Her scent clung to my memory like smoke.I couldn’t stop seeing her face.The delicate line of her jaw.The way her lower lip had trembled when she realized who I was.The flutter of her pulse beneath that pale, perfect skin.
Mine,the wolf insisted.Go to her.She’s alone.Frightened.She needs her mate.
She wasn’t my mate.She couldn’t be.I wouldn’t allow it.
I pulled off the highway and sat in the dark for a long moment, hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel.The wolf was clawing at my insides, desperate to turn the car around.To find her.To wrap myself around her and never let go.
This was what my father must have felt.This consuming, irrational need.This certainty that one woman was the center of everything, that nothing else mattered, that he would burn the world to keep her.
And then he’d lost control.One moment of rage, one flash of the beast, and he’d torn out her throat.
I remembered the blood.I remembered her eyes, still open, still surprised.I remembered my father’s howl of anguish as he realized what he’d done.
Whatever curse ran in my blood, whatever monster lived beneath my skin, I would not inflict it on another innocent woman.I would use Lena Hughes.I would break her if I had to.
But I would not claim her.
The penthouse was dark when I arrived.I moved through the rooms without turning on lights, my wolf’s vision more than adequate.Past the sculpture gallery where my mother’s pieces stood like ghosts.Past the piano I’d never learned to play.Past all the beautiful, empty things I’d filled this place with, trying to prove I was more than the broken boy they’d thrown away.
The city glittered beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows.Somewhere out there, she was sitting in a hospital room, watching her father die.Alone.Terrified.With no idea that the man who’d orchestrated her ruin was standing in the dark, thinking about her.
Go to her.
I poured myself a scotch instead.Checked my messages.
The surveillance report was waiting.My people had been watching her for months, documenting her routine, her relationships, her weaknesses.I knew her schedule better than she did.Knew about the spa girl she confided in, the opera singer who taught her piano, the cousin she talked to on the phone every Sunday.I knew what she ate for breakfast and how she took her coffee and which route she walked through the hotel every morning.
I knew everything about Lena Hughes except what it would feel like to have her underneath me.
Tonight’s update included a detail that made me set down my glass.
She’d rejected a marriage proposal.
The boy.Joseph Bishop.Soft hands and old money and a face I wanted to rearrange.I’d seen the photos of them together.The way he looked at her like she was a prize to be won, a trophy for his mantelpiece.The way she smiled at him without ever quite meeting his eyes.
He’d asked her to marry him over dinner.And she’d said no.
She’s saving herself.That’s what the file said.That’s what everyone in Paradise Peaks whispered about sweet little Lena Hughes.
Virgin.
The word hit my bloodstream like a drug.My cock thickened instantly, straining against my zipper.
I was in my bedroom before I made the conscious decision to move.The door slammed behind me.I didn’t bother with the lights.Didn’t bother making it to the bed.
I shoved my pants down and fisted my cock, already leaking at the tip.Thick.Aching.Desperate for something it couldn’t have.
Ours,the wolf crooned.Untouched.Pure.Ours to ruin.
I braced one hand against the floor-to-ceiling window and stroked myself hard.Brutal.The way I’d fuck her when I finally got inside that tight virgin cunt.
Her face materialized behind my lids.Those blue eyes wide with fear and confusion as I spread her legs.That sweet mouth falling open on a cry as I pushed inside her for the first time.She wouldn’t be ready.She’d be too tight, too small, too innocent to take a cock like mine without pain.
I’d make her take it anyway.
She’ll cry,the wolf purred.She’ll cry and she’ll beg and she’ll come so hard she forgets her own name.
My hand moved faster.Rougher.Pre-cum slicked my grip as I fucked my fist, imagining it was her.I thought about forcing her legs apart and burying my face in her pussy.Licking her until she screamed.Making her come on my tongue before I made her come on my cock.
