Chapter 3 #2
She watches me from near the kitchen island, arms crossing loosely below her chest, which only makes it harder not to look at her tits. She’s glaring. Waiting for the punchline. “Dutch said it looks like clown vomit.”
Dutch. That’s Grey’s second. I’ve never met him, but if he doesn’t understand her choices in this space, it means he doesn’t understand her. Good. I want to be the only one who gets her.
My wolf’s jealousy is sudden and irrational. I shove it down.
“Dutch is a fucking idiot.”
At my words, something shifts in her expression. Just slightly. “You don't find it overwhelming?”
I shoot her a smirk. “All this color balances your dark soul. It’s like yin and yang.”
The laugh comes before she can stop it—a short, involuntary sound she cuts off almost immediately. She looks briefly furious with herself for it, which is its own kind of victory.
And the perfect opening.
“You’re even more beautiful than I remember,” I say. “Which should have been impossible.”
The humor dies. She looks at me steadily, like she’s deciding whether I’m serious. Or maybe whether to kill me. “That was a long time ago.”
“Two years.”
“Long enough to forget what I looked like altogether.”
“I haven’t forgotten a single detail.” Her jaw tightens almost imperceptibly, so I decide to throw caution to the wind and go for raw honesty as I add, “How could I when I’ve thought about it every day since?”
For a moment, she says nothing. But I know better than to assume her silence is indifference.
“Is that why you came?” she asks finally. “To tell me that?”
“I came because we have a problem.”
“The problem has a name, and it’s Ramsey Greco. We’re handling it.”
“Not that problem.”
She knows what I mean. I see it in the way she resets her weight, the almost imperceptible lift of her chin. “There’s no problem,” she says. “Not for me at least.”
“Is that why you pretended we’d never met in front of your alphas today?”
She scowls. “Whatever was between us, it’s in the past.”
I cross the room slowly, and to her credit, she doesn’t step back. She just watches me come, chin still raised, eyes steady. I stop close enough that I can see the slight quickening of her breath.
“Maybe that’s the problem,” I say quietly.
Her brow pulls in just slightly. “What does that mean?”
“It means two years is a long time to imagine having you again.” I hold her gaze. She opens her mouth, clearly intent on arguing, but I cut her off. “Don’t bother trying to pretend you aren’t imagining it right now. I can smell it on you.”
I inhale deeply—appreciatively—and she glares. But I also don’t miss the way her nipples harden through her shirt.
Fuck.
My erection is going to be impossible to hide in these pants.
“Big talk for a guy wearing wide-leg polyester. Did you mean to seduce me with this getup?”
I grin, ignoring her taunts. And hoping she doesn’t notice the pants are now a tent. “I think the only way through this is to stop pretending we can work three feet apart from one another for the next several weeks without it becoming a distraction.”
“Several weeks?” Her eyes widen. “Grey said a few days.”
“Yes, well, I made some arrangements at the college. My board will run things in my absence, giving me a bit more time here while we deal with Ramsey.” I let my gaze drag over her. “And with you.”
I watch while she takes that in. There’s a flash of something. Interest. Excitement. Then it’s gone, and she’s shuttered back to her resting maneater face.
“We’re both professionals,” she says. Firm. Clipped. “We’ll figure it out.”
“We are.” I agree without hesitation. “And we’re also two people who very much enjoyed the way you sat on my cock once, and that memory is going to be in the room with us every single time we’re in it.
So…” I tilt my head slightly, enjoying the slight flush creeping into her cheeks.
“I propose we get it out of our systems. Once. Clean. And then we can focus on doing our jobs.”
She stares at me. “You’re serious.”
“I'm always serious.”
“You’re proposing we fuck. Right now. Tonight. While you’re wearing…that. And after two years of no contact. When you don’t even know if I have a boyfriend. Or a mate for that matter.”
I refuse to think about her with a mate. Almost as much as I refuse to let her see me sweat. So, I grin and say, “Is there another night that’s good for you?”
Her mouth falls open a little, and I take pride in rendering Mia Reyes truly shocked. But it’s not anger beneath her words when she says, “That is the most arrogant thing anyone has ever said to me.”
It’s amusement. Okay, maybe mixed with some indignation.
I lean in, wink, and say, “So far. The night is young.”
Another almost-laugh she swallows before it escapes. Her eyes narrow instead. “Prepotente. And if I say no?”
“Then I go back to my room at the estate and come on my own hand while picturing your face, just like I’ve been doing for two years already, and we do this for however many weeks it takes to run Ramsey to ground.
Tension so thick, you could cut it with that laser-beam glare of yours.
” I hold her gaze. “Your call, Mia. It always will be.”
The air between us pulls tight. I can feel her wolf—that ferocious, controlled energy she keeps locked down like classified intelligence—pressing at the edges of whatever she’s holding back. My own wolf goes utterly still. Focused. Nearly panting for her.
I reach up and brush my knuckle along her jaw, just once. She doesn’t move or react. Her eyes stay locked on mine.
Fuck it.
I lean in and press my mouth to hers—soft, deliberate, a question more than a demand—and feel the exact moment she begins to answer it. Fortunately, her answer doesn’t involve neutering me for my audacity.
Instead, her lips part on a sharp inhale.
Her hand comes up between us, not to push me away but hovering there, caught between instinct and indecision.
I slide my hand along her jaw, tipping her head back just enough to deepen the angle, and she lets me.
That’s the thing about Mia—she lets nothing happen to her that she doesn’t choose.
So, when she chooses this, when her hand finally settles against my chest and her mouth moves against mine with that particular kind of reluctant hunger, it hits harder than anything forced or taken ever could.
I feel it in my wolf like a struck match.
I want more. I want everything she’ll give me if I keep going—and I know, if I pushed her, she would. I can feel it in the way her fingers curl slightly into my shirt, the way she leans in by a fraction she probably doesn’t even notice.
Which is exactly why I pull back.
Her eyes open. There’s a dangerous look in them now that I find enormously sexy.
“What the hell was that?”
“A preview.”
“Of what?”
“What you’ll get when you ask me to do it again.”
“There you go with that arrogance again.” She rolls her eyes, but her flushed cheeks tell a different story. “What the hell makes you think I’ll ask?”
“Because I’m patient enough to wait for it,” I say, low. Like a promise. Like a fucking vow. “Eventually, you will ask. And when you do—” I let my gaze drop to her mouth for just a moment before coming back up to those sea-green eyes, “—I plan to make you beg for me.”
Her expression is back to murder, but her peaked nipples make it impossible for me to fear her anymore.
“The job comes first,” she says. The words are steadier than her pulse. I can hear it, and the erratic rhythm satisfies me more than it should.
“I know.” And I do. It’s one of the things I admire about her; that bone-deep commitment to something bigger than herself. She carries this city on her back and doesn’t complain about the weight. “I would never ask you to compromise your duty.”
“Is that why you didn’t give me away today? When I pretended we just met?”
All hint of teasing dies, and I tell her with solemn conviction, “I won’t violate your trust, Mia. Not ever.”
I step back, giving her space and looking down at her—the fierce, unyielding, luminous thing she is—standing barefoot in her bright apartment in the middle of a city that doesn’t know how lucky it is to have her, and I smile.
“Goodnight, Mia. I look forward to watching you pretend you don’t want me tomorrow. ”
She says nothing to stop me as I let myself out. But she doesn’t tell me I’m wrong, either.