The curtain shifted. Her face appeared behind the glass, and my lungs forgot how to work, the wolf pressing against my ribs.
She looked exhausted. Hair loose, wearing a compound-issue sleep shirt that slipped off one shoulder, exposing the collarbone where her claiming mark hid beneath the neckline. My wolf locked onto that strip of bare skin. Even underfed with dark circles under her eyes, Mira Maxwell made my blood run south.
Fuck.
My fingers tightened on the mortar and I reminded myself I was two stories up on a military compound with a camera sweeping back in seconds.
Not the time.
Those mismatched eyes widened. Then dropped. Traveled the full length of my body and snapped back to my face with a flush creeping up her neck that she absolutely could not hide in the moonlight.
“Are younaked?”
“Technically, the wolf was clothed in fur. The man is a victim of logistics.”
“You climbed my building. Naked. In amilitary compound.”
“The mortar gaps are surprisingly accommodating. Even without pants.”
Her mouth opened and closed. The blush was furious now, staining her cheeks, and her eyes kept betraying her by dipping below my chin before she hauled them back up through what looked to be sheer force of will.
“Stop looking at me and let me in before the camera comes back.”
“I’m not looking at you.”
“Mira, you’ve looked at me three times in the last four seconds.”
“I’m assessing thethreat.”
“So you say, love.”
A radio crackled from the corridor. Footsteps. The patrol check, early. Some overachiever guards running ahead of schedule.
My body made the decision before my brain. I was through the window in a motion that should not have been physically possible for a man my size through a gap that small, but adrenaline and lycan flexibility had a strong working relationship. I landed on her bedroom floor in a heap of bare limbs and barely suppressed panic.
Mira grabbed the blanket off her bed and threw it at my face. “Cover yourself.”
I wrapped the blanket around my waist. Her scent punched through me from the fabric. Concentrated, warm, old books and honey deepened by a new layer that made my wolf howl behind my ribs. Every nerve in my body lit up and the blanket did very little to hide what that did to me below the waist.
Her eyes dropped again. Snapped back up. The flush had reached her ears.
“Closet.Now.”
She shoved me sideways. Hard. I stumbled into a closet the size of a phone booth and folded myself inside with my knees against my chest, a winter coat draped over my head, and what I was fairly certain was a vacuum cleaner handle jammed into my kidney.
The footsteps stopped outside her door.
A knock. “Ms. Maxwell? Nightly check.”
Through the slats, Mira crossed the room and pulled the door open. “Yes?”
“Routine check. Everything in order?”
“Everything is in order. Same as it was at the last check. And the one before that.” Pure irritation, one guard regretting his career choices. “Can I go back to sleep?”
“Apologies, Ms. Maxwell.”
The door closed. Footsteps retreated. Mira waited, counted under her breath, then pulled the closet open and stared down at me.
