  That’s not the only thing he wanted to put there.

  Quietly, he laughed at himself. What was it about the Air witch that had stuck in his paw all these months?

  She was attractive, of course. Most witches were. But he’d seen women with prettier faces than her diamond-shaped visage.

  If he really stared at her, as he was doing now, he could note a dozen flaws. Like the slightly smashed quality to her nose. And that dark birthmark visible an inch and a half below her left eye. Or how she barely had a top lip.

  Perhaps it was simply her refusal that kept her in his memory. Few had the guts to refuse him. True, he’d planned to install her as head chef at his restaurant so he could fuck her whenever he wanted. But she hadn’t known that when she spread those narrow tulip-pink lips and rejected him.

  Dion couldn’t forget Samantha was the witch-with-the-tits. Sure, all female witches had tits…but they didn’t all have her tits. Hers were perfect. Not too large. Not too small. Just the right combination of point and curve to fit perfectly in his mouth.

  From his vantage point at the back of the restaurant, he could see how her tits pushed at the silk of her blouse. She’d been daring. She hadn’t worn a bra into the tiger’s den.

  Dion tossed his arms along the round booth’s back to give a nonchalant appearance. The pose made him feel in control even if he couldn’t do anything about the unfortunate lengthening of his dick.

  She asked the girl at the hostess station to speak with him. Her voice alone thickened him—that soft, airy sound he wanted to hear gasping in his ear.

  Had her catering business gone south? Dion would happily give her a job. But not as head chef. She’d lost that opportunity when she brazenly insulted him. Oh, the innumerable tasks he could give her.

  The witch’s chest lifted with an irritated puff when the hostess fetched Dion’s Gamma rather than him. His smirk deepened when her gaze darted to him several times. Twice, she flipped her hair—a mane the color of warm pecan pie. Twice, Dion imagined her doing that nude atop him. He shifted his pose with a quiet grunt to make room for the rest of his erection.

  “There’s a girl here lookin’ for you,” Kevin, his Gamma, informed him once the hostess had done her duty. “Says her name is Sam Avira.”

  Considering Samantha a girl would be a crime. The witch-with-the-tits was all woman. But he didn’t say as much. Her kind could magically draw out the sound of just about anything. No doubt she’d eavesdropped on him as much as he’d done to her.

  Still, he asked, “Did she say what she wanted?”

  Kevin shook his shaggy head. “She won’t say.”

  Dion inhaled a small laugh. He assumed whatever she wanted was for his ears only. And he liked the prospect of that. But he wasn’t going to give her privacy to ask it of him.

  “Send her over,” he replied. “And send one of the waitresses to me. Tina, I think.”

  Tina had tits the size of honeydew melons and a waist so narrow he could span it with his hands. Every female who visited his restaurant hated her.

  She’d been trying to get Dion into bed for months. He’d hired her for his Beta Jake as incentive to leave his bitch of a girlfriend. So until Jake refused Tina, Dion wasn’t going near her. But he would take advantage of her flirtation to prove to the witch he was a desirable man.

  Kevin gestured for Samantha to enter the dining room. The attractive female pretended she hadn’t seen Dion until then. Between the tables, she sailed on dangerously tall gold platform pumps.

  Dion imagined stripping her of her fitted jeans but leaving the pumps as he took her from behind while playing with her erect little nipples. Those tits and those shoes would feature in a few of his fantasies over the next few days.

  The witch reached his table. A blank expression fixed on her pretty face as she politely greeted him. “Mr. Hebert.”

  Dion liked that she hadn’t smiled at him. To call him an odious man one day and then smile as if he were her favorite person the next would be hypocritical of her.

  “Can I have a word with you?” She shifted her tiger-print purse in her palm.

  Dion was certain she had no idea what pattern was on her purse or she wouldn’t have been foolish enough to bring it in here. Nonetheless, he gestured to the vinyl bench seat beside him.

  Her knuckles went white around the leather purse strap. “In private, if possible,” she added.

  He took great pleasure in retorting, “The only thing I do in private is fuck.” The rapid widening of her moss-green eyes improved his day. Dion couldn’t resist pushing her further. “Still want privacy?”

  Silently he willed her to agree, but of course, she failed.

  “No,” she grunted as she dropped onto the very edge of his seat. She pulled her purse into her lap like a life preserver as she glanced around.

  If she’d been anyone else, Dion would have assured her it was safe to talk in his restaurant. Everyone was loyal to him. Nothing spoken within these walls made it outside without his say-so.

  She wasn’t anyone else. She was the witch-with-the-tits who had rejected and insulted him.

  Tina appeared then—bright, bubbly and with a shirt that barely covered her melon rack. She knelt across from Samantha to take their order. Dion took the opportunity to catalogue their differences.

  Tina had a beautiful face and a narrow body with those massive breasts that defied gravity. And yet she lacked an indefinable quality the witch had. Trying to grasp what it was about Samantha that drew him was like trying to hold the wind. But it was undeniable.

  “Vodka on the rocks,” Dion informed Tina and then gestured at his guest. “And for you? It’s on the house.”

  Samantha shook her head in a jerking motion.

  Dion said nothing when Tina ran her hand up his arm. He chose to watch Samantha’s reaction rather than pay his waitress any mind. There was no discernable change to her expression beyond an impatient swaying toward the door.

  Her attention remained on the departing waitress until Tina was out of earshot. And then without looking him in the eye, she declared, “I need to find a spellweaver named Dan.”

  Samantha’s request almost shocked him into silence. But instead, the opposite happened. He found himself blurting out, “Why do you need a spellweaver? Are you low on cash?”

  “No.” Samantha pierced him with an angry glare. “I don’t need a spellweaver. I need to find a spellweaver named Dan.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you know any spellweavers named Dan?”

  He didn’t. But he did reply, “I know every spellweaver in the city.” Because it was the truth. There simply weren’t any named Dan.

  “Where can I find Dan?”

  Dion didn’t want to tell her there were none by that name. She’d get up and leave if he did. There was no way he’d let her go without discovering what had prompted her to ask an odious man to find an odious spellweaver.

  Again, he asked, “Why?”

  The witch drew in a long sigh that lifted her chest inches higher. Dion struggled not to stare at it.

  She leaned forward and lowered her voice. The extra proximity made it easy to smell the salt of her perspiration, and the new angle gave him the perfect view down her shirt to the swell of those beautiful mounds.

  “My sister is missing,” she whispered while wringing her hands on the table’s edge. “Her phone was at home with an unfinished text message that read ‘Spellweaver in
the city’. Kari doesn’t go anywhere without her phone. And the living room was trashed like she’d had a fight with someone. Plus I found a guy’s ring on the floor.”

  Dion’s plans to humiliate this woman for her rejection immediately fizzled. The pleading in her bright eyes and the way her lips quivered had nothing to do with being nervous with him. They were because of this missing sister.

  His jaw set in determination.

  Chapter Three

  “Come to my office.”

  Sam’s head drew back as far as it would go on her neck at the man’s demand. She needed Dion’s help. But not three minutes ago, he’d told her the only thing he did in private was fuck. Was that what he was inviting her to do?

  The steady set of his dark cacao-colored eyes told her nothing. She’d known he’d ask it of her but she hadn’t expected it so quickly. And certainly not for simply answering if he knew a weaver named Dan. For all Sam knew, Dan was some random witch who had nothing to do with her situation.

  “U-uh…” she stammered stupidly.

  “I was kidding about the privacy and fucking thing,” he said in a lighter tone as he slid around the opposite side of the booth. It was nearly the same tone he’d used on the man in the alley.

  Under ordinary circumstances, she would never agree to seclusion with him even if he hadn’t made the earlier crack. Under normal circumstances, she would never come here. But these were desperate circumstances.

  She got to her feet beside the booth to wait on him. Dion gestured to the left for her to follow. Sam fell into step behind his faintly bergamot-scented body, noting he was at least six feet tall with inches to spare. She was five feet eight without shoes. Her five-inch platform heels gave her quite a lift. But not enough to be even with him.

  He strode through the busy restaurant in his black jeans and beige T-shirt as though he owned the place, probably because he did. The shirt was too small for him, perhaps by design. The knit clung to his muscular upper torso like a second skin but bunched loosely around his trim waist. And upper arms the size of softballs—very firm, very golden softballs—bulged at the sleeves.

  Valiantly, Sam tried to keep her gaze off his ass as he walked. It was a nice ass, flaring just enough that she suspected there’d be some mass to it when it was unclothed—without it being flabby. Nothing was flabby on this man. He was in peak physical shape, a common trait for Were.

  The dim lighting of the back corridor made it easier to ignore his ass. Soon he unlocked a door and leaned in to flip on a light. Dion motioned her to go inside. Samantha glanced within to find an office with dark-walnut furniture and a window with a courtyard garden view. An office seemed safe enough to her.

  Samantha took a tentative step inside and then froze at the sight of the plush sofa hidden against the front wall. She scrunched her features. No doubt he’d used the sofa to audition his busty waitress.

  Dion closed the door behind them. The resounding thud of wood against wood sent a sliver of worry down her back. Dion walked across the room to settle his equally plush ass on the desk’s edge. His thick arms rested against his thighs in a relaxed pose.

  Sam worked on mirroring it and softening her expression because she wasn’t relaxed in the slightest. Everything about this situation was nerve-racking. Minutes earlier he’d beaten a man in the alley out back. Now she was in a private, enclosed space with him.

  “Tell me everything you know about your sister’s disappearance.”

  Weeks ago, she’d have made a comment about how information was on a need-to-know basis and he didn’t need to know. But he was her last and quite possibly only resort. So Samantha told him everything—even the parts about how her sister wanted to move to New York. When she finished, she prepared herself for the inevitable comment that Kari had probably gone off to the big city.

  “The bad news is there is no spellweaver named Dan here,” Dion told her instead. “The good news is I know every spellweaver in the city. If one took your sister, I’ll find him.”

  He sounded so certain. Sam resisted the urge to ask if Dion would find the spellweaver before he drained her sister of all her magical power and quite possibly her life.

  The weretiger merely watched her. Sam shifted uncomfortably on the sofa beneath his dark, piercing gaze. Soon it became too much to bear in silence.

  “What’s it going to cost me?” She immediately regretted speaking the words. Sam held her breath while he continued to regard her.

  “My fee for this type of thing is rather like that of a lawyer.” His lips quirked to the left in a half-smirk that wasn’t promising. “You pay nothing unless I come through for you.”

  His answer sounded far too reasonable considering this man made a living as an Underground kingpin. “What do I pay if you come through?”

  The weretiger’s arms came up to cross in front of his chest. His motion thickened and bulged his upper torso. Cacao irises darkened further to match the dark-chocolate-colored cropped hair he sported.

  “I haven’t forgotten our last meeting.” He announced what she’d feared he would. “You publicly humiliated me in front of my pack members as well as a good portion of the city’s Underground.”

  “Neither you nor your business has suffered as a result of my cut,” Sam interjected.

  Dion’s head moved an inch closer while the rest of him remained motionless. “You don’t know what I have and haven’t suffered.”

  She was unwilling to let it go even though silence would be the best response. “Your restaurant has received rave reviews and your head chef consistently tops the restaurant critics’ lists.”

  A fact the newspapers continually reported, much to her dismay. Worse was the rumor that Hebert was entering the catering business. Her business.

  “I did have good luck with my head chef,” he conceded with a slight nod to the left. “But my reputation in the Underground suffered after your, as you put it, cut. My reputation is my livelihood.”

  That was probably true for a gangster like him.

  “So in payment for finding your sister,” he went on, “you’re going to help me rebuild my reputation.”

  Sam didn’t dare blink while she waited for him to explain.

  “By letting me fuck you in public.”

  Dion was nearly as shocked by his proclamation as she was. When he asked the witch into his office, he had every intention of helping her find her lost sister simply because it was the right thing to do. But the sight of her on his sofa woke the lusty part of his nature. He’d thought of little beyond getting inside her.

  “You’re joking,” she sputtered, moving her narrow ass to the edge of the cushion as though she might stand at any moment. Samantha clutched her tiger-print purse tighter to her chest as if it would protect her tits from him.

  Was he joking?

  He still wanted the witch even though she’d made her distaste known in front of at least a hundred people. She’d sing a different song if she gave him half a chance. But there’d be little satisfaction in being the only person who knew.

  Exhibitionism was Dion’s fetish. His ex was to blame for the urge he couldn’t get out of his blood any more than the weretiger virus. The first instance had been years ago after one of the pack’s monthly moon-cycle hunts—one of three nights Were spent ridding themselves of animal aggression. She’d let him fuck her in the crowded clearing while the rest of the pack transformed and dressed. It had almost been enough to keep him in a bad relationship.

  No, he wasn’t joking.

  Dion didn’t speak the words. The implication should be good enough. And the heat in his eyes would tell the rest of the story.

  “My sister is missing,” the witch ground out. “And all you care about is your precious ego?”

  The righteous flare of her pupils and her trembling lips shouldn’t have aroused him. They shouldn’t have prompted him to grab her by the shoulders. Nor should they have made him lift her until he could smash his lips over hers.

  But th
ey did.

  She made a sound of protest and hit him twice with an ineffectual smack of her fist to his shoulder. A moment later, she stood motionless. And then, as he teased the seam of her lips open with his tongue, the witch went pliant in his arms.

  Her perfect breasts pushed at his chest, urging him to bare them. Dion held himself back. This kiss, the sensual slide of his tongue over hers, would have to be enough because it shouldn’t have happened at all. But Dion nearly reconsidered when her tongue twirled with his and her pelvis arched until he swore he could feel her moist heat beneath the layers of denim between them. His dick went hard in an instant, harder than he could ever recall. Was that because he knew she despised him?

  A knock at his door ultimately saved him from his baser needs. He quickly released her shoulders but his lips were slower to part with hers. Samantha swayed forward on the balls of her feet with her eyes closed and then stumbled back. She landed on the sofa before he could steady her. A murderous look darkened her gaze.

  It was his fault she’d forgotten the furniture was there?

  A second knock reminded Dion why he let her go in the first place. He stalked to the door, prepared to snarl at whoever had interrupted him. Tina’s expectant expression on the other side and the tray of drinks in her hand stopped him short. He only had himself to blame.

  “Your vodka on the rocks,” the waitress announced in a volume the little witch panting on his sofa was sure to hear.

  He took hold of the drink with a careful gesture that limited how much of his skin brushed hers. “Thank you.”

  “Dion,” a second voice interrupted from the corridor outside his office. “I just heard about Robert. You didn’t have to do that.”

  He swiveled to face Bianca, another of his waitresses. Her voice was soft and warm rather than cold and sharp like the witch awaiting him in the office.

  Bianca’s glistening eyes brought him fully into the corridor where the vanilla human would hear his words. “Don’t worry about it,” he soothed.