Alphas of Seduction Read online

  “Whooooa. Down girl.” She burst out laughing and put her face into the pillow to muffle the sound.

  “What? What does that mean?” I instantly felt defensive.

  “Oh, honey. You’ve got it bad for this guy. If you could’ve just seen your face… I mean, you felt something inside of your chest when I said he was sexy, didn’t you? I saw your face twist up in confusion when it happened. That’s the green-eyed monster known as jealousy, my love. I don’t presume you ever felt it over Jonathan. Hell, you probably wished someone would’ve come along and caught his eye and taken some of that obsessive attention off you. Maybe you could’ve breathed without him freaking out for once,” Charlie rambled.

  “Please don’t talk trash about my dead husband.” Even though I didn’t necessarily feel like defending his honor, it was the right thing to do in the moment.

  “Listen. The guy was a bastard. You know it. I know it. Anna knows it. We can stop pretending he walked on water now. Can’t we? Yes, he adored you. But stalkers adore their victims, too. It’s not always a good thing, Jane.” She didn’t bother looking apologetic for what she said.

  “Let’s get back to the better subject. Daniel. Even just talking about Daniel’s hair would be better than talking about Jonathan. Are you going to see him again while you’re in town? How long are you staying anyway?” Anna expertly changed the topic. Well, sort of.

  “I have no intention of seeing him again. It’s just too dangerous to be near him. The attraction is too strong. As far as how long I’m staying, I’m not completely sure. Mother said the will is being read in a little over a week. So, I think I will stay for that and then head back to California.”

  “Why is being attracted to someone dangerous? I don’t understand that line of thinking. Jonathan is gone, Jane. It’s not forbidden to see someone. You are a grown woman. A woman with needs and desires. Daniel is gorgeous and very attracted to you. What’s the problem?” Charlie asked, confused.

  “Who says he’s attracted to me?” Again, I was defensive.

  They both just stared at me with be serious looks on their faces. “The two of you always had a unique connection, even when you were younger and living under this roof. Everyone could sense it. It was just a matter of time before something happened,” Anna stated plainly.

  “Really? You guys knew it then?” I asked.

  “Why does that surprise you?”

  “I guess I was the last one to know it then.” I laughed a little, but it was a cover to hide my embarrassment for being so naïve. Granted, I had been young, and consequently innocent and inexperienced, but when Daniel seduced me when I was eighteen, I convinced myself it came completely out of left field—one of his wild, erratic ideas. Deep down, I knew it wasn’t the case.

  Anna covered my hand with hers. She always saw through my attempts at hiding my true emotions. Squeezing her hand, I gave her a warm smile. “He always flirted with everyone in the house, I thought. Even the staff. I remember the way Mrs. Jensen, the piano teacher, would blush when he came into the room. He played terribly, but she always praised him and said he showed great effort.” I chuckled again thinking about the way he charmed all the females who worked for my parents. I guess I’d never really thought about it before.

  “When did you guys start fooling around? I’m guessing it was more than the one occasion William caught you?” Charlie was always direct, even if the subject was delicate.

  Really scrolling through my memory, I was surprised to realize how much I had packed away for safekeeping. One memory led to another, then another. A minute or so passed without me answering before Charlie cleared her throat.

  “I’m trying to remember. Honestly, I’m not dodging the question, I’ve just really repressed a lot over the years.”

  “Is it too painful to lift the lid off the box?” Anna asked.

  “No, it’s not that. It’s more of a surprise, how much I remember, I guess.” Stuff I hadn’t thought about, and certainly hadn’t talked about, in a decade—or longer. Things that never struck me as flirting or outside the ordinary when I was young, when I look back at now, seem so different. He was quite the seducer, even at a young age.

  “Like what? I’m dying for details!” Charlie begged.

  “You’re such a dog!” Anna teased.

  “Woof! I can’t help it.”

  We all laughed a little. Even though it was a somber moment, there was still a bit of lightness to finally be freeing my mind of the shame and guilt that final day had brought to the whole subject of Daniel.

  “The first time I remember him touching me, and really feeling like something was very, I don’t know, different? Yeah, I guess that’s how I would describe it, he was drawing, like he always was, and he asked me to pose for him, so he could get the shape of the female torso accurate for a dress he was designing. He said something about the bodice being of ‘the utmost importance.’” I did my best to imitate his mix of accents that I still couldn’t place after all the years I’d known him. Honestly, it made him even sexier, the exotic way his deep voice wrapped around the long vowel sounds in particular.

  I stood where he positioned me and let him move my body as he wished. His hands were strong and sure, and he repeatedly told me to relax, let him guide me. Fingers skated across my skin, leaving hot trails in their wake. Goose bumps broke out on my bare arms. Daniel asked if I was cold and I quickly lied and said it was the air conditioning. William always kept the house cool in the summer. Everyone always complained but we were forbidden to turn the air conditioning off. I thought he believed the excuse, but he had a cocky grin on his face when he went back to his easel. I felt the heat color my face and neck from embarrassment.

  He insisted on calling me Janvier. He still did today when I saw him.

  He chastised me from behind the big sketch pad. “Janvier, if you’re not going to take this seriously, I’ll just ask one of the others to help.”

  “What? I haven’t moved at all.”

  “You have. You’re slumping.” He marched over to my place in front of the window and stood behind me. “Take a deep breath and hold it,” he said, inches away from my ear, startling me with his closeness that I jumped. He growled low in his throat and the sound shot through the very center of my body. I wanted to please him. The last thing I wanted was for him to be giving any of the other girls in the house that kind of personal attention. I saw the way they all watched him. We all did. He was so handsome, so curious in his behavior, but so alluring.

  He put his big hands on my shoulder blades and pushed forward. “Stand up straight, Janvier. Are you still holding your breath?” I shook my head quickly. “Good girl. Press your tits out. They’re so gorgeous, so perfect and womanly. Nothing like the other girls. Breathe. Very good. Now no more slouching. I need to see all these amazing curves.” He ran his hands down my sides, accentuating the hourglass shape of my figure, resting on my hips, digging his fingers into the flesh through the linen of my shorts.

  “I would be able to see your body better without these shorts.”

  I swiveled my head to look at him. “Be serious. I’m not going to stand here naked, Daniel.”

  “I’m not suggesting that.” His tone was matter-of-fact, making me feel like a ridiculous child.

  “That’s what you just said.”

  “No, I said without the shorts. They’re bulky and hiding the perfection of your hips and thighs. I’m assuming you’re wearing something underneath?” He raised his eyebrow, seeming to expect an answer to such a forward question.

  “Of course I am. What kind of girl do you think I am?”

  “So what’s the problem? I’ve seen you out by the pool in barely a scrap of a bathing suit, have I not?”

  “I’m not taking my shorts off, Daniel.” I turned forward again, ending the debate.

  “Well, I’ll have to do the best that I can.” He left me and walked back to his sketch pad and I felt the loss of his warm body against mine immediately. But really, t
aking my clothes off was pushing the limit. Although he had a point about the bathing suit.

  “No slouching!”

  He scared me from my reasoning thoughts with his outburst and I popped tall like he had positioned me. “Sorry,” I murmured.

  Anna and Charlie were riveted by my memory.

  “How old were you when that happened?”

  “Hard to say. I developed so early. I was twelve when I came to the Greensboro home. He was already living here, I think maybe a year. I don’t know, maybe sixteen? Seventeen? I had already been to Europe and back, so yeah, I had to be at least sixteen.”

  Katherine and William decided when I was fourteen that I needed to go to an all-girls school in Paris for two years. I hated it at first, and I hated being separated from Anna and Charlie. After I got over the homesickness and learned the language enough to get by, it wasn’t too bad. I realized later, it was the opportunity of a lifetime, but it’s really hard to convince a pubescent girl that sending her to a foreign country for two years is something she will be grateful for later in her life.

  “Okay, so how did you get from posing for him to sleeping with him? There’s a pretty wide gap there,” Charlie persisted.

  “Well, one thing just led to another. We started spending a lot of time together. You guys know that. We would go on hikes. He would draw and I would read when we would find a clearing where we could set our blanket. I would pack us a lunch and we’d stay away from the house for the better part of the day. We would hold hands while we walked, or he would lie with his head in my lap while I read. It seemed like innocent stuff, until the day he kissed me. Then I knew I was in way over my head.”

  We lay on the blanket after having our lunch, the midday sun lazing in the azure sky

  “Your eyes are the exact color of the sky today,” he commented, looking from my face to the sky, then back.

  “Always so poetic, Daniel.” I ran my fingers through his hair, pushing strands back from his face.

  “Well, they are. I’m just stating a fact.”

  “Never mind then. Not poetic. Just factual.” I reached over to tweak his nose. He had the worst habit of ruining a moment with his comments. But before I could grab his nose, he snatched my hand in his.

  “I like you.”

  “I like you, too.”

  “No. I like you. I want to kiss you. Touch you.”

  “You’re touching me right now.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” His voice was husky. “I want to feel your skin beneath mine. It makes me hard thinking about it.” He paused. “And I think about it a lot.”

  “Oh.” Mine was a whisper on the breeze.

  “Will you let me? Kiss you, I mean?”

  I didn’t trust my voice to deliver a coherent answer, so I nodded my head. I’d been thinking about him a lot, too.

  Daniel moved from my lap and slid closer to me on the patchwork quilt. He pushed me down to my back and hovered above me, blocking out the sun so I didn’t have to squint when I looked up at him. His blond mane fanned out around his face as he lowered his mouth to mine. I was already breathless and we hadn’t even made contact yet.

  His lips crushed mine with possession. He didn’t so much kiss as consume me and I welcomed the invasion, opening for the demanding sweeps of his tongue. I had been kissed a few times before, but nothing even close to what I experienced with Daniel.

  “More. I need more of you.” He moved to lie on top of me, fitting himself between my legs. When he kissed me again, he thrust his hips forward into my pussy, only the clothing we wore stopping our bodies from truly joining. He growled into my mouth, the vibrations ricocheting around in my throat and chest, driving my need higher.

  “God, Janvier, you are perfection. You feel so good beneath me,” he murmured against my lips, not giving me time to respond before devouring me again with another kiss. Not that I would even know what to say to something like that.

  We kissed for what seemed like hours, only stopping because I had to be back to the house for a lesson or appointment or some other ridiculous thing Katherine insisted on filling my calendar with.

  “Sweet baby Jesus. If that’s what just kissing was like, I’m afraid to hear about actual sex,” Anna said, gripping on to the pillow.

  “Not me. I want every single dirty detail. Literally every single one. Wait! We need snacks. I have a feeling this is going to be a doozy. I’ll be right back. I should check on Diana anyway. Do not start without me,” Charlie added.

  She was off like a shot out of my room, leaving Anna and me on my bed, staring at the door in disbelief.

  “She’s fucking crazy,” Anna choked.

  “Agreed,” I said, still staring at the open door before we both burst out laughing.

  Charlie came back in about fifteen minutes with a tray of snacks she charmed Baxter into preparing for us while she took Diana out to do her business.

  “What did I miss? Did you start without me?”

  “No, we just talked about you the entire time you were gone,” I stated matter-of-factly.

  “About how awesome I am? About how good my ass looks in these jeans?” She did a little pirouette, showing off her bum in her designer denim.

  “No, not exactly, but you’re not kidding. Did you have lipo again? You look fantastic!”

  “Bite your tongue, you little wench! I’ve never had lipo, and I never will. That scares the shit out of me. No, I’ve been riding that damn Peloton bike like a fiend. I hate it, but I love what it’s doing for my tush.” She joined us on the bed, tucking her legs under her now-agreed-upon perfect bottom.

  “No kidding. Now let’s undo all your hard work with these brownies. Baxter sure knows the way to a girl’s heart. Look at this plate of snack heaven,” Anna said, digging into the chocolate goodness.

  “Seriously. He hit all the main food groups here. Chocolate, salt…well, that about covers it. He’s a good man,” Charlie said before taking a bite of the brownie.

  After we ate our share of brownies and popcorn, I thought maybe they would forget about grilling me for details about my sexual experience with Daniel. My stomach was happily full and I stretched out on my bed, head propped up on a few pillows stacked against the headboard, and closed my eyes. Sugar comas could be happy places when done properly.

  “Don’t think we’ve forgotten in our carb loading, sister.” Charlie pulled my toe, popping the knuckle in doing so.

  “Oh, that feels so good. Do the other ones.” I wiggled my toes and she pulled the rest, getting each one to give a satisfying pop, releasing the built-up energy from the joints.

  “Did you guys sleep together more than the one time you were caught?” Anna asked, going straight to the heavy stuff.

  “No, believe it or not, that was the one and only time. And that experience scarred me so badly I didn’t have sex again until Jonathan.” I still lay with my eyes closed, not wanting to face what I assumed would be their stares of disbelief.

  “Are you kidding me?” Charlie asked, her voice climbing up about two octaves.

  “No, I’m not. It was like PTSD. Plus Daniel was a tough act to follow. I fell in love with him that summer.” I ended the statement on a quiet sigh.

  “And you don’t want to see him again now, why?” Anna questioned.

  “Because he was really hard to get over. Really hard.” I sat up, looking from Anna to Charlie for affirmation. “You have no idea what that did to me.”

  “How much older is he? Not very, I wouldn’t think?” Anna asked.

  “He’s only two years older than me. When you’re young, that seems like an eternity. So that summer, I had just turned eighteen. It was my birthday if you recall. He was twenty.”

  Daniel had applied to the art institute’s fashion design program and was waiting to hear if he was accepted. With William’s connections and his own talent, it seemed like a no-brainer. He was working as an intern in the city during the week and coming back to the island on the weekends. He had just
come home that night.

  Katherine had dragged William out to one of her charity events for the evening. He complained, but I knew he loved getting dressed up as much as she did. Any chance to donate money and look like a bigshot in front of their peers never hurt his ego, either. They had stopped taking in new foster children a few years back, so there were only four younger ones after Daniel and me, and now that he was in the city all week, and I’d be leaving for college in the fall, the house would seem all but empty.

  Everyone was sleeping when he came to my room. I had a semi-private area on the far west side of the house, separated by the kitchen and laundry room. Katherine had redecorated the suite specially for me when my adoption was finalized when I came back from Paris.

  “Are you sleeping?” I heard his gruff voice at my door.

  “No, but what are you doing? Are you okay?” I walked toward the door, no intention of letting him stay.

  “I can’t sleep. There are things I want to say to you.”

  “It can’t wait until daylight?” All the lights were out through the entire house, the only shadows being cast were from the moon shining through the upper windows which weren’t covered by drapery. I could see his strong silhouette as he came closer.

  When he touched me, the heat from his body penetrated through the thin lace of my nightgown. “Is this what you always wear to bed?” He ran his hand over my hip and across my stomach.

  “Yes.” I paused, feeling how tense he was. “Daniel, what is it? What do you need to say?”

  “I need to be with you, Janvier.” His voice was rougher than normal, gravel instead of sand.

  “Well, you’re here.” I’d gotten in the habit of using his direct manner.

  “I need to be inside you,” he grated.

  “Daniel. Ssshhh. We can’t do that here.”

  “Why? They’re out for the night. They won’t be home for hours. Please. I’m going crazy without you. I’m serious. I can’t think straight. Feel me.” He took my hand and placed it on his erection. Harder than I’d ever felt, and he moaned when I touched him.