“I mean, you help a girl out, you drain yourself dry, you handfeed her in bed, and what?” He scoffed, pushed upright, and kicked my office door closed behind him before stalking into my personal space like he owned it. His clean, masculine scent hit me next, conjuring images of the way he’d rutted inside me and growled as he’d come. I ignored my pounding heart. “She takes off like it meant nothing.”
I took a deep inhale and licked my lips, preparing myself to be strong.
I have to be strong.
We can’t do this.
I can’t do this.
“That’s because it did.” I turned to face him and tilted my chin up to look him in the eyes. “It was the heat, right? Just instinct. Science. Biology.”
His gaze hardened, and a little muscle in the back of his jaw twitched.
“I’m sure I’ll bleed in a few days, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m not.” He reached up to brush a stray curl behind my ear, and my entire body reacted to the ghost of his fingertips on my cheek. I shivered and clenched my thighs together to squelch the pressure building there at the memory of how tender his touch could be.
“Oh, so you’re ready to give up your wild nights for a screaming infant?” I rolled my eyes and shook my head.
He grabbed my cheek to stop me, forcing me to look at him again.
“What are you doing in the infirmary?” His deep tone demanded an answer, and the wolf inside me perked her ears up, both intrigued and threatened by the reprimand.
“Working,” I said, trying to wrench my head out of his grasp.
He slid his grip to cup my jaw, his thumb on one side, his fingers on the other, his hold tight enough to mean business without hurting me. He leaned on my desk with a hand just in front of me.
“You just went through a three-day heat,” he said. “You need to rest.”
“I need to sign off on these charts.” I furrowed my brows. Why was he acting like this? The surge of magic was over, long since dissipated. He shouldn’t be in the throes of his baser impulses anymore. He had no reason to be in my office, barking commands.
“See, this is your problem,” he said. “You’re too busy taking care of anyone else to realize when you need something.”
I balked and curled my fingers into fists, the judgment made even more insulting because it was true.
“I’m fine,” I snapped. “I’ve been fine for thirty years. I don’t need you?—”
“What you need is someone to tell you when you’re being a stubborn brat,” he said.
Brat?
I sputtered for a response. No one had ever talked to me like this, and I didn’t know if it was the last seventy-two hours or the sheer audacity that gave him this perceived permission. He took advantage of my shock by filling the silence with more debauched commentary.
“I ought to bend you over this desk and spank you for every minute you spent in this God-forsaken space rather than taking care of yourself.”
The mental image made me freeze: his hand at the back of my neck, my trousers around my ankles, my bare ass in the air, his palm landing hard on my fleshy skin, the red imprints left behind, the way I’d drip for him.
My legs squeezed together on their own, and a soft moan squeaked out of my throat before I could swallow it. The earthy, feminine aroma of my arousal wafted up between us, and I shuddered, knowing he would smell it.
He twisted his lips into that wicked grin that had always made my knees weak.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” He drew in a long, slow inhale through his nose. “You naughty little wolf.”
“Fen—” I’d meant to sound chastising, perhaps get him to back off, but it came out like a plea, and I reached between us to wrap my fingers in his shirt, tightening the fabric hard enough to pull him closer.
Never had my mind, my body, and my wolf been in more disagreement about who and what he was. Logically, I knew I was just a fling to him, just another notch on his bedpost, and once he got bored, he’d leave me in the dust like all the other people before me. But my body rebelled. It remembered how good he’d made me feel, how warm and safe he’d kept me in my most fragile state. And my wolf, she howled at his dominance. There was no one else in the pack capable of saying such filthy words and soliciting this reaction.
“Oh, I know, little wolf.” He leaned down to drag his nose across my forehead. This close to his neck, the delicious notes of cinnamon and aroused male and territorial wolf slid through my airways and into my lungs. I shook harder, unable to hide his effect on me. I wanted what he described. I wanted him to do those recklessly decadent things to me, and more, I didn’t care about the consequences.
