Baiting Him (How to Catch an Alpha 2)

Last night, he came down to my place after I got home. When he arrived with LeFou in tow, I was in the middle of trying to get the tree I bought into its complicated stand. So, I distractedly let both of them in, giving LeFou a quick pet before going back to my task. After taking in the situation, Gaston set down his pup and stepped in, taking the stand from me and doing the job himself while asking me questions I answered without thinking. Then he proceeded to make it clear with words and looks that he was annoyed I didn’t call to tell him I was stopping to get a tree, and even more annoyed I hauled the somewhat large tree wrapped in twine from my car, into the building, and then up to my condo by myself, when he was just a phone call away.

He got over being annoyed after I apologized and promised to call him next time, but then he got annoyed once more when he asked me where I kept my decorations. I told him they were in my storage unit in the basement of the building. I also told him I’d get them later, because it was getting late and neither of us had eaten. He didn’t say anything when I said this; he just gave me another look that stated he wouldn’t be happy if I carted the totes upstairs without him.

We ended up bickering about this for a good ten minutes—or I should say, I bickered while holding his pup, and he mostly shook his head like I was adorable and frustrating. I finally gave in when I saw he wasn’t going to, and then I grabbed my key for my padlock and took him down to my unit. In the end, he carried my two large red-and-green totes up to my place, only allowing me to carry one small cardboard box that was filled with strings of lights.

I’ve never had a guy want to take care of me before, even with small things like carrying totes, so his caveman act was sweeter than it was annoying. If I’m honest, I was thankful for his help. It would have taken me forever to get the tree set up, and I would’ve had to take at least three trips downstairs to the creepy basement without him.

When we got back upstairs, he ordered us dinner from one of the nearby Chinese restaurants while I started to untangle the lights I’d shoved into the cardboard box last year, not knowing my carelessness would come back to haunt me. When he got off the phone, I was sitting on the floor with a knotted ball of lights in my hands, ready to toss the mess into the garbage and buy new ones. Seeing my frustration, he took them from me and had them untangled within minutes. Then he cut the twine from the tree and started to place the lights with ease, even at the top of the tree—something I would’ve needed a chair to do.

By the time our dinner arrived, we were halfway through one of my boxes of decorations, so we both decided we should finish with the tree first, and when we were done, we didn’t eat at the table or on the couch; we both sat on the floor in my living room with only the Christmas lights flickering down at us. We also made love right there, with me straddling his hips before he carried me to bed and finished inside me.

I expected him to leave after that, but he told me he was staying, which meant after we took LeFou out for a walk, I got to experience falling asleep in his arms and him waking me twice during the night to make love to me again.

My alarm went off early, and when it did, he got up with me. While I showered, he went up to his place to grab things to make us breakfast, because I had nothing in my fridge—something he informed me of while I still had shampoo in my hair. I got out of the shower to find him in the kitchen, cooking eggs, bacon, and toast, a meal we ate much like yesterday, me sitting on the counter and him standing between my knees. While we ate, we talked about random things, and then once we both finished, we latched on to each other until I somehow ended up bent over the back of my couch, shouting his name.

I come back to the moment when fingers pinch my nipple and a hand grabs my bottom, pulling me roughly against his erection. I dig my fingers into his strong arms and tilt my head away from his to look into his eyes. “I have to get ready for work.”