Fated An Alpha Male Romance - K. Alex Walker Page 0,49

my lap and kissed his forehead while playing in his hair. I’d learned in Colorado that it was a foolproof way to set him to sleep.

“I missed you, baby,” he said, eyes closed. “Today, when I was at the restaurant, I missed you.”

“I missed you too, sweetie,” I replied.

“I told my friends about you.”

“Did you, now?”

“Yep.”

“And what did you tell them about me?”

“That you’re beautiful. And amazing. And awesome.”

I chuckled. “Wow? All of that?”

“And that I’m in love with you.”

Dynamite had nothing on the explosion that blasted in my chest. I was pretty sure that pieces of my heart were now stuck to my rib cage. “Come again?”

“I’m in love with you, Alle,” he repeated. “I love you to Neptune. I would say the moon, but Neptune’s further and Pluto got jacked of its planetary status, which is pretty fucked up if you ask me.”

I laughed and pressed kisses all over his handsome, intoxicated face. But, as I tried for the words to respond to his declaration, they never came. Literally, as I opened my mouth to say “I love you too”…because I, in fact, did love him, my throat seized like I was having an allergic reaction to my own feelings. How could I tell him that I loved him if I didn’t even have the courage to leave Roderick?

“I want to have your babies,” he went on.

“We can talk about that in the morning,” I replied, clearing my throat and thankful he was too far gone to catch my faux pas. “How about you get some sleep?”

“Will you still be here in the morning?”

“I’ll be here. Always. Go to sleep.”

That seemed to satisfy him, and he quieted while I continued to stroke his hair until he fell asleep.

-----

Roderick Q. Hamilton

The person that James had contacted to follow Alexandra had actually been a retired private investigator that owed the older man a favor. Although the investigator never gave me his name, I’d dubbed him “Stubbs” due to his short stature and overall puffiness. His complexion was extremely pale, even more so when you added in his white hair, and he wasn’t dressed in the traditional khaki trench coat with a pipe and detective hat like I’d been expecting. Instead, he wore a washed out baseball T-shirt and faded jeans that had hit their peak in the nineties.

“What have you got for me today on the Ethan and Alexandra story?” I asked, running frustrated fingers through my hair. On top of my campaign, I now had to deal with my girlfriend’s infidelity. It was the very last thing that I would have expected to see coming.

He pulled up the file on his tablet and swiped through dozens of pictures of Alexandra with Dr. Stewart holding hands, gazing into each other’s eyes, kissing, leaning towards each other in deep conversation, and many more. They’d even had the nerve to look extremely happy when they were together. She looked at him in a way that she’d never looked at me, not even when we’d first met.

“Have you found out if they’re sleeping together?” I forced out.

“I haven’t been able to get inside the house,” he answered. “But, I suspect that they are.”

“And why’s that?”

“Their level of intimacy. It just speaks to them sleeping together. But if they have, I can assure you that it hasn’t been in the house you two share.”

That reassurance offered no relief. Although Alexandra and I didn’t have what one would call an “active” sex life, for us to have gone this long without it meant that she had to be sleeping with him and that she’d been enjoying it.

I was not the one for lewd sex. At least, not with my future wife. Wives were there for companionship, to be the mothers of our children, to ensure the succession of our lineage, and to have at our sides when out in public. A bachelor represented an immature man that could not be trusted to commit; marriage dispelled that image. Though I’d never stepped outside of our relationship, mistresses were those deemed for enjoyment. A silent partner of sorts. So, with Alexandra, it was always going to be missionary, chaste, and quick until we got married and I stepped into the world of extramarital sex. That was just how it worked. Even Alexandra’s own father had reinforced that notion. My relationship with her had nothing to do with love.

But it would make no sense for her to step outside of our relationship for sex if this man was