His arms tightened around me.
“Ignore it.”His voice was soft.Almost pleading.“Stay here with me.Just a little longer.”
I pressed closer.Whatever the world wanted, it could wait.
Right now, there was only this.Only him.Only the warmth of his body and the silver chain at my throat and the quiet certainty that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
I closed my eyes.
And let myself fall.
25
RAPHAEL
She slept with my collar around her throat.
I watched her from the pillow beside hers, close enough to count her eyelashes, close enough to see the faint pulse beating beneath her jaw.The silver chain glinted in the pale morning light filtering through the curtains, the diamond-studded ring resting in the hollow of her throat like it belonged there.Like it had always belonged there.
My cum had dried on that chain hours ago.I should have cleaned it.Should have wiped away the evidence of what we’d done, restored some semblance of civilized behavior.Instead I’d pulled her against me and held her while she slept, breathing in the scent of apples and cream layered with leather and sex and something that was purely us.A new scent.Our scent.The smell of two people tangled together so thoroughly that the separate notes had begun to merge.
Ours,the wolf purred with smug satisfaction.Our mate.Our mark.Our scent on her skin.The world will smell us on her and know.
I didn’t argue with him this time.Didn’t have the energy for the familiar battle.Maybe didn’t have the will.
She’d chosen it.Not because the contract demanded it, not because I’d manipulated her into compliance, but because she wanted it there.I’d watched her face when I asked, watched the moment she understood what I was really asking.Watched her weigh the choice, knowing she could refuse, knowing I wouldn’t punish her for it.
And she’d said yes.
Put it on me.
My hands had trembled while I fastened the clasp.My hands.Trembling.Like some lovesick fool instead of the Vor of the Ivankovskaya Bratva, the man who’d watched business rivals beg for mercy without blinking.I’d killed for the pack.I’d built an empire from nothing.And this woman, this fierce stubborn human woman, had reduced me to trembling over a clasp no bigger than my thumbnail.
Not lovesick,the wolf corrected with a rumble of contentment.Mated.There’s a difference.She accepts our claim.She wears our mark.This is how it should be.
I closed my eyes against the word.Against everything it meant.Against the thousand ways this could destroy us both.
She shifted in her sleep, pressing closer, her hand finding my chest like she was searching for my heartbeat even in dreams.Her palm lay flat over my sternum, directly above the organ that had been cold for so long I’d forgotten it could feel anything at all.The trust in that gesture hollowed my chest.She had no idea what I was.What I’d done.What I was still doing.She didn’t know about the wolf that lived beneath my skin, about the Bratva that owned my loyalty, about Apex Lending and the grandfather who’d paid to make me disappear.
And she’d given herself to me anyway.
I studied the marks I’d left on her body with the wolf’s possessive attention.Faint bruises on her hips where I’d gripped too hard, where she’d wrapped her legs around me and demanded more.Red impressions on her breasts from the clamps, still visible hours later, badges of what she’d endured for me.The collar.My collar.My claim visible for anyone who looked closely enough.
The wolf wanted to add more.Wanted to mark her so thoroughly that no one could mistake who she belonged to.The claiming bite throbbed in my imagination, the place where her neck met her shoulder, where a wolf’s teeth would sink in and bond them forever.
Mine,the wolf growled with deep satisfaction.Every inch.Every breath.Every heartbeat.
But it wasn’t possession anymore.That was the terrifying part.The thing that made my chest tight and my throat close and every instinct I had scream danger.
I could have called it possession in the beginning, when she was just a means to an end, a pawn in my grandfather’s destruction.When I’d looked at her and seen only her father’s legacy, the hotel I would take, the family name I would grind to dust.I could have called it obsession when her scent started following me through my days, when I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing her face, when I’d started finding excuses to touch her just to feel her pulse jump beneath my fingers.
I couldn’t call it that now.
The word I’d avoided.The word I’d denied every time the wolf whispered it.The word that meant death and destruction and everyone I’d ever cared about turned to ash.
Love.
I loved her.
