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Alone in the elevator with him, she realized just how much trouble she was in.
Stress and exhaustion and fear had worked to quieten the dual needs of her Sidhé nature and the Therian wolf, a primal creature who’d scented the male who’d laid claim to her all those years ago. That wolf didn’t always speak the same language as the logical part of her brain. Therians might not be human but they had dual natures, the beast that was their animal self, and the “human” part that controlled their minds when they weren’t running in their animal form.
They were always both, but in one form, one part of their nature tended to have more control. Usually.
Zee had three aspects to her nature, thanks to her mother’s Sidhé blood. Now, although she was in her mortal form, the hungry, aching burn of lust had teased the baser aspects of both her Sidhé and Therian natures to the forefront and her body ached to be stroked, to be touched.
Desire, hot and molten, pulsed through her in a slow, inexorable rush. It was instinct to clench her thighs together but that only put pressure on her clitoris and made the matter worse.
She heard a rough intake of air and realized with no small amount of despair that Niko had caught her scent. The temperature in the elevator seemed to skyrocket. Under the layers of her clothing, she grew flushed, her skin too tight for her body, while her nipples were so hard, the silk of her bra was too abrasive.
Could just being around him do this to her?
And she knew, without a doubt, the answer was yes.
She’d barely been coming into her adulthood when she left the Appalachia pack. Even then, her own hunger for Niko had sometimes scared her. She understood her nature a little better now, knew that while most Therian females began exploring their sexuality in their late teens to early twenties, her mixed blood had changed the timeline for her.
The full intensity of that hadn’t come on her until maybe five years ago, but it had hit her hard, likely because she was isolated, cut off from her pack, cut off from her family, slowly going insane inside her skin.
Now she was bare inches from the man who first stirred her lambent hunger. More, he was still the man who haunted her dreams, the man whose face she saw when the aching want pushed her to take matters into her own hands.
Thankfully, the doors didn’t open until they reached their floor. Gripping her suitcase by the handle, she hurried out of the elevator car, her face burning.
She could scent her own arousal, knew Niko had caught it as well. There was no way in hell the Therians in that group had missed it.
And when they arrived in Durham-Starfell, she’d still be like this—aching, empty, lonely, rejected.
Bleak emptiness flooded through her at the revelation.
Damnhim. Damn him to hell and back.
Abruptly, tears burned her eyes and she blinked them back, willpower and frustrated anger the only things keeping her from collapse.
“Why did you come after me?” she demanded, sensing him coming up behind her.
“You belong with your pack.”
She whirled to glare at him, one hand clenched in a bloodless fist around the strap of her overnight bag, the other gripping her suitcase so hard, the casing groaned in protest.
“I don’t have a pack,” she said starkly, the pain still an open wound on her heart, on her soul, a wound that had been seeping ugly, bitter drops of blood for a decade. “You made sure of that when you threw me away.”
He flinched as if she’d hit him.
“Zee... ” Her name came out a quiet rasp, his vivid blue eyes going stormy and dark with the intensity of his emotions.
Guilt, she realized. It was guilt.
Humiliation added another layer to the miasma now choking her.
Shaking her head, she turned away and moved to the door. There was no need to wait for him to figure out what room to go to. She quickly discovered that this floor held only one room. The penthouse suite took up the entire top floor.
Niko’s presence at her back had her instincts on edge and she sidestepped, doing a half-turn to keep him in her line of view as he moved to pass a card over the panel embedded in the door. A light flashed green and the door opened with a whisper of sound.
She entered, adjusting the weight of her overnight bag where the padded strap dug into her shoulder.
“Zee, I fucked things up,” Niko said, standing so close his breath stirred her hair. “I know that and I’m... Fuck, I’m sorry. That doesn’t even touch how much regret I’ve got inside, and I know it doesn’t mean shit, know it can’t fix the trouble I put you through.”
She closed her eyes, misery a hard knot in her throat.
“But if there’s anything I can do to make up for what I did to you... ”
He touched her shoulder.
She jerked away, that simple touch putting her nerve endings on red alert.
The lights in the room came on at her movement and she looked around the opulently luxurious suite. Despite the size of the rooms, she already felt caged in. Trapped.
Without speaking, she headed for the hall.
A doorway stood open on either side, showing two separate bedrooms. She ducked into one, closed the door and immediately collapsed against it.
