She could do whatever she wanted to me.
She was… perfect. I’d never seen beauty like hers down here.
An old fear shuddered to life, one that stirred every time I felt the feral part of me grow.
One weekend last year, I’d gone feral—a frequent occurrence for me—but when I woke up from it, I hadn’t remembered my pack.
Not Phantom. Not Sin. Not Vandle.
I remember their shock. I remember how, at the time, it hadn’t meant anything to me, because their faces were new.
Everything before that point, I’d had to be told.
The fear I carried now was from the relationship I’d built with them since.
A deep, visceral unease that everything I saw, or felt, or said—it would one day be gone. It would mean nothing, and I’d leave them again.
They hadn’t known, when we packed up, that I was broken like this, and I always wondered—if they had, would they have found another alpha?
It was a constant fear I carried, but now, staring at this goddess, I understood it was nothing compared to what it could be.
Her palm pressed against my chest, ripping me from my spiral, and I felt that shock of lust from how touch starved she was.
All those fears dissolved as her breathing hitched, her pupils dilating as she drank in every ridge with her eyes.
Then, completely instinctively, she shifted forward and next thing I knew, she was dragging her soft tongue right up my abs.
As if snapping into consciousness halfway through, she drew away in an instant, back straight, eyes wide.
She looked shocked. “I don’t know why I did that.”
I groaned, fighting every instinct right down to the marrow of my bones, to stop myself from pinning her up against the wall and claiming her.
What kind of cruel test was this?
Maybe this was how they found out if we were fit to leave in ten days.
I cupped her cheek, sinking into a want—a need—the likes of which I’d never felt before. Maybe… maybe I didn’t have to be afraid.
She wasn’t going to let me go anywhere.
Iknewit—don’t know how I knew it, but I did.
She wasn’t a burden like Phantom was worried about.
Shewas the answer.
So very slowly, I helped her from the shower and handed her a towel to dry herself off. I even tried not to look when she shimmied off her soaking top and undergarments from beneath it. I failed. But Ididtry.
Unfortunately, she expertly held the towel in place with her teeth while she worked, and I didn’t get a single chance to glimpse anything naughty.
It didn’t take me long to finish my own shower, and when I had, I grabbed my towel, heading into the next room, rooting about in the drawer to grab another pair of sweats and a fresh, dry shirt for her. That was when I caught the faintest trace of something in the air that was… different.
I frowned, clumsily tugging the sweats on around the towel (so as not to offend her), and looking back at the doorway where she was standing, clutching her towel to her chest.
As fresh as the shower she’d just stepped from, was the trace of velvet rose and cocoa.
I blinked, taking another breath and letting it saturate my lungs.
