Chapter 17 #2
“I’m the one giving orders,” I assert although considering I’m breathless and mumbling, I might lose some of the oomph to my statement.
Billy bites, then kisses my smarting ass, then unties my wrists. I groan as the blood rushes to my shoulders, which had gone a little stiff.
Billy seems to understand exactly what I’m experiencing because he squeezes them, helping massage the life back into them.
Well, now I know. Billy White the III is an animal in bed.
Madi’s conjecture that he might be decent because he pays attention to people’s desires was right.
He’s smooth. Experienced. Dominant in a delicious way.
I want more.
He pushes me onto my back with his body on top. His gaze is on the silver ring in my navel. He must think it’s hot.
I push him away, and he yields. His normally closed expression is still inscrutable, but I detect a softness in it that wasn’t there before. An appreciation?
You’d think he’d be ragey with blue balls by now because I’ve come twice, and he hasn’t come at all, but he seems patient.
The man has self-control, I give him that.
I straddle his waist, and his lids droop as his large, talented man-hands come to my hips.
A phone rings, and his eyes slide toward the floor where his trousers are.
“Do you need to get that?”
He grinds his teeth. “Fuck.”
I take that as a yes and climb off.
Billy springs from the bed and grabs the phone out of his pants pocket. “Brick.”
Ah. His boss and best friend. I wonder which role of the relationship comes first? It almost seems like boss since he was so in the dog house with Brick over harming his relationship with Madi. It’s weird, though, because I thought Madi said they were college friends before he was a boss.
“Where are you?” Brick’s voice is so loud I can hear it all the way over here on the bed.
“I’m working from home today.”
“Since when do you work from home ? What the fuck are you doing there?”
Billy’s face goes as blank as a slab of marble, not that he was showing much before.
Uh oh. I have a feeling playtime is over. I scoot off the bed and search for my clothes.
“I’m trying to have a meeting with my exec team, and they tell me you’re not here. I need you in the office. Now.”
“I’ll be there in thirty.” The call ends without any goodbyes. When Billy looks my way, I expect to see that flat businesslike gaze, but there’s a flicker of something else. Disappointment? Longing?
Seeing that glimpse of a real human beneath the slick exterior does something strange to my heart.
Am I feeling sympathy? For a billionaire?
That’s absurd. He chose this high-powered life. He chose Brick as a best friend.
He walks over to me where I’m standing in the matching bra and panty set that I may have chosen precisely for a moment like this. “I’m sorry.” He catches my nape and pulls my face up toward his. “I have to go. Please tell me we can do this again.”
Wow. He said please. And I’m sorry.
“We’ll see.”
He lowers his face toward mine, but stops halfway there. “May I kiss you?”
It seems hilarious that he’s asking permission to kiss me after he had his thumb in my ass a short time ago, but I’m still not in the mood to give him any inches.
“No.” I say but then take control, grasping his face and pulling his lips down to mine.
I kiss the hell out of him, infusing all the built up lust I’d hoped to release with sex into his mouth.
Our noses rub together. Lips twist. I make it long and passionate to show him what he missed.
Not that the flagpole erection pressing into my belly doesn’t prove he’s already well aware.
When we come apart, his nose appears to have angry red marks. I reach up to touch one. “Did my nose ring scratch you?” It shouldn’t be able to scratch–that doesn’t make sense, but I can’t think of any other explanation.
Billy ignores my question and cradles my cheek in a gesture that seems way too tender for a guy I’ve been sparring with for months. He gives me one more quick kiss before turning away to pull on his clothes. I beat him in the race to get dressed and sweep out of the room before he does.
Pepper is waiting out in the hallway and–dammit!–he left a little puddle of pee there.
Fuck. Well, at least it was on the hardwood, not a rug I couldn’t afford to replace.
“Watch your step–there’s dog pee!” I call back to Billy. “I’ll clean it up.”
I hear Billy growl in the bedroom, and Pepper pees some more.
“Don’t be mean to him! He’s just a puppy!” I run for paper towels.
Billy catches me on his way out. He kisses me one more time. “I want you,” he says and leaves.
Those are his parting words.
I stare at the door he left through, a slow smile creeping over my face. “Noted.”
Billy
I savor Aubrey’s scent on my skin as I take the elevator to the garage. My face tingles where her silver nose ring burned me. My balls have to be a dark shade of blue–they ache like a motherfucker, but my wolf is whistling while he walks. I just made Aubrey come.
I had her naked in my bed. Her scent won’t just be all over my place, it will be on my sheets.
But as I tear out of the garage in my Porsche, the sound of Brick’s rebuke rings louder in my ears.
No one works from home at Moon Co. Twenty-five percent of the employees are wolves. That means no one is sick–ever. Brick runs his business with iron rule. He doesn’t demand evenings and weekends unless it’s necessary, but you sure as hell better be at your desk when he needs you.
I’ve always been the guy putting in the sixty hour weeks.
I’m there first. Leave last. I make it my job to be on top of every single aspect of the business that might bite us.
I work with Eagle–our corporate attorney and Brick’s brother-in-law–to problem solve every liability.
I run that company as much as Brick does. Maybe more.
So yeah, me fucking around with video meetings yesterday was as far from normal as it gets.
What is happening to me?
I roll down my windows and let the polluted New York air with the stench of the streets slap my face. Aubrey’s scent fades, and I pick up the variety of scents on the street–the sweet grease of donuts, the singe of rubber, the exhaust.
As my disgust for the city crawls over my skin, the pleasure from touching Aubrey vanishes.
I’m left only with anger.
Why in the fuck does she have this affect on me? How could I let my need to get into her panties interrupt me doing my job for Brick? I disappointed my alpha–again. And this time under the auspices of making up for last time.
What if…this wasn’t about making things up to Brick at all? What if Aubrey is actually my downfall?
The Adalwulf crone predicted Madi would bring about the end of the Blackthroat pack, but that didn’t happen. What if she got it wrong? Or what if it wasn’t a prediction at all, but a curse? A curse that twisted and found its way to me.
The Adalwulfs had made a pact with witches generations ago, and now every generation produces a wolf-mage–pack seeress to help guide their alpha.
Their old crone died with Odin, their last alpha, but my sources tell me a new young seeress has taken her place–Aster, the virgin mage.
It may be that they sent Madi as a curse to destroy Brick, and when that didn’t work, redirected it to me. Why else would I be so entranced with a lowly human? I hate humans.
I care nothing for art. Social justice means nothing to me–I’m a wolf operating in a separate society.
I yank down the visor to look at my reflection in the mirror. Angry red blisters appear along my nostril and upper lip where Aubrey rubbed her silver nose ring.
I enjoyed the kiss.
Enjoyed the passion behind it. Enjoyed knowing I inspired that passion.
I allowed myself to be marked by a human.
All the while, my alpha needed me, and I was absent from the pack.
What in the fuck is wrong with me?
I need to get a grip. No more working from home. No more fucking the enemy.
I will pay her for her work on the mural and get through the bachelor / bachelorette party and wedding, but that’s it. If we happen to collide in bed a few times while we’re at it, I won’t complain, but I can’t let her distract me.
I can’t succumb to whatever strange allure she has.
Aubrey Cook is trouble. Her chaotic beauty is dangerous.
No matter what happens over these next few weeks, I can’t let her under my skin.