If he hadn't been so angry right then, he would have been almost embarrassed by it. Nico was calm, he was controlled, he didn't let himself be run over by his senses or his instincts.
But something about Elise made him go haywire.
As soon as the bedroom door closed, she jerked her hand out of his grip, and he let her go. He could have held on tighter, could have refused to let her back away, but he wasn't a monster, and he refused to let her see him as one.
Elise was rubbing her wrist. "That hurt," she said. "You're twice my size. Maybe have some control next time?"
"You haven't seen me out of control," he responded.
If he let go, if he let his wolf take charge, she would be on the bed right now, legs splayed wide, moaning in pleasure, as he took her again, and again, and again. His cock throbbed, and his teeth felt sharper than normal.
What the fuck was wrong with him?
If this had been someone else, another pack member, or some sort of contractor hired to do a temporary job for the pack, he would want to tear their throat out for putting the alpha at risk.
All he wanted to do toElise'sthroat was pepper it with kisses, lick it, and leave his mark there so everyone could see that she belonged to him.
"I can't do this job if you're not going to trust me," Elise said. Her voice trembled, and her hands were shaking.
Was she afraid of him? His wolf prowled beneath his skin, rejecting the very thought that he might do her harm. She had to know that he wouldn't, that hecouldn't.
But how would she?
"You can do your job when one of us is there," he said. "We have made that clear."
If one of the other betas had found her in that room alone, he couldn't have protected her, not without killing one of them. Would he do it? He wasn't sure, and that alone made the earth under his feet feel unstable.
His first loyalty was supposed to be to the pack, to Cole, not to some human woman he had met two days ago. And yet he feared if it came down to choosing between her and the pack, he couldn’t predict his choice.
Madness.
Elise had pulled away from him, but she hadn't backed up. She was still standing close, and her scent was getting stronger by the moment. There had been something strange about it when he walked into Cole's room, but that might have just been the cloying and annoying scent of sickness that had permeated every surface since they brought him in there.
Cole smelledwrong.
Maybe Mark would understand why, but Mark wasn't there right now. And Elise was forced to rely only on her human senses and her human training with none of the resources and tools a human would normally have.
Elise was looking at him, eyes wide, chest heaving, scent strong, and something within Nico snapped.
He crossed the distance between them in one step and buried his face in her neck, breathing her scent deep into his lungs.
He wrapped his arm around her and rested it at the small of her back and justbreathed. She engulfed him,set his body on fire.
Lilacs. Soap. Something whimsical beneath it. He couldn't identify it, which was strange, because werewolves had a very acute sense of smell.
But that didn't matter. Whatever it was, it was hers. And on top of it was his own scent, that she had been collecting from sleeping in his bed and wearing his clothes and being near him these last two days.
That was the sexiest thing that Nico had ever smelled in his life.
He told himself he was just going to scent her, was going to breathe her in deep and then back off. She was human, she might think it was a hug, if a very intense one. But that was all he was going to allow himself.
Except his lips brushed against her skin, and he heard her let out a little breath.
It wasn't quite a moan, but it could get there. The first kiss was an accident. The second wasn’t. He trailed his lips over her pulse point and down until he tasted the collarbone jutting out of her pajama top. His tongue darted out, and he laved her skin.
Now Elise really did moan. Her fingers clutched his biceps, and she pressed closer to him. That was all the permission he needed. His kisses moved upwards until he drew a line of them along her jaw. But he stopped when he got to the edge of her lips. Something about that felt like crossing a line.
He pulled back, and they stared at each other for several beats. He feared that his eyes were glowing a wolfish yellow, but if they were, she didn't react to it.
