Except I can’t quite enjoy it as much as I want to, because the sight of Lucas Steele actually looking embarrassed is doing nothing good to my insides.
I drag my palms over my still-damp hair, suddenly tired. So tired.
“Lucas, just tell me the truth,” I say, and I hate how small my voice gets. “Why? Am I lacking something?”
“No.”
It comes out of him fast. Immediately. Like the answer was already sitting at the front of his mouth. Like there was no scenario in which he was going to let that question hang in the air between us for even a breath.
I feel a hot, unwelcome sting behind my eyes. I blink it away. “Then what is it?”
He doesn’t answer. He purses his lips, one hand flexing at his side. I watch him search for something to say, watch his throat work, watch whatever is caged in his chest rattle the bars once and then go quiet again.
Nothing. He gives me nothing. Just stares at his feet.
“You know what?” I say softly. “I’m glad you didn’t answer that.”
His head snaps up.
“Because any excuse you gave me”—I keep my voice level—“I would’ve had to pretend to respect it. And I don’t. I don’t respect any of this.” I gesture between us. “Only a weak man runs like a coward from something the fates decree. And I don’t like my men weak, Lucas.”
His eyes flash. For a second—for one delicious, dangerous second—I see his wolf looking out at me from behind them. Dark and wounded and furious.
I turn away before I can let it affect me. I start walking toward the tree line. I can feel him following me at a distance.
I call over my shoulder, sweet as honey, “Don’t worry about the bond, Alpha. There are plenty of men to choose from. I’m sure it won’t be a problem for you much longer.”
I make it maybe twenty paces into the trees. Then, I hear it.
The sound of a fist hitting bark. Hard. Hard enough that something splinters. A low growl follows, a sound that is not quite human and not quite wolf, tearing itself out of a prison that has been holding too much for too long.
I don’t turn around. I don’t give him the satisfaction. But I let myself smile. A slow, serene, dangerous little smile that he cannot see.
I lift one hand and twirl a damp curl of my hair around my finger as I walk. My wolf is practically purring inside me, the hurt from a minute ago already banked under a warmer and more useful emotion.
He punched a tree. Over me. Over the idea of me with someone else.
I step over a fallen log without breaking stride.
I don’t chase men. I never have. My mother raised me better than that, and my own pride wouldn’t let me even if she hadn’t.
But I know how to make a man chase me.
And Lucas Steele, with all his discipline and his control and his carefully constructed walls, has absolutely no idea what he has invited into his territory.
He wants to pretend the bond isn’t there? Fine.
He wants to pretend I’m just another visiting official? Fine.
He wants to kiss me senseless in a library and then tell me it was “unintentional”? Oh, Alpha.
I smile wider as I take in the forest around me.
Let’s see exactly how unintentional it remains.
By the timeI get back to the estate house, my hair is mostly dry and my resolve is steel.
Lydia is waiting for me in the entrance hall with a tablet in her hand and a polite, composed smile that tells me nothing about what she is thinking. If she noticed I was gone for two hours without telling anyone, she has the good grace not to mention it.
