Call of the Alpha - Part 1(11)
That’s not possible, she thought. Something’s not right here…something’s definitely not…
She then realized that her hands were still on his chest, her fingers grazing him through the shirt. Astounded with herself, she drew her hands back as if she had just touched a hot stove. She exited the bedroom and went back into the living room.
She tried reading, she tried napping, she even tried doing a crossword puzzle. But her mind was simply not focused. When she tried to nap, she found herself working out theories and events that could have caused the man in her bedroom to run through the woods stark-ass naked. When she tried to do the crossword puzzle, she thought of those quickly healing wounds and how there seemed to be something almost unearthly about the man.
She tried watching television for the rest of the evening but was too distracted. She looked to the phone several times and, on one occasion, even walked to it and held it in her hand. But in the end, she had not called for an ambulance. By that point, she was too far gone. And even if the nurse in her had won that battle, the newly awakened sexualized part of her was too enthralled with him to give up.
The sexual thoughts she was having were very much unlike her. It was almost as if she was looking into someone else’s head. If she’d been having them about someone she knew, it would be different. But this was not only a stranger—he was a stranger who had been wounded and was healing miraculously before her eyes. There was something almost forbidden, dangerous, about her feelings for him.
Which, she supposed, is what made it all that more alluring.
Jessica tried to shut the thoughts out, but that seemed to only make them stronger. She kept imagining herself slipping into bed with him and curling up to him. It was, after all, her bed. The fantasies came easy enough. She realized with a start that she wanted to know him intimately. She imagined being with him, having met him in some other entirely different circumstance. She imagined what it would be like to be with him. Seeing their bodies moving together in her head, she imagined him both taking charge but gentle, the conqueror and the gratuitous lover at the same time.
Now feeling anything but tired herself, had the man not been occupying her bedroom, she would have surely gotten the handy little device she’d picked up on a lonely weekend at a conference and spend some time relieving her own tension. But it was in the bedside table by her bed, so that option was out. In the end, she tried pleasuring herself with her hand. But even then she was too distracted by him, wondering what would happen should he awaken and walk into the room while she was otherwise occupied. The thought both aroused and terrified her. Was she ready for that, with a man who she’d only met yesterday, no less?
Giving up, Jessica retreated back to the television, watching some mindless reality TV show where stupid women were fawning over stupid men and then voting one another off the show.
When he was still not awake at nine o’ clock, she checked on him one last time. She tiptoed to the bed and noted that his breathing was back to normal. She checked the wound on his chest and it was little more than a scratch now. All of the other cuts and scratches that had been on him less than twenty-four hours ago were nowhere to be seen.
She ran one of her hands through his hair and he stirred the slightest bit. She watched him for a moment, part of her hoping that he would keep resting while another part of her very much wanted him to be awake. He remained asleep, turning slightly onto his side. Jessica watched him for a moment before she returned to the living room and made herself a sleeping spot on the couch.
She lay there for close to an hour before she was finally able to fall into sleep. As she did, a last waking thought drifted through her mind. Well, at least now I know what I’ll be doing with my week off.
Chapter 6
When Jessica was jarred awake on the couch, it took her a moment to realize where she was. She had never slept on the couch, so her sleep-addled mind had trouble accepting where she was for a few moments. As her brain sorted through all of this, her ears took in a commotion from somewhere else in the house. Things were being slid around and there was a very strange sound, almost like something grunting.
She sat up quickly, looking towards the hallway and her bedroom beyond. Was her guest having another attack of some sort? It seemed likely, but as she got to her feet and headed that way, her mind cleared from sleep and she realized that the sound was coming from somewhere else entirely.
She turned slowly, standing in the darkness, as fear snaked its way through her body for the first time since bringing the stranger home with her. The kitchen, she thought. The noise is coming from the kitchen. She turned in that direction—to her right—and looked down the short connecting hallway that sat between the living room and the kitchen. She could see nothing, but sensed movement.
She stepped in that direction on numb feet. When she reached the edge of the kitchen’s entranceway, she saw the source of the noise but it made no sense at first. She saw a hunched shape on all fours, its rear in the air and its face at the floor. She couldn’t make out any more in the shadows and darkness of the dark room.
She then reached out and turned the kitchen light on. She winced from the glare of the light but when her eyes focused, she saw the man that she had hit with her car kneeling on the floor. The shape she had seen in the darkness was still there, but it now had a familiar shape. Still, nerves still gripped her heart. Behind him, the refrigerator door was open, spilling faint light onto the floor. Several different foods were spread out on the floor in front of him: a block of cheese, leftover burgers she’d packed up from two nights ago, and a package of bacon that looked to have been savagely torn open. He was tearing into one of the burgers when she stepped into the kitchen, partially frozen in shock from what she was seeing.