Chapter 1 #5
Individually none of these guys look terribly concerning. Together, with handguns, they look concerning.
“And here’s the pack you have at your disposal,” Rex says. He seems unconcerned. He turns from me to look at them.
“Not at my disposal. They’re who I serve,” I say. “This is the future of our kind.”
“Well,” Rex drawls, looking them all up and down. “The future is bright.”
He’s being sarcastic. He’s also rolling his sleeves back down.
I didn’t know that he had rolled them up.
He also took his coat off at some point.
It’s hanging over the back of my chair. He must have held me in place, squirming for freedom, and somehow managed to remove his attire and get his sleeves up.
However he did it, I am now viewing his brawny, muscular arms with a hunger I didn’t know how to possess before he touched me.
This asshole has made me feel things I’ve never felt before.
Things I could have gone a lifetime not feeling.
It’s not fair to be this aroused and this unable to do anything about it.
“What do you want us to do with him, boss?” Cal asks the question.
“I’ve got this,” I tell them. I might be lying. I am feeling lightheaded and absolutely ravenous at the same time. There’s a part of me that almost wants to be swept up in those big, brawny arms and carried off to his den. I’m fighting it with all I am.
If Rex gets control of me, everything we’ve been doing here, everything we’ve worked for is a complete waste of time. We might as well have laid down and joined the main pack from the outset.
That is not the point of this pack. We call ourselves the Runaways for a reason.
We are outsiders. Rebels. We are a new generation who doesn’t wear fancy suits like Rex’s, and we have values that don’t match his.
We believe in the new world we live in. Not the old one we were promised. It’s all a fucking lie.
He looks back at me and I actually feel my pussy clench in response to his eye contact.
Oh, fucking no.
This is it, isn’t it. This is what girls gossip about. This is what I’ve been mentally trying to warn myself off for my whole life. I feel a draw to this man, a kind of chemistry that is setting off reactions inside me that I cannot control.
Not him. Anyone but him.
I could resist someone else. I was hoping, honestly, that it would be one of the Runaway guys that I’d watched be an idiot over and over again and no longer found attractive in any way.
But it’s not. It’s the richest, most powerful man in the city, who is standing in my office looking like he’s about to come bursting out of his suit.
He’s my enemy, well, as close to an enemy as I get anyway.
And right now, all I want is for him to carry me off and fuck me until I’m bred with his baby.
Fortunately, I do have one thing on my side: myself.
As good as I am at fighting others, I am just as good at fighting my own needs.
I can go eight hours without water if I have to.
I can need to pee and not go until I almost wet myself.
I can forget to eat until I nearly faint.
Some people call that undiagnosed ADHD. I forget to call it anything.
Point being, I can absolutely be so much of a menace I drive away the mate fate herself picked out for me.
Hell, I bet, even if I did want him to be my mate, I’d fuck it up somehow.
I’m not single and virginal because I’m ugly.
I’m single and virginal because no man of any species can handle me.
They take an interest in me, thinking I’m going to be fun and hot.
And I am fun and hot. Right up until the crashing out starts.
I keep telling myself that, even as my ass continues to burn inside my jeans.
Rex didn’t seem to have much trouble handling me, but there’s more to relationships than pinning people down and whipping their ass.
At least, I assume there is. Someone has to make dinner at some point.
I bet someone does it for him already, though.
I am very aware that the three guys who are looking at me have probably seen more than they should have. If I show any signs of softness now whatsoever, I’m fucked.
So I draw myself up, I override my desires, and I talk to him the way I know they expect me to.
“Mr. Regent, I don’t know why you thought you could walk in here alone and tell us what to do,” I say. “Maybe you’re getting soft in your old age. Maybe you’ve forgotten what real wolves are like. We claim territory. This is ours. Now. For the second and last time. Get. Out.”
He smiles at me. The expression in his eyes is hard for me to discern.
He is angry, of course he is. But he seems to be enjoying himself too.
I can feel his energy flowing around me.
He has so much of it. It is elevated and it is dominant, and I think there is some world in which he shifts right now and we’re all fucked. But he doesn’t do that.
“I just had this suit tailored,” he says. “And Fescue would be furious if I ripped it any further. In fact, the damage from that knife is going to annoy him.”
“I don’t care what a man with an herb’s name thinks about what I do,” I say.
“It’s actually a grass,” he replies calmly, as if we’re here discussing planting a fucking lawn.
The politeness is covering so much havoc. Every second he stays in the room with me is one I am even closer to completely losing control.
My heart is hammering in my chest. My body is going fucking wild with responses I cannot afford to let it have. This man is dangerous. Every inch of him. No. That’s too big a division of measurement. Every millimeter of him has something that could fucking ruin me in it. I can sense it.
He reaches out, grips me by the back of the neck and pulls me back toward him with a casually powerful gesture that makes me feel instantly possessed. Some part of me already belongs to him.
Fuck. No. This cannot go this way. My knees are going to buckle. I have to fight my body hard to keep standing up.
He draws me in toward him and I feel him lower his head. He drops a chaste kiss on my cheek that nonetheless makes me feel dizzy with need.
“You’ve only made this harder on yourself,” he murmurs in my ear. “I will see you later, mate.”
He releases me and shrugs his jacket on in one powerful motion before buttoning it in a deliberately unhurried way. Then he leaves, walking past my gun-wielding guards as if they are little more than kids with water pistols.
I am left with so much erotic energy charged inside me I feel as though I am about to go full fucking crazy.
He just called me his mate. We’ve barely spoken.
I thought I was being presumptuous about wanting to fuck him.
I never imagined he’d acknowledge it so soon, or so casually, like it’s not a huge fucking deal, like both our lives didn’t just change forever.