“You don’t celebrate then?”
His tone was nonchalant, but Vanessa sensed the loaded judgment in his words. She could tell he had already mentally reached his verdict and found her lacking. Lupercalia was an outdated holiday, her parents had always posited, and an adult one at that. As a child, her family had a special dinner and not much else. The first actual party she’d attended was at University, and it seemed little more than an excuse for the frat brothers to score with as many girls as they could in an evening, hardly an advertisement for werewolf pride and inclusivity.
“Well, so much for track records and defendants and all that bluster about community.”
The smile he cast in her direction made every muscle in her body clench, and she tightened her grip on her phone to keep from throwing it in the direction of his perfect teeth. He was at the other end of the table, and she wondered if her almond-shaped manicure would be sharp enough to gouge out his eyes were she to vault herself like a ninja at him.Next time get the stilettos. Harder to type but has more benefits.
“But I suppose I have to give you credit — you weren’t terrible today, rabbit.”
She’d been there a year at that point. It should have been embarrassing, the way they’d made her start from the bottom, truly as little more than an office aide. The endless litany of tasks were things that would typically fall under the purview of a paralegal, some more befitting an unpaid intern. If there was grunt work to be done, Vanessa found it on her desk. She’d undertaken it without complaint, knowing the ladder only went up, and if she didn’t make these bones on the bottom in front of these new firm owners, she would never be given access to the first rung.
Despite his vocal presence at her interview, she’d seen very little of the imperious, dark-haired partner. It seemed he was constantly in court, coming and going with a confident sneer or holed up in his executive suite office, with an endless team of researchers, junior associates, and paralegals working round-the-clock on his cases. Even though he’d made sure to knock her down a few pegs that very first day, Vanessa was certain Grayson Hemming was actually quite unaware of her existence.
Until the day that he was.
It had been a day like any other. She’d been coming out of a conference room, surrounded by a throng of people, carrying a stack of binder-clipped documents. He had been on the other side of the hallway, stopping abruptly in the middle of the corridor and nearly causing a pile-up of bodies in his wake. When his eyes locked on hers, she felt the air leave her lungs.
The smell of him was thick and impenetrable and clouded her brain, making the wide-open corridor seem like a tight box inhabited by no one but them. His head cocked slightly, and she felt the weight of his eyes slide down her body to the tips of her toes and up again, pinning her there like an insect under glass. She jolted when she’d realized she was the only one left still standing there gaping, that they werebothstanding there staring at each other like idiots, and had forced her feet to turn away from him, beelining to a bathroom to splash cold water in her face and get control over her breathing, trying not to notice the way her heartbeat seemed to thump in the space between her thighs.
Since that day, she’d felt his eyes on her constantly. She had never assisted on one of his cases and had never been given a reason to venture up to the executive floor, but wherever she was in the building, it seemed as if he found a reason to be there as well, however briefly.
Vanessa told herself that the haircut she’d splurged on was necessary for looking professional in the courtroom, even if it did make her dark hair seem fuller and flippier, and that the several new dresses she purchased were similarly to look polished and capable for her clients . . . and not that the body-skimming shapes and designer labels were for the benefit of her daily audience of one. The weight of his eyes would sink into her back, pressing down her spine, slipping over her legs like black satin. He was an asshole, a demanding, demeaning son of a bitch, but she had a very hard time pretending to herself that she didn’t like the presence of his eyes finding her throughout the day, pressing to her like a kiss before he vanished.
The unfortunate side effect of being fully in his orbit of awareness was putting up with him. This was the first case of his upon which she’d been called to assist, which meant armloads of discovery documents dumped on her desk at regular intervals and a non-stop stream of highlighters from the supply closet, more late nights than she had ever worked in her life, and a continuous email chain from him demanding more, more, more. More work, more research, accomplished faster, with the subtle insinuation that if she couldn’t keep up, she could see her way to the door. She had perfected the art of vomiting in a perfect stream into the toilet bowl and had invested in a giant case of breath strips that dissolved under tongue, plausible deniability that she ever let the stress of the non-stop workload, going to federal court, or his non-stop barrage of insults, demands, and threats get to her.
Vanessa pursed her lips, huffing in offense at his words, hoping it disguised the giddiness she felt over the backhanded praise. The attraction she felt towards her arrogant, demanding boss was mutually returned; she was sure of it, but as of yet, nothing had happened, which was for the best, she reminded herself firmly. A year, she reminded herself, crossing her ankles demurely, feeling the slow drag of his eyes, meaning she should have been well over her crush. If a crush were all it was.
“He’s a fuck boy,” her coworker had laughed in the bathroom mirror, weeks earlier, leaning forward until her breath fogged the glass as she examined her mascara. “A total man whore. I’ve heard he has a new girlfriend every other week, but none of them stick. There has to be a reason.”
Vanessa had rolled her eyes, snorting at the other woman’s words. “The reason is that he’s a fucking asshole,” she answered succinctly. “That’s not hard to figure out at all. A cocky, egotistical asshole. But he gets away with it because he’s hot and he probably has a big dick. Besides, it’s not fair to call someone that looks likethata boy, whether he fucks around or not.”
Every bit of it was true. He was arrogant and sharp, onerous and demanding and amegafucking asshole . . . and all of those things, combined with his flashing eyes and steely smiles, were apparently her Achilles’ heel. It was humiliating to contemplate.
Her original desk had been far away from his office, but now she had been moved up several floors, and there were some afternoons Vanessa was positive she could smell him through the vents. The scent of his wolf seemed to send curling, black tendrils beneath her desk, licking up her legs and tickling her clit every time he was in the vicinity, and now that she had been given a chance to do work on one of the more prominent cases, it was ten times worse. She despaired over what might happen if she were ever called to sit behind him in court the week of the moon, with a shallow heat simmering in her veins.Your honor, I’m not on his lap because of the case; it’s just that I need to cock warm him until the change, or I’ll go crazy. Surely the multi-species disabilities act covers that.
In retaliation, she preferred to fill her fantasies of him with scenarios of total control —hercontrol. Every time a file was sent back to her because he wanted the same findings reannotated in a different color, she tried to imagine what he would look like stripped naked and bound in latex, strapped to one of those German torture porn tables, shiny black encasing his solid pectorals and heavy arms, whimpering while she edged his cock. When he made some cutting comment about her lack of beneficial experience, she wondered if he would still be as bossy and sharp with the spike of her heel pressing into the seam of his scrotum, which she imagined to be fat and full, for anyone with as much arrogance as he possessed would indeed be testing the strength of his fly every waking moment. Her favorite daydream involved watching his arrogant expression fade, aloofness replaced with panic when his airway constricted, suffocating slowly as she rode his perfectly chiseled face until he was purple and unconscious.
It was for the best that she’d not done something foolish to act on her attraction, and even better that he’d not either. She didn’t need to be embroiled in some HR scandal that would follow her for the rest of her career. Her wolf didn’t quite understand that, though, and she whined every month when the full moon neared, certain she could hear the pulsing in his balls and taste the heft of his cock on the air. All of her control fantasies fell away, and she could think of nothing other than the way he would dominate her in bed and fill her with his knot, the way he dominated opposing counsel in the courtroom — cooly confident, always in control. She’d always had a competency kink, and he set it on fire.
“I grew up in a human neighborhood, actually, so there wasn’t much space for celebrating the holidays,” she explained, unsure why she was doing so, knowing he would likely have something shitty to say in response. Instead, his brow softened, almost imperceptibly.
“Were you—”
“No,” she answered quickly, already knowing he was going to ask if they had been eclipsed, werewolves hidden amongst humans, and she shook her head with her own tight smile. “I was raised to be proud of what I am. Proud . . . but quiet. You know how it is.” She wasn’t sure that he did, actually, but his eyes sparkled as she went on. “And besides, the few parties I went to at school left much to be desired.”
“Well, I suppose you’re going to need to get on the guest list for anactualcelebration, in that case,” he quipped lightly. “We need to get you caught up. You don’t need to be quiet anymore, rabbit.”
She wondered how quiethewas, if he moaned when he came or if he was stoic and silent, face turning red as his cock spurted, vocalizing nothing.
“We may actually manage to turn you into a civil litigator yet.”
“Five times,” she exclaimed indignantly, throwing her hands up, the sight of that dimple appearing beside his perfect smile making her stomach swoop. “I’ve now gone to trial five times more than your three most senior litigators combined. I think we’ve dispensed with the ‘yet’ part of that. And why a rabbit?”
It was meant to be an insult, surely; an indictment of her work, appearance, and ability. She knew that was likely true, but the knowledge didn’t detract from the giddy reality that Grayson Hemming had a pet name for her, even if it was meant to cut her down. She’d worked too hard all these months proving herself, had fought tooth and claw for a chance to reach that chair behind him at trial, and now that she was there, Vanessa decided she wasn’t inclined to leave.
“Is that because I’m just so sweet and innocent looking in the courtroom? Men are easily fooled, you know. Did it ever occur to you that maybe that’swhyI’ve been to trial five times more than your best guys?”
His answering chuckle was a low rumble, a dark curl that seemed to slip its way between her thighs with ease, reverberating against the wetness it found. Her breath caught when he rose, moving with the same unhurried confidence he displayed in the courtroom. The pale color of his shirt was blinding next to his lightly tanned skin, the fabric taut, straining as he shrugged his jacket back on. Her lungs tightened, and she realized she was holding her breath as he crossed the room, moving in what she could only describe as a swagger. She wondered if he could smell how drenched she was already, the mere sight of his loosened tie enough to make her wolf writhe, raising her ass and presenting herself willingly.
