Still holding his gaze, I say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t ask for Bitcoin or any other dosh. I didn’t try to blackmail you.”
I want to be furious with him. He’s spent the past three days stalking me on my phone. He just accused me of trying to extort money. As far as I know, he’s stilltaking under advisementDa’s offer—Canton Crew millions and me.
He’s my enemy.
“You didn’t send the email,” he finally says.
I hate the rush of relief, knowing I’ve passed his idiotic test. I hate that my head feels light, like he’s just untied his terrycloth bonds. I hate that he’s bigger than me and stronger than me and I have no hope of ever escaping him.
And I hate that I like all of that too—even a teeny, tiny bit.
I’m Kate Lynch. I have a mouth that scares off half the Canton Crew. I talk back to my mother, my father, to anyone who thinks they’ll tell me what to do. I have to say something to Wolf now, bleed off some of the energy sparking just beneath my skin.
So I snort like none of this matters and I say, “You’re a wolf, lying in my granny’s bed. Is this the part where I saymy, what big ears you have?”
He pauses a moment before he obliges: “The better to hear you with, my dear.”
He isn’t just quoting a silly fairytale. He’s reminding me that he’s spent the better part of the week trying to speak to me. Trying to talk about Da’s offer.
That’s why he’s staring at me with those stalker eyes. That’s why the gold flecks look so bright. He found me and now he’s trapped me and there’s nothing I can do to escape.
But I try to buy a little more time. “Wh— What big eyes you have,” I say.
He sits up on the bed, swinging his legs over the side so hisfeet settle on the floor. He knows exactly what I’m doing—delaying the inevitable, the same as I did in Boston. A sudden flutter between my legs makes me bite my lip. His eyes narrow like lasers.
“The better to see you with, my dear.”
It’s like he canseestraight through my hoodie. He somehow knows my nipples have turned to stone.
When he stands beside the bed, he’s taller than I remember. Broader across the shoulders. He moves with an easy confidence, like he’s used to covering long distances with his pack of fellow wolves.
Instinct makes me back away, one step, two, three, until my hip finds the door. Impossibly, it’s still ajar because I was so astonished to find Wolf here.
He matches my moves like we’re dancing. When I’ve run out of space to retreat, he reaches behind me and pushes the door closed. He takes the daffodils, which I’m clutching like a broken dagger, and places them on the tiny side-table where Granny used to keep her photo of Grandad and Da.
I shift the tin of cookies, raising it between us like a shield. Still pinning me with those feral eyes, Wolf adds the tin to the table, and the box of tea too, because my fingers have forgotten how to obey me. How to keep me safe.
When Wolf’s hands are empty, he cages me against the door. Heat radiates off his body, rising from every inch of him. He plants one hand beside my head and uses the other to pluck at the cords hanging from the neck of my hoodie.
My gulp is audible. If he just shifted his hands… If his palms found my tight, aching nipples… If his fingertips pinched and pulled the way he did in Boston…
“My,” I whisper, and I have to lick my lips because they’ve gone completely dry. “What big hands you have.”
He doesn’t go for my tits. No. He reaches into my sweats. He traces the landing strip I’ve left down my mound, and he dipstwo fingers past my soaked folds. “The better to feel you with, my dear.”
Groaning, I let my head fall back against the door. I close my eyes and sink a little toward the floor because my knees have forgotten why they’re here.
Flicking his thumb against my clit, he leans into me. He sucks my left earlobe between his lips. I feel the tip of his tongue, hot and hard, and then his teeth, sharp enough to make me yelp.
“My,” I say. “What big teeth you have.”
He shifts his fingers inside me. He tongues the pulse point in my throat until I squirm, and then he scrapes his canines along my jugular. “The better to eat you with, my dear.”
I sag against him, giving him my weight. My body remembers everything we did in Boston, how he drove me to a second orgasm, just his mouth on my tits when I was too raw for him to do anything between my thighs.
I want to know everything that wicked mouth can do. Yes, I want him to eat me, to suck my clit, to fuck me with his tongue.
But first, I want to taste him. I want totouchhim. He tied me up last time, before I had the chance.
