Free Guarded (True Alpha 2) by Alisa Woods

I killed her.
    Lucas’s words froze Mia’s body against the door where they just had sex, but her mind spun like a carnival tilt-a-whirl. He couldn’t possibly mean what he said… not literally. He had said, My mate is dead . She assumed that meant his wife.
    Did she just have sex with a wife killer?
    A chill raced up Mia’s body, from her bare toes on Lucas’s impeccably polished wooden floor to her naked arms, where she clutched the tattered remnants of her bra defensively to her chest. The chill swept up her face to the top of her head, and the realization that Lucas might actually be a killer lifted her sex-mussed hair straight off her scalp. She tugged at her slim black skirt, still hiked up around her waist—a pretense at modesty that seemed more urgent the more the chill seeped into her body and chased away the remnants of heat-filled pleasure he had given her. A pleasure she had never experienced with anyone before. And yet all those passionate kisses, all those expert touches with his hands and mouth, the urgent way in which he said he couldn’t resist her any longer and had taken her against the door… were those the acts of a killer?
    She shook her head, not believing it. Not with the way he looked at her, cared for her… protected her. When all he had to do was walk away. Mia didn’t know what dark thing in his past had taken his wife from him, but she knew this much: Lucas Sparks was no killer.
    “You don’t really mean that,” Mia said to him.
    He had turned his back on her. “I don’t say things I don’t mean, Mia.”
    “I don’t believe you,” she said, standing straighter. “You just blaming yourself for your wife’s death or something—”
    He whirled on her, instantly looming over her and menacing her with a dark look. The fear-chill raced through her again as he forced her back against the door with his powerful presence. “Do not presume you know anything about me. You don’t belong to a pack. You hide your wolf from your family. You know nothing.”
    Moments before, he had been pinning her to the door with his thrusts deep inside her. Now, he kept her there with the disdainful gaze he raked across her nearly-naked body. But even that look welled up heat across her skin. And holy hotness, the pleasure he’d wrung out of her in that short tryst against the door… in spite of the warring emotions in her head, her body still sang with the thrum of it. But now he wasn’t just angry that she lied about being a shifter—there was something else fueling the darkness in his eyes. Besides, he was right: she could shift, she just didn’t . At least not very often and usually at night when she was dreaming. Or when she was in the throes of passion, like she had been with Lucas.
    “You’re right. I know nothing,” she said softly. Mia met his challenging look with one of her own. “Teach me.”
    He was close enough to kiss her. Her inner wolf whimpered for him to press her into the door again. But he only let out an exasperated huff and turned away, shaking his head.
    She couldn’t see why being a shifter would matter to him. He was a shifter, after all. The fact that her claws had come out and sliced into his back and shoulders hadn’t bothered him a bit. He was wolf —she could see those scratches were already healed. But there was something about her being a shifter that made him want her less… when it just made her want him more. Only a shifter could pleasure her like that and not wear scars as a result. But it was much more than that: her inner wolf yearned for him in a way she’d never felt before.
    She belonged with him.
    Only he didn’t seem to think so.
    It had something to do with his dead mate—Mia’s mind flashed back to the darkened office at SparkTech with T. Sparks on the door. Whatever had happened, however his wife had been killed, it took part of him with it… and that darkness still sat inside him, like the shrine of his wife’s office, kept shrouded and