Moonlight warmed Nora’s skin as she padded barefoot and naked across the wooden planks of her porch. She retrieved her spare key from its hidden spot behind the faux shutter, turned it in the lock, then pushed the door open.
Her wolf had needed that solitary run through the woods. She felt calmer, more centered, and more human. The latter was odd considering she had never been human in her life, but she imagined that was what it felt like not to have a beast trying to claw its way out of your pores.
She swiped a too-large T-shirt from the chest she kept by the door. Her home was at the edge of the woods, and she kept spare clothes for any pack mate who might need them. Usually, those pack mates were twice her size. Thus the oversized shirt. She shook out some of the wrinkles, then started to slip it over her head.
“Do not bother.”
She spun around in time to see Jared step from the living room’s shadowed corner.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
He stepped closer, and then she sensed him. Smelled him. She should have known her home had an invader before she ever crossed the threshold.
“You are riveting,” Jared said.
“You can’t be here. Someone might stop by.”
He took the T-shirt from her hands. “I will sense any wolf who nears.”
“Like I sensed you?” She wanted to be angry. She wanted to throttle him for trespassing. But he palmed the curve of her hip, and her body decided it wanted to do something else entirely. “You are an idiot.”
“I want you.”
“You won’t want me when you have a stake in your heart. You have to go.” She removed his hand from her waist.
“If that is what you wish.” Somehow, he’d switched who was holding whose hand. Their fingers were intertwined now. He brought her closer, and his scent, a mix of cedar with undertones of earth and caverns, wrapped around her.
“This is a bad idea,” she said.
“Yes.” He kissed her throat.
“Do you have a death wish?”
The hand skating up her shoulder paused. He met her gaze. “If you ask me to leave, I will.”
That was the problem. She didn’t want him to leave. She’d run hard with the pack, ran until the gibbous moon no longer caused her to burn with need, but one touch from Jared, one steady look, and the fire returned.
She undressed him, button by button, until he was as bare as she. Then she pushed him to the floor and straddled him.
Later, she did the same in the kitchen, then the game room. Then he took her on the dining room table. It should have ended then. It should have been enough, but when they returned to the living room and she retrieved his clothes, he didn’t accept them.
“You really should—”
“There are still two hours before dawn.”
Those words inflamed her again. They must have singed her mind because Jared pressed her down onto the desk in her study. A stack of papers scattered across the floor, and when he entered her again, her elbow hit the mouse, lighting up the computer screen.
The way he filled her, the slick, delicious friction, was just as exquisite as the first and second and third times. She didn’t give a damn how the screen’s glow lit her breasts. She just wanted more, more of this vampire who should have been her enemy.
The vampire who was her enemy. Shit.
She remembered the email from DefenSec she’d left open on the desktop. She hit the power button on the monitor, delving the room into shadows again. Jared paused his sweet assault of her body, holding her tight, unmoving as if in punishment for her distraction.
She grabbed the back of his head and forced his mouth to hers.
They didn’t remain in the study. She took him upstairs, took him to her bedroom, then to her bed, a place she’d never invited any of her lovers.
But Jared wasn’t a lover. He wasn’t a longtime commitment. He was no commitment at all.
