Alpha's Captive 03 - Flight Read Free Page A

reached over and aimed the showerhead with one hand as she cranked the handle to switch to the shower with the other, giving his handsome, smirking face a full blast of cold water.
    Levi’s eyes widened with shock and indignation, and Harper shrieked with laugher, changing the angle of the showerhead as the water warmed before she soaked the bathroom with it.
    “You’re really asking for it now,” Levi said, his eyes flashing with something that was almost but quite definitely not anger.
    “You slapped my butt!” Harper said as the water, warmer now, streamed over her body. “And then you jumped all over me.”
    “You slapped mine first, if you recall,” he said.
    Harper paused, remembering. “Oh, yeah. I guess I did. But you deserved it.”
    “And you didn’t?” he returned.
    “I didn’t get your car shot at. And I didn’t go on to wreck it.” That still stung.
    He stepped into the shower and jerked the flowered curtain closed. “Still on about the car.”
    She looked up at him, his body inches from hers. The tub enclosure seemed far too small to fit them both. “Still? It happened like three hours ago! My car, Levi. You wrecked my car.”
    “I seem to remember that you were driving at the time.”
    “Don’t you dare try to pin that on me.” Harper really was irritated now. She’d cared about that damned car more than anything in the world. Her oldest brother had given it to her, and she’d worked summers and weekends earning money to buy parts to restore it. She and her brothers had spent hundreds of hours in the barn together, covered in sweat and grease, talking cars and sports and her poor taste in guys.
    And Levi was, from an y objective standpoint, the poorest choice of all. Because whatever the failings of her previous boyfriends—and Levi wasn’t even that—none of them had almost gotten her killed.
    He caught her chin with his fingers and tilted it up. She blinked at him, then realizing that it wasn’t water from the shower that was getting in her eyes and blurring her vision, she jerked her face away.
    Or rather, she tried to, but his grip only tightened.
    “I’m sorry, Harper,” he said softly. “I knew better than to let you come with me.”
    “Then you shouldn’t have taken my car,” she said bitterly.
    A tiny smile quirked his lips, but his eyes were still solemn as he said, “I still could have stopped you, babycakes.”
    “You ass hole,” she spat. “I’m upset about my car, not about coming with you.”
    “ But I don’t care about your car.” Those amber eyes glinted infuriatingly. His other hand, the free one, touched the bandage on her arm lightly. “What I care about is that you got hurt. And there’s no excuse for me letting that happen.”
    Which was entirely not the point. That was a douchebag, overprotective kind of thing to do, to turn around what she was saying and make it about something else completely. And now she was really mad, mad and humiliated that he’d seen her moment of weakness, because she never, ever let guys see her cry. Harper tried to pull out of his grasp, but there was nowhere to go, and he was lowering his head toward hers again—
    She bit him on the lip, hard, and he jerked back with a curse, releasing her.
    “I’m not your babycakes,” she said. “I’m not anybody’s babycakes. Look, you’re hot. I won’t deny that. And in the sack—look, I don’t even know how you’re doing half of what you do to me because it really, really shouldn’t be that good. This is fun, okay? It’s been great, except for the whole car and almost dying thing. But here’s the deal. Don’t pretend that you know me or you care about me or that I freaking matter to you, because I know I don’t.”
    He stoo d there, the shower hitting the contours of his chest and running down, across the trail on his belly into the nest of hair and down his thighs and cock. And something happened—in his eyes, in his face, and her breath hitched, just a