Alphas Like Us (Like Us 3)

I raise my brows at Akara.

“Two shots, two cocktails,” he answers. “A single shot was in each cocktail.”

“Okay, that shouldn’t knock out a six-foot girl who weighs…one-sixty, one-sixty-five?”

“Around there,” Akara nods.

Her BAC has to be low, but she’s not a regular drinker. “How much sleep has she had?” I step back since her pulse is normal. I stand next to Maximoff.

“Not much,” Akara says, adjusting Sulli again.

There you go. “That’s most likely why she passed out after four shots.” I glance back at Jane who’s stuck calculating. “She’ll be fine, Cobalt. People pass out from drinking. Shit happens.”

Jane raises a finger at me. Not a middle finger. A pointer finger to shut up.

Maximoff whispers, “It’ll make her feel better.” I assume that Jane was the one supplying and mixing Sulli’s drinks.

And I don’t need to ask why they’re all tense.

From an outsider’s standpoint, having a friend facedown drunk is a nuisance at best. I’ve lugged Donnelly’s ass up a flight of stairs at 4 a.m. before, and we cracked jokes about it the next morning.

From a security standpoint, having a celebrity pass out—one who is female and has a family history of alcoholism—is a fucking PR nightmare. The moniker Drunken Heiress will follow Sulli around for the rest of her life.

From a friend and family standpoint, none of us want Sulli to have to deal with bad shit.

I turn to Maximoff, sweeping his sharp features again. “Who’s carrying her out of here?”

“Akara already picked her up, and she looked dead.” He shakes his head once, neck stiff. “She can’t be carried out, and there’s no way outside without a camera catching us.”

Not good.

Akara says what I’ve realized. “We’re staying here until she wakes up.”

Maximoff tries to crack his knuckles. The longer I stare at him, the more I know something is eating at my boyfriend, and fuck, I just want to be alone with him. It’s the only way he’ll unwind.

“Follow me, wolf scout.” I take his hand and try to lead him to the men’s bathroom. He ends up next to me, step-for-step, and he opens the dark wooden door.

I easily let him have that lead. Teasing him isn’t a good idea right now.

The bathroom is as elaborate as the bar: gold fixtures and faucet, three obsidian sinks and urinals, two varnished wooden stalls.

Maximoff puts a hand to his neck and glares at the fringed chandelier.

“What are you thinking?” I lean casually against a sink and grip the granite counter behind me. To be honest, I want to hold him. Badly. But I have to wait until he’ll let me. Until we talk this shit out.

And I love driving along the weaving and crisscrossing roads of his ever-turning mind. The fact that he lets me in means everything to me.

He tries to blow out a breath. “My chest is on fire.”

Just watching him, my chest is burning alive too.

Before I respond, he adds, “And I almost hit Akara.”

I quickly replay Akara and Maximoff’s interactions in my mind. They seemed normal. “He didn’t act like you swung at him.”

“Because I stopped myself from even moving my arm.” Maximoff tugs at the collar of his Philadelphia Eagles crew-neck. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel, but all I could reach was anger when Akara said this has happened before.”

I frown. “When?”

He tries to roll his taut neck. “A few weeks ago at Charlie and Beckett’s apartment. Apparently Sulli thought it was some fluke happening since she only drank three beers and conked out. Not asleep, but fucking unresponsive.” He holds my gaze in a tight vice. “And I keep thinking…Maximoff…” His eyes redden. “You had a chance to keep her away from alcohol. You stupid fucker. Why’d you let her drink at all?”

I take the strong breath that he can’t take. Staying at ease when he can’t be at ease. “Because despite loving to be in control, you’re not a controlling fucker, Maximoff. You don’t make other people’s choices for them. You’re just there for them.” And when he needs to be reminded of that, of anything, I’ll be the first to tell him every time.

He pinches his eyes.

I move off the counter. Please let me wrap my arms around you. I stop when he backs up for a second. “Maximoff.”

He lowers his hand. “And I keep thinking about how you just spent forty-million hours working nonstop to come back to this.”

I almost smile. “Thirty hours,” I correct.

He scrutinizes my unruffled state of being. “I don’t get how you’re okay with this.” He gestures from his chest to my chest. “I’ve taken so much away from you, and I can’t stop it. I can’t change the fact that my family is chaotic, messy, and bizarre-as-fuck because I love them as they fucking are, and I feel selfish wanting you to be a part of that.”

I inhale. “The media took my privacy; you haven’t taken a thing from me, Maximoff. You’re giving me something so fucking precious: your chaotic, messy, bizarre-as-fuck family, and I also love them as they fucking are. Plus, I look forward to coming home and putting out wildfires with you. It’s not that complicated.”

I knew we’d need to talk this through again. It’s different now that I’m finishing my residency and not working directly for his family yet. He thinks he needs to give me peace and quiet away from the chaos.

But I want everything that comes with him.

Maximoff stands still, taking deeper breaths. His gaze fastens tight to me, and love is written all over his eyes. “I was excited to see you,” he admits. “Like stupidly excited.”

I picture that, and the corner of my mouth rises. “Your infatuation is showing.”

“I don’t care.”

It swells my chest, and my eyes burn. I give him a once-over before I move closer.

He steps back. “Wait.”

I stop a few feet from him, and I comb my hand through my hair.

Maximoff pinches his eyes one more time, then stares upward like he’s wracking his brain. When he looks down at me, he asks, “Did April call back?”

“Yeah.” My older stepsister never used to dial my number, and in the past few days, April has bombarded me with phone calls and texts. “It’s why I was late.” I run my tongue over my molars, almost wincing.

“That bad?” he asks. Now Maximoff looks like he wants to hold me.

But we wait a little bit longer to bridge the space.

“It’s not good,” I say. “She said she still doesn’t feel safe at her house. Someone threw a bouquet of flowers over the gate.”

Maximoff shakes his head. “We can hire more private security for her.”

“We’ve already hired three around-the-clock security guards, plus installed security cameras, plus we had a gated fence put up.” It all happened after April called me. Panicked about how people kept ringing her doorbell and asking her questions about me and Maximoff.

My stepsister’s home address in Palo Alto was leaked when I was doxxed.

Maximoff nods. “Then she needs to move houses if she still doesn’t feel safe. I’ll pay for any costs.”

“That’s exactly what I told April.” I raise my brows. “And she started screaming at me about how I don’t have to move out of my house, and it’s not fair since I did this to her.”

His eyes flash hot. “Jesus Christ, you didn’t ask to be doxxed. This isn’t

your fault.”

“No shit,” I say, and I catch him smile-grimacing at that. I almost laugh, and after a short pause, I tell him, “I don’t feel that guilty anymore. Right now she has more protection around her house in Palo fucking Alto than your townhouse in Philly.”

Maximoff nods again, and it’s taking all of my energy not to walk forward and close the gap that separates us.

I feel my lip piercing beneath my tongue. “Still stupidly excited to see me?”

He smiles, his eyes welling. “You have no goddamn idea.”

It overwhelms me, and I move forward.

Maximoff moves forward. Our arms find each other, and our mouths crash together, hungry and starved—I clutch the back of his head, and his arm hooks around my shoulders. Pulling me closer. And closer.

With passion that builds hot tears and spurns all types of heartbreak. I live and breathe inside this emotion. He pins me to the outside of the stall, a sink on our right. My back slams to the wood with a thud.

And we break apart to breathe, keeping our hands on each other. We both look at the door.

Locked.

Maximoff tries to unbuckle my belt with one hand. “We have time to kill.”

I thread his hair with my fingers. “We do,” I agree.

He pauses his mission and lifts his forest-greens to me, commanding kiss me, man. I don’t yet, and he tries to come in for one.

I shift my head out of the way, and then I turn back and kiss him myself.

He groans against my mouth, “Fuck.”

My blood cranks to a swelter.

Maximoff palms the outside of my pants. Fuck, that feels good. He pulls his head back and orders, “Unzip your jacket.”

Okay, Bossy. “Someone loves my fingers,” I say and slowly, slowly unzip my leather bike jacket. He watches my hand, and I use my other to unbutton his jeans.

My palm dives down his pants, his boxer-briefs. I fist his gorgeous cock, and he bucks his hips into me. More than once. More than twice. Fuck—a deep noise is trapped in my throat. And I devour his arousal that narrows his eyes to burning points.

We kiss again, pulled into a rough, ravenous undertow. And I’m always careful of his collarbone. I even look for signs of pain, but he’s so far gone in pleasure.