Chapter Ten #2
“You cut across me,” I snap, though the words come out very quiet and controlled. In my experience, the most dangerous sounds are the quiet ones.
He raises an eyebrow. “I had the angle.”
“You did not have the angle. I had the angle. I’ve been tracking that deer for ten minutes, and you came in from the left like a raging fucking bull.
You blew it, furball.” My voice is climbing, the control cracking at the seams. The hunger roars up through the crack like smoke through a gap. “I almost had him. I was right there!”
“Your approach was too high. You would have overshot.”
“I would not have overshot. I was perfectly positioned, and now he’s gone because you think you know everything, and clearly you don’t know enough to stay in your lane when someone else has already—”
“Charlie.” His voice holds steady, but the strain underneath it is unmistakable.
“Don’t ‘Charlie’ me, I’m furious with you right now—”
“Good.”
The word stops me cold.
His gold eyes are steady in the dark, watching me with an attention that is completely, unsettlingly unruffled, and the lack of defensiveness in him is somehow more infuriating than an argument would be.
I step forward, my body moving before I entirely plan it.
The anger and the hunger and the four days of white-knuckled restraint all rise at once into something that needs somewhere to go.
“Good?” I repeat, stepping closer, my anger building even more.
“Your fangs are down,” he says. “Your eyes are red. Your hands have been clenched for thirty seconds, and you’re putting out enough predator energy right now to make most wolves back up, and you haven’t once looked at my throat.
” He tilts his head, and the motion exposes the line of his neck with a casualness that registers somewhere in the back of my brain as either extremely brave or extremely stupid.
“That’s not the bloodlust. That’s anger.
Yours… controlled…” He pauses, the corner of his lips turning up in satisfaction.
“We lost the deer on purpose, Charlotte.”
Every word lands with the weight of the ground dropping out from under me.
I stare at him, and the fury doesn’t dissolve. It transforms, and the transformation is fast, electric, and runs from my chest all the way down to the soles of my feet.
He set the collision up.
He watched me track, waited until I was close enough that losing the target would hurt, because the point was never the deer. The point was what losing the deer would do to me.
Which means he’s been watching me. Not supervising but learning, which is either horrifying or…
“You absolute—”
He catches me as I shove him. His hands close around my wrists with lycan certainty, not harsh, not gentle, just there, and I don’t shake them off.
I pull against him instead.
Hard.
He doesn’t move.
The immovability of him hits like a wall, and with it lands every piece of information I’ve been refusing to process for the last five minutes.
His shift tore completely through his clothes, and he stands before me in nothing but moonlight and the finished lines of a body built before I was born.
The heat coming off him in the cold air is becoming a serious fucking problem, and I keep making the extremely questionable decision not to think too hard about why.
“You lied to me,” I say, but the words land softer than I mean them to.
“I didn’t lie.” His voice drops low, roughened by something he’s trying not to show. “I redirected.”
“That’s the same thing.”
A faint breath of amusement ghosts across his mouth, gone almost before it forms. “And yet you came back.” His gaze drags over my face, slow and deliberate, like he’s reacquainting himself with every line.
“Furious, alive… still you.” His grip loosens a fraction, not letting go, just shifting into something that feels less like restraint and more like contact. “There she is.”
The space between us tightens.
Anger and hunger twist together until I can’t tell which one is louder.
Rogue doesn’t move away when I step closer.
He plants himself like a wall of muscle and willpower, wolf riding just beneath his skin.
His eyes glow faintly, not fully shifted, but close enough that the air between us tastes charged.
Every breath he takes sounds deliberate, like he’s holding back something bigger than either of us.
“You think I needed saving?” I snap, voice rough from the edge of the hunt still clawing through me.
“I think you were about to cross a line you can’t uncross,” he answers quietly, and the calm in his voice makes something in me snap harder than if he’d shouted.
I shove at his bare chest.
He doesn’t budge.
The lycan in him answers the vampire in me without words, stance widening, chin tipping down just enough to make it clear he’s not backing off. It isn’t dominance. It’s grounding.
The forest seems to lean closer as I glance down, finally realizing that he is completely naked. My eyes widen, dropping before I can stop them, taking him in in one involuntary sweep before I wrench my gaze back to his face. “You’re naked!”
A small smirk touches his lips. “Observant.”
“Don’t you…” I avert my eyes. “Is this a lycan thing? Do you just—”
“Lycans have a few biological quirks I’m not explaining tonight.”
“Oh, that is outrageously unhelpful.”
“Noted.” He chuckles as my hunger seems to be increasing, but it feels different, not so bloodthirsty, and more… wanting.
“You could have mentioned this was a possibility before we left the cabin.”
“Would it have changed anything?”
I open my mouth, then close it. “No.”
“Then it wasn’t relevant.”
My gaze drops to his throat, to the pulse beating steady and unafraid beneath flushed skin. His scent floods my senses, wild and earthy, threaded with heat and something fiercely alive that calls to the hunger in me like a dare.
His voice lowers. “You’re shaking.”
“Because you ruined my hunt.”
“No,” he murmurs. “Because you’re starving and pretending you’re not.”
That’s the moment the tension snaps tight enough to cut.
I surge forward, my fingers clamping into his hair, and the kiss lands like a strike meant to wound.
Teeth scrape, breath collides. It isn’t gentle.
It’s a challenge thrown between two predators, testing boundaries that neither of us understands.
Rogue’s hands clamp around my hips instantly, claws barely held back as he drags me flush against him.
A growl rolls through him, deep and possessive, vibrating against my mouth until it sinks into my bones.
He meets me. Muscle to muscle, breath to breath, the wolf rising just under his skin without taking over, and the shock of being matched instead of managed lands somewhere I wasn’t guarding.
I bite his lower lip, harder this time, tasting the heat of him without breaking skin. His breath punches out, and his grip tightens, fingers digging in just enough to remind me he’s stronger, steadier, anchored in a way I’m not.
“Easy,” he murmurs against my mouth, his voice rough, not commanding but coaxing, like he’s talking to both me and the monster clawing at my ribs.
“I don’t want easy,” I whisper, dragging my mouth along his jaw, inhaling the wild scent of him like it might quiet the ache burning through my veins.
His hand slides to the back of my neck, fingers threading into my hair, not pulling but holding me there, keeping the distance measured.
Something in me sharpens to a point. My fangs press against the inside of my lip.
The space he’s keeping between us has become the most intolerable two inches on earth.
I chase his mouth again, pushing, testing, daring him to stop holding back.
This time, he answers with a deeper kiss, slower but heavier, like a storm rolling in instead of lightning striking.
His breath mixes with mine, uneven now, control slipping just enough to feel dangerous.
My nails scrape over his shoulders, and a rough sound tears from his chest, half growl, half warning.
The world narrows to heat and breath and the steady beat of his heart against mine.
I push into him again, refusing to be steadied, wanting friction, wanting the clash.
His grip shifts, one hand sliding higher along my spine, anchoring me as I try to take more than he’s willing to give.
I catch his lower lip between my teeth and feel him still, a controlled, deliberate stillness, the moment before he commits.
Then he answers.
His mouth comes down on mine harder, and the pressure of it opens my lip against my own fang, the sharp copper tang of my blood blooming between us.
He tastes it.
I feel him taste it.
And a sound leaves his throat that isn’t a word, but is something I will think about the rest of my unnaturally long life.
For a heartbeat, he breaks away, breath hot against my cheek.
“You’re playing with fire,” he mutters.
I smile against his mouth, fangs grazing his lip again. “You’re the one standing in it.”
Something in him snaps.