I didn’t care. I needed to leave immediately, before anyone made another comment about the extremely obvious situation in my pants. I made it out of the tattoo shop through sheer force of will.
I walked through the door, down the street, around the corner, and the moment I was out of sight, I broke into a sprint.
My apartment was one block away. I’d never been more grateful for strategic housing decisions.
I burst through my door, slammed it behind me, and leaned against it, breathing hard. My cock was straining against my jeans, demanding. My entire body was wound tight, the echo of Riley’s pleasure still reverberating through the bond.
She said my name. She thought about me while she touched herself. Shewantedme.
I needed to... I couldn’t... I shouldn’t...
My laptop was on the coffee table. I absolutely shouldn’t.
But I did. I pulled up the security feed from the cameras I’d installed around Riley’s building. Not inside her apartment, I wasn’t that invasive, but the perimeter, the entrances, the street. Just to keep her safe, to make sure Damien wasn’t lurking.
She was fine. The footage showed her apartment building quiet, no threats, no sign of that piece of shit anywhere. Everything was secure.
I rewound until I found the timestamp from about an hour ago, when I felt the bond flare. The camera gave a view of her window, curtains drawn but backlit. I could see shadows moving behind the fabric. Could imagine what she was doing, could remember exactly how it felt through the bond.
My hand was on my cock before I made a conscious decision.
I stroked myself roughly, watching the shadowy movement behind her curtains, remembering the feeling of her pleasure flooding through me. The way her breath caught, how her heart raced. My name on her lips like a prayer.
“Riley,” I groaned, and it came out desperate, broken.
I didn’t last long. Two strokes, three, and I was coming hard, spilling over my fist, her name on my lips like she’d written it on my soul.
Afterward, I lay there in the dark, panting, staring at the ceiling.
I was pathetic. Completely, utterly pathetic. Getting myself off to security footage like some kind of deranged stalker. The men at the tattoo shop were right. This was insane.
But I was also in love with her.
It wasn’t just the mate bond or instinct. I was actually, genuinely, completely in love with this human woman who didn’t know I was a werewolf, didn’t know she was my fated mate, didn’t know I had her name tattooed on my thigh and cameras around her building and a desperate need to be near her that bordered on madness.
I cleaned myself up, changed my clothes, and checked on my new tattoo. The letters were red and slightly swollen, but clear. RILEY. Permanent, forever, just like she was.
I just had to convince her of that somehow.
10
— • —
Riley
I was in the zone.
I’d been writing for six hours straight, barely stopping for coffee or bathroom breaks, completely lost in the world I was creating. The story was flowing like water, words pouring out faster than my fingers could type them, scenes unfolding with a clarity I hadn’t felt in months.
It was a friends-to-lovers romance. My favorite trope. Definitely not because of any recent developments in my personal life, thank you very much.
The heroine was a sarcastic writer with trust issues and a tendency to make questionable decisions regarding tall strangers. She had a ceiling stain she’d named George. She ate cereal over the sink at midnight. She ran a book club about morally gray love interests who would commit murder for you.
Totally fictional. Completely made up. Not autobiographical at all.
The hero was a mysterious blonde man who showed up unexpectedly and turned her world upside down. He had gray eyes, because gray was a perfectly normal eye color and not at all specific to anyone I knew. He was unreasonably tall. The kind of tall that made doorframes nervous. He washed dishes without being asked and brought gifts that were too thoughtful and looked at the heroine like she was the only thing in the room worth seeing.
His name was Cameron, which was completely different from any other name. The fact that it started with the same letter and had the same number of syllables was pure coincidence.
