Alpha Kissed #2
What better place to meet your fated mate than an extraordinary candy store?
And what better season than Halloween? Liam is arranging the amazing treats in the window of his gourmet candy shop, Sugar, when a jogger taps on the window. Despite his policy not to let strangers in when he’s alone in the closed store, this stranger is too irresistible to send away.
Edison has had his eye on the hot alpha store owner for months but has finally gathered his courage to approach him. To his relief and delight, the man of his dreams asks him out on a date. Sweet!
But when a little boy who attends the afterschool activities at Edison’s community center falls into desperate need, he is called upon to take him into his home and so a family begins. A foster child who has been so badly harmed brings challenges, and only a very strong, loving alpha would want to take on both an omega and the injured child. An unexpected pregnancy ups the ante.
They have found one another, but are things moving too fast? Can they take care of the children and each other as well as the businesses they are responsible for? Can they make a home?
The Alpha’s Candy-Kissed Omega is a MM non-shifter mpreg with a hot successful alpha, a sexy, caring omega, a little boy who needs them both and an adorable baby. Plus a surprise or two along the way.
Chapter One
Liam Delmonico
October first...an hour before dawn...my wait was finally over. Sure, all the holidays were great and as the owner of Sugar, a boutique candy store, I was able to indulge in my love for them. I got orders for my Mother’s Day long-stemmed triple-chocolate roses from thousands of miles away. Stockings filled with miniature truffles for Christmas. Valentine’s Day...don’t get me started. But Halloween was my personal favorite.
My staff and I had already created trays of everything from teensy, intense dark chocolate bats to white chocolate—not my favorite, but some of our customers loved it—to hand-painted terrifying clowns. We would begin shipping them out later in the week, packed in our special overnight mini-chill chests. It didn’t take much heat to ruin chocolate’s perfection or, horrors, to have it bloom, that whitish film all chocolatiers dread.
While we specialized in chocolate items, we made many other kinds of sweet delights. Candies of all kinds. Everything prepared on site from the highest quality ingredients. We had even surrendered, at special request, for that most pedestrian of treats, a copper kettle setup, right inside the shop, where twice a day Hazel, our fudge-maker supreme, prepared her grandmother’s recipes for old-fashioned creamy squares of mouthwatering awesomeness while customers watched.
As I trundled the cart we’d set up the night before toward the front window, I flicked on the lights in the shop. Outside, the last leaves of autumn skittered along the sidewalk and the sky was just starting to brighten to the east. We’d cleared the display before going home, so I had a blank canvas for my creation.
Trace, Hazel’s husband, a remarkable man who’d not batted an eye when he learned the woman of his dreams was once a star football player named Harry, had as usual come up with the painted elements we required. Although his artwork garnered tens of thousands at auction, he painted backdrops and just about anything we wanted and wouldn’t take a dime in return. He only requested we didn’t let anyone know he was doing it, which made perfect sense.
This year, we had a full haunted house display, six-foot-tall facade and open windows in which our delights could reside. Thus the bats, vampires, witches, ghosts, and other denizens of the night. The moon hanging over it was made entirely of divinity, the spiderwebs, spun sugar, and even the graveyard soil consisted of crumbled midnight-chocolate cookies, one of our few baked items. I stepped back and clicked on the October playlist I’d compiled, a combination of heavy classical music and mostly retro tunes from bands like Oingo Boingo who I felt had the season down to an art. Unable to resist, I did have a few short segments of spooky sounds.
As “Dead Man’s Party” filled the shop, I sang along, arranging my treats and feeling the Halloween spirit fill me. Thus absorbed, and with the inside lights making it hard to see the predawn street outside, I didn’t notice the man staring in until he rapped on the window, making me jump at least two feet in the air.
He leaned closer to the window, pointing at something, and saying words I of course could not hear through thick plate glass. After one particularly weird experience with a nutritionist who wanted to lecture me on how I was responsible for all the ills of the world, calling me a dealer in death, my staff had made me promise not to let strangers in after hours, but this “stranger” was pretty cute.
Although he looked like a guy out for an early morning run, his tight shorts outlined an impressive package, and the grin on his handsome face was knee melting. So...another health nut wanting to tell me the error of my ways, or a guy who exercised to allow the pleasure of a few extra calories into his life? Maybe I could just talk through a crack in the door until I determined who I was dealing with. A lock of hair flopping over his forehead, a weakness of mine, decided it for me, and I moved out of the window toward the door, pointing to it as I did. Twisting the lock, I swung the door open and stuck my head out.
“We’re not open yet.” Cuz, you know, dawn and the closed sign didn’t give that away.
“Oh, I know, and I am sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to tell you how much I loved your display. I run by here all the time, and always think it’s great. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to let the creator of candy greatness know this.”
And the voice matched the face, matched the body. Smooth as molasses and rich as 75% cocoa dark chocolate. A little shiver raced up my spine. “How nice of you. Window dressing is one of my favorite parts of the job, I have to admit.”
“Those little bats are killer. All the detail. And the webs...wow.”
“Want to come in for a minute and get a better look?” Sorry, staff. This guy got me. I opened the door wide.
“Oh, no. You’re busy. I wasn’t trying to finagle my way into chocolate heaven.”
I wasn’t a swooner, but if I had been, I’d have been laid out on the floor. “Get in here. Now.” My inner alpha was taking over, planning dinner dates and dancing, sunset cocktails on the beach.
Luckily, he didn’t think I was a nut giving orders to strangers because he stepped inside and drew a deep breath. “Wow. It smells amazing in here.”
I grabbed a chair from one of the cafe tables and brought it over by my working area. “Doesn’t it? I think that every morning when I come in. Have a seat, and we can talk while I finish up.”
“If you’re sure it’s no trouble?”
“None at all. I have a pot of coffee in the back if you’d like a cup.”
He grinned again and I knew I’d do a lot to keep seeing that. “You’re a lifesaver. I never let myself have mine until after my run, but I think I can call it officially over.” He disappeared into the employees’ only section and returned with a steaming mug of my own mocha java blend. “Can I help you with anything?”
I shrugged. “If you don’t mind, you can hand me things. Once I get to the other side of the window, I have to keep climbing in and out, so that would be great. If you don’t mind.”
“No,” he said shaking his head slowly. “I don’t mind at all.”
Lorelei M. Hart is the cowriting team of USA Today Bestselling Authors Kate Richards and Ever Coming. Friends for years, the duo decided to come together and write one of their favorite guilty pleasures: Mpreg. There is something that just does it for them about smexy men who love each other enough to start a family together in a world where they can do it the old-fashioned way ;).
The Alpha's Candy-Kissed Omega #2
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