Bad Idea

Beck POV The Hollow is closed on Sundays, and nobody asks where I go. They never do. Sunday is when the Alpha's business gets done, and the Alpha's business isn't theirs. I walked out of town at dusk, and the three people who saw me looked the other way. I didn't have Alpha business. I had mate business. I hadn't seen her since I locked up behind her at two that morning, and I wasn't going to see her again until Tuesday. My wolf had been pacing a trench in my chest since noon. I just had to see her. It was a bad idea. I knew that by ten o'clock, standing on four legs at the edge of her yard, because that was when she walked past the kitchen window. She had one arm up, shaking her hair loose, and the window cut her off at the ribs. It showed me enough. Black lace. Two thin straps. I could see her skin right through it. That wasn't a top. That was lingerie. She was headed for the living room. I should have turned around. I went up onto the porch instead, low and quiet, one paw at a time. I'm a lot better at sneaking when she isn't looking at me. The curtains in the front window didn't quite meet, and I put my eye to the gap like the predator I am. What she was wearing had no business being for him. It was sheer from her t**s to her hips, and it stopped there. Under it was a black thong and nothing else. Her hair was down her back. Her legs were bare. She had done all of that on purpose, carefully, for a man who was sitting on the couch with a beer on his knee, staring at the television. She stopped in the doorway and leaned on the frame. "Hey." I heard it through the glass like she had said it against my ear. It was soft and low, the sexiest voice she had in her. I felt it in my c*ck, and it wasn't even meant for me. He didn't turn his head. My lip came up off my teeth. She was a goddess. She was standing ten feet from him wearing almost nothing, and he was watching a football game rerun. "Travis." She shouldn't have had to say it twice. He glanced over for half a second. "What's up?" "Are you just going to watch TV all night? Come to bed with me." "In a minute." She waited. Then she pushed off the doorframe, crossed the room, and stood right in front of the screen with her back to the window. And I got a clear view of that perfect ass. The thong hid nothing. She was round and soft and bare, and I wanted my hands full of her. I wanted my teeth in her. I wanted to bend her over the arm of that couch, pull that scrap of lace to one side, and f*ck her until she forgot there had ever been anybody else. I need to leave. I didn't. "Babe, you're in the way," he said, and he leaned over to look around her. I watched her shoulders go tight. "You know we haven't had s*x since you got laid off." That got his attention. He sat back. He looked at her face, finally. "I'm sorry. I've been going through a lot." "I know. And I've been there for you." Her voice shook, just a little. "I'm here right now, and you won't even look at me." So he looked. I watched him do it. His eyes went down the lace and the legs and back up, and his mouth came open like a man who had just noticed what was parked in his own driveway. "Damn, babe." He set the beer down. "I'm sorry." She crossed her arms. I couldn't see her face. I didn't need to. I knew what that mouth looked like when she pressed it shut, and I would have bet the bar that her bottom lip was pushed out, full and pouting. I would have crawled across broken glass for that lip. He got up and grabbed her. He kissed her, and kept kissing her, and started whispering into her hair. I caught every word of it. I'm sorry. You're so beautiful. I'm going to make it up to you. It was cheap and easy and it didn't mean a thing. She gave in anyway. Her arms came uncrossed. Her hands went to his shoulders. She had been waiting months for somebody to want her, and she took what she could get. My claws went into the porch boards. He didn't pick her up. A woman who puts that on gets carried. She gets carried up those stairs and laid down like something that matters. He took her by the arm instead, the one with the pink line still healing on it, and towed her out of the room behind him like he was moving a lamp. She went. I heard them on the stairs. I heard her laugh, small and nervous. I heard the mattress take someone's weight. She isn't yours, I told my wolf. She came here with somebody. We don't take what's taken. He wasn't listening. He hadn't been listening for two weeks. Then the bedroom door closed. And I lost it.