Punished By The Alphas Read Online Free PDF Page A

imagine how a kid like me would struggle to claw her way out of Utah and as far away as she could go.
     
    It didn’t help that I had always been curvy. The boys growing up around me had always overlooked me for the thinner, skinnier girls. I knew I could throw down with the best of them, but as I grew up neglected by male attention, dressing more and more like a slut for them…I realized the truth – they didn’t appreciate me. Even I barely appreciated me. I was twice the woman any of them were, but that didn’t convey well. I was eighteen before I lost my virginity, and the guy was drunk, making it less fulfilling than it was already doomed to be.
     
    But life has a way of making you appreciate the things you thought you hated, and isn't afraid to batter you over the head with them if you don't get the hint. I had tried so hard to get out of that Utah town, working my skin to the bone for a major record label until they decided to branch out. Unfortunately, they needed a presence in the west, and Utah offered the best tax breaks...so, back off to Utah I was shipped.
     
    It wasn't all awful though. I was still young, in my mid-twenties with something to prove. Shopping around online for an apartment, I happened across this gorgeous little home by the edge of the woods in a small forest town called Checker’s Grove. Doing the math, I realized that the mortgage would be about what I'd spend for a two bedroom apartment around there. After browsing all the pictures and the interior digital tour one last time (okay, a bunch of times), I started making phone calls. Combined with my high credit score and some first-time home buyer tax breaks, I was just able to scrap together enough money to throw a half-decent offer at the middle-aged couple who owned it.
     
    I flew in to meet them and tour the actual home. After thirty minutes with them, they accepted my offer on the spot. If I’d known what I was getting myself into, I might have just said “screw it” and found another, lesser-paying job. But little woodsy towns have their secrets sometimes, and I was about to learn that the hard, unprotected way…
     
    *              *              *              *
     
    After the difficult part – driving a moving truck halfway across the country without wanting to kill somebody – it only took me a miserable four-day weekend to get the house put together. A few towns over I had access to the Interstate, where I could hit the road and order the important stuff, like actual furniture. I was lucky enough to find some good deals late on a Thursday, ready to have them shipped out that Saturday morning.
     
    Those first two nights were just a few books, an uncomfortable air mattress, and me; after the bed came in and I got everything assembled and in the right place, it was on to organizing the rest of my new home. The house was an older property — lots of beautiful crown molding, hardwood floors, the works. I wasn’t interested in going too gung-ho on the whole modernization front, so I intended to leave it pretty much as-is.
     
    We like to keep it close to nature, the older couple had said. With the woods so close, and how old the house is…it’s something from an older era.
     
    It did certainly seem that way, although I had no idea what they really meant by “close to nature.”
     
    Taking a break for a short while, I sat in a patio chair on the back deck and gazed off into the woods. My personal little paradise came with a thick patch of woods that stretched along the edge of the neighborhood. In the distance loomed one of several mountains, and I wondered if I would ever dare to make my way towards it.
     
    Sipping from my drink and reading a good romance novel, I didn't notice my exhaustion creep up on me. It slowly tugged at my eyelids until I droopily plunked the book on the glass-top end table beside me. The cool air was just warm enough to be comfortable, with the lightest