Page 28 of Wolf It Down, Knot Me Up

His gaze narrows on me. “Are you trying to break me?”

I laugh. “Neither of us is sleeping, so we might as well not sleep in the same room.” The words are out before I talk myself out of them, and instead of panicking, something bright and reckless blooms in my chest. Maybe I should be horrified by what I’m inviting into my room. Instead, I’m absurdly excited by it. “I just want you to hold me.”

“That’s what you want?” He raises an eyebrow.

I grin. “Ask again in ten minutes and check the answer.”

His laugh is dark and delicious.

I slide my hand into his before I lose my nerve. It swallows mine whole, and the simple difference in our sizes sends another traitorous shiver through me. Then I tug him toward the house.

He follows half a step behind me, silent, and somehow that’s worse. Every nerve in my body is already tracking him, hyperaware of the heat at my back and the impossible temptation of turning around.

I almost bounce up the front steps, unable to explain the ridiculous thrill fizzing through me. It feels dangerously close to sneaking out after curfew or climbing over a fence marked KEEP OUT. Except I’m drawing a convicted Alpha I barely know into the darkness of my house, and every step feeds the wicked little part of me that’s been begging to find out just how dangerous he really is.

I pull him inside, and he kicks the door shut behind us. Then we stop at the bottom of the stairs. I’m up on the first one, so when I turn, we’re almost level, his face right there, and everything between us ignites into a flame. My breath rushes out of me, while his hand tightens on mine, barely, the smallest pressure.

Then the arousal comes over me. Half of it isn’t even mine. It pours out of him, dark and heavy with no brakes on it, and the burning sensation doubles inside me, to the point where my knees nearly give out.

“How are we supposed to survive this?” I ask, smiling, because if I don’t make it a joke, I’ll shatter under the weight of it.

He watches me for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Whatever’s happening behind those eyes isn’t soft. “You keep asking the wrong question.”

“Then what’s the right one?”

He grins for a moment. “You should be asking how long it’d take me to carry you to your room if you begged me.”

I gasp, pressing my thighs together.

“But I want you to know that if we go up those stairs, that’s the end of it. I’ll lay you down on that bed and take my time with you. I’ll drag my mouth and tongue over every inch of you until you’re pleading for more, and then I’ll take you hard, because I’ve had your scent in my head since we met. And it’s driving me insane.”

I shudder, and my heart is a fist swinging at my ribs.

“You’re not safe with me,” he growls.

It comes through the bond right behind the words, all of it, the weight and the hunger and the control. The air in the room turns thick and charged, and every sense I have goes on alert. “Too bad I’m not scared of you.”

“You should be.” He leans in closer, his breath on my throat. “You don’t know who I am. What I’ve done.”

“I don’t care.” I hear myself say the words, and I should care enormously, but instead I’ve never been so completely wrecked by desire.

Part of me braces for him to leave, and I tell myself firmly that I’m not begging or chasing him out into the dark like some desperate Omega. Which is precisely who I’ve become tonight.

Then I watch the dark come up in his eyes. “Fuck it,” he groans under his breath.

I don’t even blink.

He drags me off the step as though he’s done pretending distance was ever an option. My back meets the wall with a dull thud, his body caging me there without force, only certainty. Then he kisses me, and there’s nothing careful left in him. It’s fierce, desperate, almost punishing in its intensity, as though he’s been fighting himself for hours and has finally decided to lose. I should be horrified. Instead, I open for him.

His hands slide up to frame my face, holding me exactly where he wants me as the kiss deepens. Every ounce of restraint that’s haunted him all night seems to unravel against my mouth, and I meet it without hesitation, my fingers knotting tighter in the front of his shirt as though I can somehow pull him closer than being pressed against me.

Then his hand wraps around my throat.

Not tight. Just enough to make it clear that, for this moment, I belong to him, and I’m powerless to change it.

I wait for the panic. Five years of flinching at less than this, and I wait, but it never comes. What steamrolls forward instead is a purr, rolling up out of my chest and vibrating against his palm, an unmistakable order to my Alpha to keep going.

He rewards me with a deep growl in his throat.