Hunting The Alpha Wolf (Dark Paranormal Romance (Erotic Horror, Erotika)) (2 page)

Trouble was that he was
late, over an hour late, and she had drank half the pint, and the bar staff
kept giving her funny looks.

Sara had driven up from
London in her old, battered Volvo estate that afternoon, and was planning on
finding a quiet corner and sleeping curled up across the boot. Put the backseat
down and there was just enough room in the boot for her to stretch her legs.

Her old sleeping bag,
which had seen better days, would still be more than warm enough to cope with
the winter temperatures, and she had her rucksack to rest her head on. He dad
had always insisted that she should buy the best quality that she could, and
both the rucksack and the sleeping bag had travelled with her across Europe and
across the tracks of Nepal.

The main worry was that
Sara had just enough petrol to get home, and no spare cash.

She hoped the trip
would be worth it.

She hoped that she
could sell the story to cover her rent for the next few weeks.

Sara was a freelance
journalist, freelance meant unemployed. She had never really fitted in with the
corporate environment, and so within a week of landing her job at a major
national newspaper she had left. Well to be honest she'd had to leave.

Telling the editor to
fuck off during a development meeting had not gone down well. “Get your own
fucking coffee,” had actually been what she'd said when he had come in, sat
down and told her to fetch his coffee.

Still she had a sharp
eye for a story, and a good turn of phrase, so she had been able to drag in
enough money over the last 6 months to keep her head above water, but it was
tough.

So here she was in the
sleepy market town in Cheshire, hunting down a story, which she hoped would pay
her rent and food bills for another month.

If not, then there was
always lap dancing. Sara had paid her way through university by working in a
local gentleman’s club. But she'd hoped that she had moved on from that. She
hoped that she could earn a living through her writing, not by being pawed by
middle-aged businessmen, or having to rub her breasts across their faces to
earn that extra tip.

She'd got used to it
after a while, although the first time she had danced for a man it had been a
complete revelation.

Walking into the club
in a flimsy, semi-transparent dress she had bought at a charity shop, seeing
girls gyrating in front of men in suits it had been like walking into Dante's
Inferno.

And what was going on
in some of the private rooms defied description.

Some of the girls would
do almost anything for an extra tip.

She had resolutely
refused to offer any
special
treatment, even though she knew she was
curtailing her earning potential. Still because of the dancing, she had ended
university with no debt, but also with a healthy disrespect for men.

She now saw most men as
objects rather than as the people they were. She knew that even the most loyal
boyfriend would pay a girl to strip for them. They would then go home to their
partners, and never mention it.

This made it hard for
her to build relationships. Foreplay became something she sold, not something
she did for pleasure. Taking her clothes off with a man, relaxing into the
experience, it all ended up being just a bit clumsy.

So, instead she focused
on work.

Trouble was work was
not really that good at the moment, so it was not really something she could
focus on.

So, when a friend of
hers had offered her the chance to write an article for a radical left wing
paper she'd had no choice but to go for it. The paper printed stories which
were anti-government, anti-establishment and anti-corporate. In fact the paper
printed stories which were anti-everything, at least that's what it seemed to
her.

She’d never read it
before her friend had mentioned it, and having read it once, she hoped that she
wouldn’t have to again. Clearly her background, as the daughter of a peer of
the realm, didn’t fit with the papers ethos. So Sara made sure there was no way
the paper, or any of her colleagues could connect her to her family.

Her family, who had
been invited to last year’s royal wedding. Ok they had sat at the back, but
they had been there.

Sara loved her father
deeply and respected him. A strong, confident man he had brought her up alone
after her mother had died in a car accident when she was six.

He had offered to help
her on a number of occasions. But Sara refused to accept money from him, or
capitalize on his status.

She was determined to
stand or fall on her own two feet.

So she had chosen a
university, Sheffield, rather than follow his footsteps to Oxford, and had paid
for it herself. She knew that he would have been scandalized by her lap dancing
career, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

There was no way she
was going crawling back to her father for money, not unless it was the choice
between that and starving.

Even then she would
think twice.

The paper wanted a
story on Foxhunting. They wanted something that they could use to stir people
up against the foxhunting set, who despite the fact that it was now against the
law, had continued to hunt with hounds.

Sara’s friend had an
old friend from school who worked on a farm in Cheshire, and he'd mentioned
that he’d nearly been run over by the hunt a couple of weeks ago. So he’d told
his friend, who'd told their friend who'd told Sara and here she was.

Sitting in a pub in
Nantwich, waiting to meet a farm labourer who she hoped would direct her to the
local hunt.

Waiting for someone who
was late, and as night encroached she felt increasingly that the evening and
the journey had been a waste of time.

She had just about
decided to give up on him. Perhaps she could try the pub across the road, a bit
of boisterous company might not be such a bad thing. Boisterous conversation,
she could enjoy that for an hour or two, as long as no one expected anything
more. Sara could not even remembered the last time she'd had sex, it had to be
over a year.

Still picking up a
bloke tonight would be almost impossible even if she'd wanted to. She couldn't
really invite them back to her place. The backseat of an old Volvo parked in a
council car park just behind the pub was hardly conducive to anything more than
a quick fumble.

And one thing she had
learned from biter experience was that going back to a man’s apartment, who you
didn't know very well, was full of its own risks.

The most memorable
occasion being when a rather good-looking banker she had met had produced a set
of nipple clamps and a short paddle which could only be used for hitting her on
the arse. She knew that the copy of '50 Shades of Grey' on his bedside table
should have given her some clue to his little predilection.

A swift refusal to take
part had led to a rather angry exchange, and ended with her pulling her clothes
back on and leaving through the front door very quickly.

That had been a less
than pleasant journey home, she had felt cheapened by the whole experience, not
that, she realised, she had done anything wrong.

Downing the dregs of
her pint she made to collect her things when the door opened with a gust of
cold air and a man stepped in.

She knew immediately he
was her contact.

Younger than the other
occupants he was also scruffier, wearing jeans which had seen better days and a
shirt which she suspected he had borrowed from his dad.

His dad who was
obviously considerable larger than he was.

He looked around the
room, saw her and smiled. He had a great smile and his whole face lit up when
he did. When he smiled she stopped noticing his scruffy clothes and just looked
at his face, clean, and handsome he was full of the health that comes from
working outdoors most days.

It was the sort of
smile that could charm the knickers off anyone.

His grin was completely
infectious, and she smiled back feeling her own knickers loosen slightly as she
did.

He waved at her and
mimed a drink, she held up her glass, the logo clearly visible to him and he
frowned then smiled at her.

A few minutes later he
arrived at her table carrying two pints of Guinness, set them down and held out
his hand to shake hers.

"Gary," he
said, she reached out and he gripped her hand. His hand was rough, but not
unpleasantly so, it felt scrubbed. He held on for slightly longer than he
should have, realised what he was doing and blushed.

"Sara," she
replied, and grinned at him, glad now that she had waited. She lifted her pint
as he sat opposite her.

“Cheers," she
said, and they raised their glasses.

"Thanks for the
drink," she said, "I've run out of cash and I think the locals are
getting restless."

"Don’t
worry," he smiled, "I think you could sit here all-night with an
empty glass and they wouldn't throw you out. They don’t get many pretty girls
in this bar. You are an attraction in itself."

"Thanks, I
think," she said, both took sips of their beer at the same time, and
laughed.

"Sorry," Gary
said, "I'm not usually this crap with women; it’s been a long day."

"Tell me about
it," she said shrugging; she had not enjoyed the drive from London through
the oncoming snow.

"Well," he
said, "some of the fences were down, and I had to fight my way through the
drifts to get them fixed. Then one of the cows needed her heels scraping, which
is not a good job, and then…" He looked across the table at her, she was
pulling a bemused and sarcastic expression.

"Oh," he
said, laughing. "When you said tell me about it, you didn't mean tell me
about it did you..? Sorry, as I say, I’m not always this crap around
women."

"Am I that
intimidating?" she asked, taking her hat off and brushing her fingers
through her hair, smiling. It was such a deliberate action, such an obvious
flirt, that they both laughed.

"Honestly
yes," he said, "you're really pretty and you seem somehow exotic, if
that's the right word. Well, you're certainly not from around here
anyway."

"Exotic, that’s
the first time I have been called that. I think I like it. So now, really tell
me about yourself."

They continued with the
chitchat. Gary told her he had grown up in the town and had not done
particularly well at school, which was. he explained not unexpected. He was, he
said with a smile, not too bright.

The only route open to
him had been to work in the local industry which was farming. So he'd gone to
agricultural college, the local one, and then got a job on a local farm.

"I've never been
more than 50 miles away from home." He said that his parents were locals
and his brothers and sisters all lived in the town.

"No wonder I seem
so exotic," she said blushing, "with my wild London ways, and fancy
moves."

Gary was particularly
interested in her life in London and despite how much she tried to tell him
what it was really like, that she had no money, and slept on a sofa in her
friends house, he seemed convinced that her life was far more glamorous than
his. Perhaps she reflected, it was. He was also fascinated when she told him
about her backpacking trip across Europe.

"Weren't you
worried?" he asked.

"About what?"

"Well, you know, a
woman on her own just wandering around, weren’t you worried about being
attacked."

"Not really,"
she said, "I stuck to the main towns and travelled on trains mostly. The
only time I ever worried was in Italy. I was in a small-town, Bayonne I think
it was called and one of the locals became a bit of a pest. He approached me in
a bar one night while I was just sitting watching the world go by. We talked
for a while, I gave him the brush off and then he left. Or so I thought."

"What happened
next?"

"He followed me
back to the hotel I was staying at. When I got up in the morning he was sitting
in the restaurant. He just kept starring at me." Sara paused and took a
long drink from her pint, she could develop a taste for Guinness, given enough
time.

"So, what did you
do?"

"I went over to
his table, sat down and ordered coffee. I'm not sure what he thought was going
on, probably thought his luck was in. I ordered a coffee and politely explained
to him in fluent Italian that unless he left me alone I would take him back to
my room and cut his fucking balls off."

Gary laughed, drawing
looks from the bar huddled locals.

"Then, when the
coffee arrived I accidentally, very accidentally spilt the entire cupful into
his lap and left."

"Bastard!"
Gary exclaimed.

"Yep,  it was a
very hot cup of coffee."

"Not to messed
with are you?" he said.

Sara smiled and swept
her hair over her ears again, "Not without an invite no," she said.