Chapter 14 - Finneas #2
She fixed her skirt. Straightened her blouse, checked her buttons.
Bent down and scooped the scattered quarterly reports, tapped them into a neat stack on the desk corner, and walked back out to her desk.
And she immediately sat down, opened her laptop, and started typing. Like nothing was happening.
I sank back into my chair. Tie crooked, hair wrecked, cock still half-hard as I tucked myself away.
Breathing too hard, staring at the mess on my desk.
She did that, crossed the floor like she didn’t just pull me apart at the seams, and went back to work while I sat here trying to remember how lungs worked.
She caught me looking at her and fucking winked.
A few days later she came in during a client call while I was pacing behind my desk, phone to my ear, talking about quarterly deliverables. She set a document on the corner of the desk. Turned to go. Stopped. Turned back.
She reached up and straightened my tie. Her fingers brushed my collar, smoothing the fabric down my chest. Slow. Her eyes on her own hands. Then she looked up at me, gave me the dimple, and walked out.
I lost my train of thought so completely the client asked if the call dropped.
I finished the call, went to her desk, stood over her. “You did that on purpose.”
“Did what?”
“The tie.”
“It was crooked.”
“It was not crooked.”
She kept typing, didn’t look up. “Go back to your office, Finneas.”
I stood there while she typed, the edge of a smile she was fighting visible from where I stood, and it took everything in me not to pull her out of that chair. Instead I turned around, walked back across the floor, closed my door, sat down, pressed both hands flat on the desk and breathed.
This woman was going to destroy me. I could feel it happening in real time and I didn’t want to stop it. Didn’t even want to slow it down. If this was destruction, then fuck it, let it burn.
The weekend came and Andrea decided I needed to see the shelter.
She’d been talking about Bonalisa for as long as I’d known her, to me at the office and to Fin on the porch, and the way her voice changed when she mentioned it, softer, warmer, made me curious about a place that could do that to a woman who was sarcastic about everything.
She was in a sundress, sneakers, practically bouncing on the sidewalk like a kid going to a birthday party.
I was in jeans and a shirt she’d picked out because she told me my version of casual was “a suit without the jacket, which is not casual, it’s just less formal.
” She wasn’t wrong but I wasn’t going to tell her that.
Bonalisa was smaller than I expected. Tucked between a laundromat and a hardware store, hand-painted sign over the door, a place that clearly ran on love and duct tape and probably not enough funding.
Inside it smelled like dog fur and cleaning solution and the barking hit me the second we walked through the door.
My wolf’s ears perked, cataloging every animal in the building by instinct.
Andrea introduced me to the owners. Mary was about thirty, dark hair pulled back, some kind of paint smeared on her forearm that she clearly didn’t care about. She looked me up and down slowly, didn’t smile, crossed her arms.
“Finneas,” I said, holding out my hand.
She took it. Firm grip. “Maryjane. Mary’s fine.” She let go and tilted her head at me. “So you’re the one she won’t stop talking about.”
“Hopefully good things.”
“Wouldn’t say that.”
Andrea groaned from behind me. “Mary.”
“What? I’m being honest.” But the corner of her mouth twitched.
Her husband came out carrying a bag of kibble over one shoulder, tall, sandy-haired. He shifted the bag to shake my hand. “Peter. Nice to finally meet the guy.”
“Likewise.”
He nodded at Andrea, smiled, kissed Mary on the head as he passed without breaking stride.
She swatted his arm without looking up from the clipboard she’d picked back up.
They moved around each other like two people who’d been doing this for years, passing tools and dodging dogs without a word exchanged.
“So this is the boss,” Mary said, looking me up and down. “You clean up different out of the suit.”
“Thank you?”
“Wasn’t a compliment.” She handed me a mop. “Kennel in the back.”
So I mopped. A Lycan King mopping a kennel floor on a Saturday morning because a five-foot-three woman in a sundress told him to. If the council could see me now.
Peter put me on dog-walking duty after. The pit bull mix was about ninety pounds of pure uncontrollable chaos.
It dragged me across the parking lot before I got my footing, my shoes skidding on the asphalt while this animal sprinted after a bird that wasn’t even close.
Andrea’s laugh hit me from behind, then the click of a phone camera.
“Delete that.”
“These are going in a frame.”
The dog yanked me back the other direction. More clicking, more laughing. I was going to destroy that phone later. I was absolutely not going to destroy that phone because hearing her laugh like that was worth any damn amount of humiliation.
Inside, a kitten from the new litter climbed my chest while I was sitting on the floor sorting donated blankets. Tiny needle claws digging into my shirt. I froze. Held it with both hands, stiff, barely touching, genuinely terrified of a creature that weighed less than my wallet.
“You look like you’re holding a bomb,” Andrea said, crouching in front of me.
“It’s very small.”
“It’s a kitten.”
“What if I hold it wrong?”
“Put it against your chest. It wants body heat.”
I pressed the kitten against my sternum.
It purred. The vibration went through my shirt into my ribs and my whole body tensed because this damn thing weighed nothing, I could crush it without trying, and the thought made my stomach tight.
I’d fought wolves twice my size, taken challenges from Alphas who wanted my throne, and none of that scared me as much as accidentally squeezing a kitten too hard.
“Breathe,” she said. “You’re turning red.”
The kitten kneaded my shirt and fell asleep. I sat on the floor for twenty minutes, not moving, barely breathing, because I was not going to be the person who woke it up.
Andrea took four photos, showed them to Mary and Peter, and all three of them laughed at me. I didn’t give a shit because Andrea was laughing and that was all that mattered.
While we restocked the food supply she talked. Not the way she used to talk to Fin on the porch, all rambling and uncensored. This was quieter. She was choosing what to share.
“My mom was a vet,” she said, stacking cans on the shelf. “Small clinic in Whitebrook. Our house always had animals. Dogs, cats, a rabbit once. A goose that followed her home from a lake.”
“A goose.”
“Gerald. Horrible. Bit everyone except my mom. Lived in our backyard for three months.”
She smiled, but softer than her usual smile. “I was going to follow her into vet school. Had the grades, had the plan. But after she and my dad died I needed money fast. Grandma was getting older, vet school is expensive, and somebody had to step up.”
She put the last can on the shelf and stood back. “I don’t regret it. I’m good at what I do. But sometimes I come here and I think about what it would’ve been like.”
She was looking at the rows of cans but her eyes were somewhere else entirely. I watched her face, didn’t say a word. Filed it deep.
That night at her house, she was on the couch with the highland romance open on her knee, legs tucked under her.
I sat beside her with my arm along the back of the couch, not touching her shoulders but close enough that she could lean into me whenever she wanted. She usually did by the second chapter.
She read aloud in that terrible Scottish accent, doing all the voices, pausing every few pages to editorialize.
“He’s being an idiot again. Just tell her. Why are fictional men so emotionally constipated?” She looked at me sideways. “Don’t answer that.”
I listened. My wolf settled deep in my chest, quieter than it had been in years.
She read for an hour, her voice getting slower, the pauses between sentences stretching, and her head dropped against my shoulder. The book slipped from her fingers. I caught it before it hit the floor, set it on the coffee table, pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and draped it over her.
She mumbled and pressed her face into my neck, her hand curling against my chest. I sat very still with her warmth against me.
All those nights I’d lain beside this couch as a dog, listening to this same voice, unable to touch her, unable to tell her who I was or what she meant to me.
And now she was here, choosing this, choosing me, her fingers curled against my shirt and her breathing going slow.
It should have felt like relief, and it did, mostly. But underneath was a fear I couldn’t shake, cold and sharp, because I’d never had anything this good and I knew from experience that anything this good could be taken.
Luca had come by the office earlier that week. Walked in, looked at me, stopped in the doorway.
“What?” I’d said.
“You’re smiling. Can see teeth. Didn’t know you had those.”
“Get out.”
“She’s good for you, Finn. Whatever this is, keep it.” He’d leaned against the door frame and his voice shifted. Quieter. “But the council’s been asking about your schedule. You’ve missed two briefings this month.”
I’d started to respond but he kept going.
“And Lorraine cornered a junior beta at the pack hall last week. Told the girl she was the incoming Luna, demanded to approve all social events going forward.”
My jaw had tightened. “She what?”
“You heard me. Walking around giving orders like she’s already got the title.”
“She doesn’t have shit. She’s not Luna, she’s not anything close to it.”
“I know that. You know that. But she’s saying it loud enough that people are starting to wonder whether it’s true.”
I’d told him I’d handle it. He’d given me the look. Same one he’d been giving for months, the one meaning when?
When. That was the question I kept dodging. When the hell was I going to tell the pack about Andrea? When was I going to shut Lorraine down publicly instead of just privately? When was I going to stop hiding the best damn thing in my life like it was a liability?
Now Andrea was asleep on my shoulder and the weight of that conversation pressed against my chest alongside her hand. My mother had called twice this week. I didn’t pick up either time. Lorraine was getting bolder. The pack didn’t know about Andrea. Nobody knew except Luca.
I should tell her. About all of it: Lorraine claiming a title that wasn’t hers, Margaret’s pressure, the politics piling up while I sat here pretending nothing existed outside this, us. She deserved to know what she was walking into, deserved the truth, all of it, not just the parts that were easy.
She shifted in her sleep. Her fingers curled tighter against my shirt. I could feel her heartbeat through the fabric, slow and trusting.
Shit.
Not tonight. Tonight she read to me, fell asleep against me, my wolf was quiet. Everything was good. I was going to hold onto that for as long as I could, even though I knew the longer I held on the harder the fall would be.
I pressed my mouth against her hair and closed my eyes.
Not yet.