The drive is shorter than I’d like. Too soon, we’re pulling up in front of my apartment building. It’s a shabby complex in a not-so-great part of town. Peeling paint, flickering security light,and a chain-link fence that’s seen better days. I can feel him taking it in, and I feel defensive.
“Thanks for the ride,” I say quickly, reaching for the door.
“Miranda.”
I pause, my hand on the handle.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
I turn to look at him. He’s leaning toward me across the center console, those amber eyes fixed on my face. The space between us shrinks.
I immediately lean back against the passenger door. “I’m not kissing you for driving me home!”
His grin is slow and wicked. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Then his hand comes up, fingers gripping my jaw gently but firmly. He pulls me closer across the console, close enough that I can feel his breath against my lips. His gaze drops to my mouth, lingering there for a heartbeat too long.
“But if you want a kiss, all you have to do is ask.”
Heat spreads through my core. I feel myself getting wet, a throb between my thighs that makes me press them together.
He laughs lightly, the sound low and intimate in the quiet car. “Maybe you could just give me your keys instead.”
His thumb brushes across my cheekbone before he releases me, and I immediately lean back again, putting distance between us.
I yank my bag into my lap, refusing to look at him as I dig through it with shaking hands. The keys jangle as I pull them out and shove them at him without a word.
His fingers deliberately brush mine as he takes them.
I turn to get out, desperate to escape before I do something stupid, when his hand catches my chin again. He turns my face toward him, and before I can process what’s happening, his lips brush against my cheek. Soft. Deliberate.
Then he winks at me.
“See you Saturday, sweetheart.”
“Hey!” I sputter, but he’s already releasing me, that insufferable grin on his face.
I stumble out of the car, my cheek tingling where his lips touched. He waits until I’m at the building entrance before he drives off, and I’m left standing there with my heart racing and my mind completely scrambled.
Chapter Five
Grayson
The forest floor is cold under my paws, but I push harder anyway, lunging over roots, tearing through underbrush. It should clear my head. It isn’t working.
I’m letting a human woman into my son’s life.
The thought circles back for the hundredth time, and I put on a burst of speed to outrun it. It doesn’t help. It just circles faster.
It was impulsive, a move born from desperation. Ethan doesn’t bond with females. Maybe because Vanessa left scars on his young heart that still haven’t healed. If I had known earlier what she was subjecting our son to, the constant neglect, I would have divorced her myself. I would have snatched Ethan from her arms the moment he was born. But I was young and idealistic. And my son paid the price for my foolishness.
Linda is the only female Ethan has tolerated, maybe because she was in his life since he was six months old. But I can’t understand what it is about Miranda Carver that has my son talking about her like she hung the moon.
The pretty lady. That’s what he called her this morning at breakfast, completely unprompted, over a bowl of cereal. Is she coming back, Dad?
I rumble in approval. She really is pretty, even when she’s insulting me. Wolves prefer dominant females. It’s hardwired into our biology. Female shifters are willful by nature, built for strength, and that is what male wolves are drawn to. A mate who can hold her own. A mate who doesn’t break.
Miranda is not a shifter. But every instinct I have seems completely indifferent to that fact.
