Free Wanted by the Alphas (An Extremely Sensual Paranormal Shifter Romance) by Dawn Steele Page A

her
limbs being entwined with his glorious body, and a flush creeps
into her cheeks.
    “Well, you could have called,” she says.
    And the moment she said this, she wishes she
could take it back. The last thing she wants to do is to sound like
a whiny girlfriend. They just had sex for one night, for goodness
sakes! They are very far from actually dating.
    “I mean,” she adds hastily, “you are not
obliged to call, of course. What we had was great . . . that was
what it was.”
    Why does everything that is coming out of her
mouth feel so lame? She half-wishes a great big hole would open up
and let her dive into it. Lucien’s presence is reducing her to her
tongue-tied, trembling-kneed roots, and that is the farthest from
what she wants to be in front of him.
    He doesn’t seem to be as composed as he
usually is, either. But then, she doesn’t know him that well. She
doesn’t know him at all. He gave off the veneer of a
devil-may-care, sophisticated player at first meeting. It may not
be who he truly is.
    “Well,” he says awkwardly, “you did leave the
next morning. You didn’t even leave a note. I was going to take you
to breakfast and ask if you wanted to stay longer at Pine’s Bluff.
Until you can get your feet on the ground, of course.”
    “Oh. Thank you. That’s very nice of you.”
    “You are welcome.”
    A silence again. A very stretched,
uncomfortable silence. Shannon senses that Lucien is not used to
being silent on such subjects. Or maybe he is not used to having
his lover leave him without a word or a note in the morning. She
reckons that it is him who usually does the leaving.
    Of course, that is probably unfair. She
doesn’t know what he does in situations like these.
    He looks up, seeming to recover his usual
spirits.
    “You going shopping?” he says.
    “Just picking up some groceries.”
    “Well, I need to pick some up myself. Do you
want to go in?”
    “I didn’t know you picked up your own
groceries,” she teases. The awkwardness appears to have lifted
some.
    “Oh, but I do.” He smiles. “I pick out my own
wines and cheeses. I’m quite a connoisseur.”
    “I believe you.”
    Together, they walk into Safeway’s. There is
no hand-holding, just a comfortable companionship – as if they have
both made a mutual decision not to push anything but just let
things go at their own pace, if there’s even anything there at
all.
    She is flattered that he has actually tailed
her car and come to this place with her. She is flattered that he
is going grocery shopping with her. She is flattered that this
extremely handsome, sophisticated scion of a multi-million dollar
real estate empire is even with her at all.
    They make small talk as she pushes a trolley
down the aisles. He goes to the cheese section and gives her
rundown on the different cheeses from different places.
    “Do you like Brie?” he says.
    “I have never tried it before.”
    “It’s French. A little crumbly if you like
that kind of texture.”
    “I prefer Italian cheeses in my pasta. This
is what I mix when I make a cheese sauce.”
    “I like fruits like apricots and raspberries
mixed up in my cheeses,” he says. “I usually eat them with water
crackers.”
    She finds herself warming up to him again in
that easy camaraderie they seem to share. Almost as if they are
boyfriend and girlfriend.
    When they pass a door with the sign ‘STAFF
ONLY’ somewhere between the dairy and frozen sections, he suddenly
grabs her hand and pulls her through it.
    “But what about my cart – ?” she begins, but
the rest of what she was about to say is lost when he presses her
back against the tiled wall and kisses her ferociously.
    Ohhh!
    His mouth devours hers with insatiable
hunger. It is as though he is so penned up with physical need for
her that he cannot contain himself. His kisses are hard on her
mouth, and she cannot help but respond to them. Her loins are
turning into mush.
    Someone will see us, she thinks in a haze.
But he