Alpha by Jasinda Wilder Page A

hand cupped my elbow, holding my arm out for him.  
    Another embarrassingly breathy moan slid from my throat as his lips touched my bicep, moved to the inside, that soft and tender flesh there. Hot soft wet lips, kissing me so intimately, so tenderly, I couldn’t prevent the sound from escaping me. I’d never been touched this way, never been kissed this way. His lips hadn’t touched mine, hadn’t touched me anywhere at all but my hand and arm, and yet I was more aroused than I’d ever been in all my life. I was shaking from head to toe, hot all over, mouth hanging open, barely breathing.  
    “Kyrie…Kyrie…so gentle, so responsive. Do you feel that? I know you do, my sweetest thing. I know you feel it.” His voice was a low, murmuring thread, his breath touching my shoulder now like a sun-hot wind. “It’s lightning, isn’t it? Pure lightning, arcing between us. Every time my lips touch your perfect skin, you blush and you shiver. I’ve barely touched you, barely begun to kiss you, only just learning the secrets of your body, but already you react so beautifully. Kyrie…Kyrie…you are so beautiful. Such a precious thing, and I simply cannot wait to make you sing, to make your body hum and shiver for me.”
    I had no breath, heard no sound but his voice and the poetry in his words. If I’d heard anyone else speak that way, I’d mock and scoff. It would sound so contrived, but somehow with him, with his rich and melodic voice, it sounded perfect, natural. And his words, god. I couldn’t help but react to such statements. I felt my spine arch, felt my head turn to the side and my neck curve away, offering the column of my throat to him. No one had ever said such things to me. I’d been called sexy, hot, pretty. One guy had even called me “deliciously fuckable”; I’d had mixed feelings about that one. I’d been told I had a “bangin’ body,” and I’d been told I had fantastic tits. Once, I’d been told my eyes were lovely. That was a good one.  
    But…this was different. His voice, a deep murmur in my ear, thick with sincerity, rife with something like awe…it took his poetry to a new level. It made what should have been a fairly common and trite compliment—“so beautiful”—into something different, pushed it into a new realm.  
    And…he couldn’t wait to make me sing? Make my body hum and shiver for him? What the hell did that even mean?  
    But I had a suspicion. I did feel the lightning. I couldn’t deny that. Mere kisses along my arm, and I was moaning. If he could elicit that reaction from such simple touches, what could he get from me with more intimate attentions? I shuddered as the thought ran through me.
    His lips—now skimming along the ridge of my shoulder and into the curve at the base of my throat—smiled on my skin. “Yes…you feel it. You feel what I could do to you. What I will do to you.” He trailed kisses up my neck, one…two…three…and then his lips were on my jaw, nearing my chin— is he going to kiss me? —his lips slid up, up, paused just beneath the corner of my lips. “You want me to kiss you, Kyrie? Don’t you? You’re afraid, but you do. I can feel it in you, sense it in you. Ask me, Kyrie. Ask me to kiss you.”
    His lips hovered, just barely touching my flesh, at the corner of my lips. I trembled all over. The words bubbled up in my throat, crashed against the wall of my teeth. Kiss me . Please kiss me. I clenched my jaw, squeezed my teeth together to stop the words from coming out.
    “No? Not yet, hmm?” His breath touched my cheek, and then his lips descended, ever so briefly, to the swell of my lower lip. He kissed me so softly, so quickly, I might have imagined it. And then I felt a nip, sharp teeth catching my lip, and I gasped. “Very well. I can wait.”
    I breathed out as I felt him move away, and then I heard a spoon clink against china.  
    “The soup is going cold. Open up.” His voice was neutral once again.  
    “You’re