“No. I’m not going to kill you. It’s going to be okay.”
He shook his head. “You tried to kill me,” he said more clearly.
She sighed. “No. I did what I needed to do to start your recovery. I didn’t want to hurt you. We were supposed to do that gently, from a relaxed, seated position. In an ideal world, you would have let me in. But you forced my hand when you threatened me.”
Jason laid his head back on the side of the tub. “You could have just asked me to stop.”
“I did.”
He tried to think back, but all he remembered was the wolf, the overwhelming feeling of wanting her. Everything else was a blur, flashes and random images he could barely associate with the woman in front of him. He raised his wet hands to his face.
“I forgive you,” Selene said. “Don’t waste a second of your recovery thinking about it. I knew what I was getting myself into.”
He snorted, rolling his head to the side to give her a pointed glare. “Funny, it seems I didn’t.”
“As long as you resist treatment, everything we do together is going to feel like a fight, and you’re the one who will wear the bruises,” she said firmly.
With his eyes tightly closed, Jason asked, “Did you find what you needed? Or did you almost kill me for nothing?”
Selene sat cross-legged on the bathroom floor. “I want to talk about Professor Matthews.”
The water splashed as Jason opened his eyes and unsuccessfully tried to sit up. “That’s what you decided to dig out of my head? Jill Matthews?”
“She was your trigger. You keep her in the darkest corner of your mind.”
He sighed. “Fitting, I guess. If there was one thing Jill had in spades, it was darkness.”
“I watched her take advantage of you. It was obvious you didn’t want to be there, but she mentioned you… signed up for something.”
He leaned his head back again. He remembered, but it wasn’t something he liked to talk about. And it had absolutely nothing to do with his vice.
Selene sighed. “She said something that stood out to me. ‘We’re just two people—’”
“‘Taking solace from an unforgiving world in the safety of each other’s arms.’ I forgot that was something Jill used to say.”
“I think it’s significant.”
“It was a long time ago, long before my vice was a problem.”
Selene said nothing, the silence growing weighted between them.
“You won’t believe me when I tell you this, but what happened with Matthews started with…” It looked like he was about to make theJsound, but he didn’t speak her name.
“Jessica?”
He nodded. “She was also a grad student at the same university. I met her at a bar before I realized she was the daughter of the Crescent Star pack alpha. We’d met before, but I didn’t remember. Anyway, it turned out she was a TA for one of my classes. Just a weird coincidence.” He rubbed his chest. “The beginnings of the mating bond hit us both immediately, but I hadn’t claimed her yet. It was too early. We were too young to fully understand what was happening between us. We didn’t reject the bond, just hadn’t completed it. A few days after we’d met, we were in an office Jessica used for meeting with students when we, uh, got carried away. Professor Matthews walked in on us, Jessica in a compromising position on the desk.
“When Jessica spoke with her, Jill acted like she understood and there would be no repercussions. But then she spoke with me. She said she’d have Jessica fired, unless I agreed.”
“You agreed to give her what she wanted in exchange for her silence,” Selene whispered.
Jason nodded slowly. “It was a sophisticated trap she’d set for me. At first she wanted only a kiss for her silence. What was one kiss in exchange for Jessica’s career? But she’d secretly recorded us. Then she threatened to show Jessica if I didn’t take things further. It progressed so fast. Goddess, I hated her.”
“So that’s what started it.”
“No.” Jason shook his head. “I was a normal werewolf who enjoyed sex. I didn’t suffer from a wolf’s vice until…”
“Until that day. I saw you in her office. Silas was trying to call you.”
