Menace stood directly behind me, his hands braced on either side of my shoulders. I could feel his breath on the back of my neck, could taste the salt of his skin in the air. The energy between us was so thick it might have been visible; I felt his thigh pressed against mine, the minute tremor in his arms as he held himself rigid. My own hands balled at my sides, desperate to reach back and anchor myself in the reality of his touch.
We rode in silence for three floors. The numbers glowed above the door, ticking upward with glacial slowness.
Juliet glanced over, her lips twitching. She nudged Bronc with her hip. “Bet you five bucks they don’t make it to the apartment,” she whispered.
Bronc didn’t turn around. “That’s a sucker’s bet.”
The tension in the elevator was less air, more storm. Each floor intensified the charge, each lurch of the machinery a challenge to the fraying leash of control. Menace’s fingers tapped a nervous rhythm against my shoulders, then stopped. His left hand slid to the curve of my waist, fingertips barely grazing the fabric, and I nearly gasped at the heat of it.
“Easy,” he muttered, not for me but for himself.
My wolf wanted to snarl, to roll over and bare my throat. I swallowed the urge and instead leaned into him, just enough to feel the pulse at his wrist. He stifled a groan. Bronc, sensing the escalation, took a deliberate step forward and mashed the button for our floor twice.
The elevator shuddered, then creaked to a stop. The doors opened to a carpeted hallway, lit with muted wall sconces. Menace moved first, gripping my hand and tugging me after him. I followed, heartbeat in my throat, vision tunneling to the door at theend of the corridor. Bronc and Juliet trailed behind, exchanging a look that was part playful, part their own lust for each other.
“Don’t break anything valuable,” Juliet called, her voice sing-song. “We’re on the Council’s dime, so aim for the drywall.”
Menace didn’t answer. He moved in long, predatory strides, never letting go of my hand. I had to half-jog to keep up.
We reached the door. Menace fumbled the key card once, then slammed it into the slot. The light turned green. He shoved the door open with enough force that it ricocheted off the wall.
We stumbled inside. The door snapped shut behind us, cutting off the laughter of Bronc and Juliet, the hum of the hallway, the last fragile membrane separating us from the thing we had become.
Menace pressed me back against the closed door, both hands flat to either side of my head, his chest crushing mine in a cage of bone and heat. He didn’t kiss me, not right away. He just stared, eyes wolf-yellow and wild, his lips parted as if he was weighing the exact moment to lose control.
“You’re sure?” he whispered, the word ragged.
“Always,” I breathed.
The dam broke. His mouth crashed into mine, all tongue and teeth and bruising want. His hands found my wrists, pinning them above my head. I felt the scrape of his stubble, the cut of his breath, the way he shivered, as if barely holding himself together. My own body answered in kind—hips grinding, mouth biting back, a raw noise in my throat that could have been a sob or a battle cry.
He pulled away just long enough to look at me, his pupils blown wide, his wolf so close to the surface it hurt to look at him.
There was no ceremony to it. No pause for candles or a practiced hand at my waist, no gentle removal of a shirt or a playful tug at a zipper. Just hands everywhere, tearing, shoving, pressing me so hard to the door the knob left a bruise above my hipbone. He peeled my shirt off in a single rip, the sound obscenein the quiet, and I gasped as the cold air bit my skin. His mouth crushed mine—iron and blood, a tang of something wild—and I bit him back, tasting the salt of his neck as he moved down, down, down. My bra was gone before I felt his hands on my back. He didn’t unclasp it, just hooked his thumbs under the cups and yanked it off, leaving red lines on my shoulders.
Menace kissed the line of my collarbone, open-mouthed, his tongue painting heat wherever it landed. His hands were everywhere, greedy, never still; one bruised my breast while the other locked my wrist to the wood above my head. He pressed a thigh between my legs, forcing me to ride it, and I felt him, hard and insistent, through the wool of his slacks.
I clawed at his shirt, desperate for skin, and found the buttons gave way under the force of my hands. I pushed it off his shoulders, running nails over the old scars and the new—each one a litany of pain and memory, each one mapped and memorized. I bit the tendon at his neck, left a mark, felt the growl in his chest echo into mine.
“Fuck,” he breathed, voice gutted and shaking. “Missed you so goddamn much.”
His fingers were rough, impatient, as he dragged my panties down my thighs. He knelt, nose pressed to the inside of my leg, inhaled deep as if the scent of me was the only air that mattered.
“Could eat you all night and all day.”
He licked a line from my knee to my cunt and bit down on the inside of my thigh, hard enough to make me yelp.
“Want you screaming,” he said. “Want them all to know what a good girl you are for me when I eat you out. Only me. Only my tongue fucks you like this. Only I eat your pussy like this.”
“Don’t stop,” I told him, and he didn’t.
He tongued me, savage and wild, like he was starving and only my pussy could feed him. Nothing delicate or gentle about it. His stubble scraped me raw. He worked two fingers inside, curling them just so, and I lostmy footing, knees buckling. He caught me, slung me over his shoulder, and carried me to the bed. The world spun; I laughed, dizzy and high on the violence of it.
He tossed me down, then removed his pants and followed, pinning me to the mattress with his weight. I wrapped my legs around his waist, hooked my ankles at the small of his back, and dug my heels into his ass until I felt his cock throb against me. He was inside me in a single thrust—no warning, no hesitation. The breath punched out of my lungs, replaced by a noise I didn’t know I could make. He set a rhythm, brutal and perfect, hips slamming into me over and over. The headboard crashed against the wall, a war drum to the neighbors.
He grabbed both my wrists and pinned them above my head, fingers locked tight around mine. He pressed our hands into the mattress so hard it burned, so hard I thought I’d bruise. His mouth never left my skin—biting, sucking, marking me as his. The mate mark on my neck was a live wire, heat radiating from it, every thrust pushing me closer to a cliff I’d never known existed.
“Say it,” he growled, voice ragged.
