And she’d stood up.Turned to face me with her spine straight and her chin raised and my release still dripping down the curve of her back.Refused to break.
It’s not working.
Three words.That was all it had taken to shatter decades of carefully constructed defenses.Three words from a girl half my age who should have been trembling and broken on my floor.
The wolf snarled, pacing faster.He’d been furious with me since I walked away from her door.Since I stood there like a fool, jaw working, tongue thick and useless in my mouth, unable to find words that wouldn’t damn me further.Since I turned away without speaking because speaking would have meant admitting she’d won.
Coward, he spat.She saw you.She stayed.And you ran like a pup with his tail between his legs.
I wasn’t running.I was regrouping.There was a difference.
Is there?
I told him to shut up.He ignored me.
Dawn crept through the curtains, pale gray light that did nothing to warm the cold in my chest.January in the mountains.The world outside was frozen, locked in ice, but the chill I felt had nothing to do with temperature.
Her scent clung to my sheets, to my skin, to the very air I breathed.Sweet and soft and innocent.Except it wasn’t innocent anymore.Now it was blended with something darker, something richer.My scent and the musk of sex.Marking her whether she wanted it or not.
The wolf liked that.Preened at the evidence of possession, at the way our scents had mingled into something new.
I hated that he liked it.Hated the satisfaction that curled through me every time I caught a trace of her on my pillow, my robe, the bathroom door she’d touched on her way out.
I threw off the covers and stalked to the bathroom, running the shower hot enough to scald.Steam filled the room.The water beat down on my shoulders, almost punishing.
It couldn’t wash away the memory of her hand on my chest.Pressing hard against my heartbeat.Feeling the way my pulse raced under her palm, giving away every lie I’d tried to tell.
The things I feel for you.They’re dangerous.For both of us.
I’d said that.Actually admitted it out loud, standing there stripped bare while she looked at me with those wide blue eyes.
What the hell was wrong with me?
I stayed in the shower until the water ran cold, then dressed in the dark.Charcoal suit.White shirt.The mask of civilization over the beast that wanted to hunt.
By the time I made my way to my study, I’d patched some of the defenses she’d cracked.Work.I would bury myself in work.The revenge plot was nearly complete, documents gathered over two decades now compiled into an airtight case against the senator.This was familiar territory.Destruction I understood.Control I could wield.
Not whatever that was last night.
The manor was quiet.Alice would be in the kitchen by now, preparing breakfast.And Lena…
I could smell her.Even through closed doors, my wolf tracked her scent like a compass pointing north.She was still in her room.Still sleeping, maybe.Or lying awake like I had been, replaying the same moments over and over.
Go to her.
No.
She’s confused.Hurting.You did that to her, and now you’re hiding in your office like a coward.
I said no.
The wolf subsided, but his presence pressed against my ribs, watchful and waiting.
Viktor called at eight.I let it ring twice before answering, using the seconds to ensure my voice would come out steady.To make sure no trace of last night’s weakness would bleed through.
“The media contact is confirmed,” he said without preamble.Viktor never wasted words.It was one of the things I valued about him.“Timing is set for next week.The documents will land on his desk Monday morning.By Tuesday, every news outlet in the state will have the story.”
Senator William Prescott.My grandfather.The man who’d made me disappear after my parents’ deaths, who’d paid Richard Hughes to keep me locked away in that boarding school for years while he built his political career on the corpse of his daughter’s memory.
