Ransom (The Unchained Omegaverse #1) - Callie Rhodes Page 0,33

that she wasn't ogling him.

Was it her fault he was just so damn ogle-able, better even than Mr. February in the local fire station's fundraiser calendar? She already knew that Ransom was huge and strong, but under his clothes had been hidden a body worthy of a sculptor, with a broad, defined chest and abs like a washboard and biceps bigger than her waist. He made every other man she'd seen naked seem like a boy, a weakling…a beta.

As she watched, Ransom plunged into the water and swam lazily across the pool and back, then flipped onto his back and floated, the sun warming his face. Her eyes were drawn to his cock, which even at rest, even after being submerged in freezing water, was mouthwateringly enormous.

Then he dove again as gracefully as a heron. Gretchen waited for him to pop up a few yards away…and waited…and waited until she started to panic. Had he gotten entangled in the weeds at the bottom of the pool? Hit his head on a rock?

And if he had, what the hell was she supposed to do about it? It wasn't like she could jump in and save him. Gretchen knew how to swim, but even if she could find him, there was no way she could drag someone Ransom's size to the edge.

Come up, come up, come up. The prayer repeated over and over in her mind. But as seconds turned into a full minute, she started to panic. Goddamn it, he was in trouble and needed her help.

Gretchen skirted the pond, crashing through the cattails in her panic when suddenly something swung out from an overhanging tree bough in front of her. Ransom dropped lightly to his feet, dripping wet and grinning.

"Looking for someone?"

Gretchen had no idea how the alpha had managed to get to shore and circle back through the forest without her noticing, but she did her best to pretend he hadn't just about given her a heart attack.

"Oh hey, Ransom," she said in a bored tone. "Fancy running into you. I didn't know you were out here."

His grin only widened. "No? Must have been someone else I heard sneaking around. But since you're here, why don't you join me for a bath? Come on in—the water's fine."

Chapter Ten

Gretchen didn't even realize that she was backing away until she tripped over a stone and landed on her ass, adding a few more bruises to her collection. It hurt, but she barely noticed. Every ounce of her attention was focused solely on the overwhelming presence of the huge, vital, gorgeous—not to mention naked—alpha towering above her.

She made sure to keep her gaze glued to his, absolutely refusing to let her eyes drift to other…attention-grabbing parts of his anatomy. Unfortunately, his cock was far too prominent to be ignored, and no matter how hard she stared at his face, it still dominated her peripheral vision.

To Ransom's credit, he offered his hand to help her up without commenting on her discomfiture. She wanted to accept his help but was far too afraid of knocking intimately against him in the process.

"Here," she stammered, pulling the T-shirt off and tossing it up at him. "You need to put this on. There could be…people. You know, watching us."

Ransom laughed. "The people I'm worried about aren't going to be put off by catching a peek of my bare ass, woman. Trust me, if they were close enough to get a good look at me, we'd have a whole different set of problems."

She didn't want to think about the soldiers chasing them. It was still early, and she had enough problems to deal with.

Well, only one at the moment, but it was big enough to crowd out all the others.

When that predatory look had returned to his eyes—the one that said he could tell exactly what she was thinking about—Gretchen decided to ignore his hand and pull herself up off the ground.

"Why do you insist on calling me 'woman'?" She asked, desperate to change the conversation. "You know my name, right?"

"Yeah," He held the T-shirt balled up loosely in his hand, covering just enough of his anatomy to make it seem like he was trying…but Gretchen knew that if she let her gaze drop, she'd still get an eyeful. "I call you that because it's what you are. You're a woman, and I'm a man."

His voice was thick and heady and made Gretchen's knees go weak. Why was he talking that way? He had to know the effect