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“So”—he pinned her with a stare that brooked no dissent—“tell me who you’re working for.”

There was no point in playing dumb and pretending she hadn’t come for the grimoire. But would spilling her guts help her mama? He’d take her to the council. She’d be charged, put on trial. What was the punishment for trying to steal from a council member? Banishment? Her powers stripped or bound? Nothing good. Cordelia wouldn’t come to her defense. She’d deny all knowledge, any involvement. She wasn’t going down for this. No, Cordelia never got her hands dirty. Then how would she free her mama and Bernard from the old hag’s clutches?

What should I do? Think, Grace.

But with him this close to her, her body was in charge and her brain was as empty as a sauna in summertime.

Chapter Nine

A range of emotions crossed her face, none of them capitulation, and it stirred his blood right back up to boiling point. And sent his semi-soft cock as hard as the marble countertop in his kitchen. Her bound to his bed, her dress rucked up about her thighs, leaving her long legs, legs he wanted wrapped around his hips, bare. Her beautiful eyes were wide, her breath caught in her throat, and drool from trying to remove his gag glistened on her chin. It called to the beast within and short-circuited his brain.

Putain. He needed to rein himself in before he was the one drooling. Before he got down on his hands and knees and begged for her consent. He whipped out his pocket handkerchief and dabbed at her chin. She pressed herself back into the bedhead, her retreat cutting him to the quick.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” He should want to. She’d tried to drug him with herbs. Were it Irena King, or the new guardien he’d confronted in his apartment, there’d be nothing stopping him. But this woman… Grace…

“Why should I believe you?” She swallowed, glancing at her bound wrist. “You’ve tied me to your bed.”

He saved that image—the swipe of her tongue, the sheen of moisture left behind—for a rainy day. Something he could revisit when the thought of acting on it didn’t threaten his entire pack’s existence. “Isn’t that what you wanted, chérie? You came to my apartment. What other reason could there be?”

Grace’s cheeks darkened.

He couldn’t help taunting her, hoping she might…consider it? Change her mind? Want him? When Fates knew she was too good for him. Too wholesome.

Not so good she hadn’t come to steal from him.

“It’s what you were offering me back in the kitchen.”

Her flush deepened, spreading up her chest and across her neck. Oh, she wanted him. Her desire filled his nostrils and coated his tongue. But she didn’t want to want him. And the thread of her fear, though checked, was impossible to ignore.

“Are you retracting your offer?”

He leaned over her, reaching for her right hand. Her nostrils flared, but she didn’t retreat. If she had any inkling of what he wanted to do with her, she wouldn’t be so stubborn. But this dichotomy about her, this push and pull, one minute offering herself, the next pulling away, was intriguing as fuck. And a little concerning. She wasn’t like the viper from the floor below. Irena. That woman would have no qualms about seeing her seduction through. Or knifing him in the back. But Grace… None of this seemed to come naturally to her. Seduction, sneaking into someone’s apartment, stealing. So why was she here? Why accept a mission like this when it was far from her comfort zone?

He ignored the temptation to lean into her, to run his nose, his lips, his tongue along the curve of her throat, and brought up the lock screen on her phone. She struggled against him but, tied to the bedpost, she had nowhere to go. He set her thumb on the fingerprint scanner and unlocked her phone, then re-gagged her. She snarled at him, and his determination wavered.

To avoid further temptation and a potential loss of his control, Alain removed himself from the bed and turned his back on her. Standing in the doorway, he searched through her phone. An image of an older couple on their wedding day stared back at him from her home screen. There was a strong family resemblance between the woman and Grace. Her mother? The man looked nothing like Grace, but he bore a passing similarity with the new tenant on the floor below. A member of the King family? He snapped a picture on his own phone and sent it through to Pierre and Louis.

He turned to her emails. The latest were invoices for a business with a San Franciscan address, Thrifty Witch, with items such as dried herbs and botanicals, resins, ritual oils, cauldrons and candles. One of them from one of his own companies. It stood to reason. He was one of the larger botanical supply companies in the world, and the only one that stocked some of the more exotic and toxic ones.

He skipped to earlier emails. A notice of an electricity bill, a receipt for an online purchase, a calendar reminder about a rent increase. Nothing incriminating. He opened her gallery. A series of promotional images showing a store display and stock items. He flicked through the photos. This wasn’t a store catering to weekend witches caught up in the pop-culture of it all. Her range was extensive, and some of the botanicals she stocked were rare, others hard-core. It was almost as comprehensive as his collection.

He scrolled on. More pictures of the happy couple from her home screen. Some with only the two of them, others with people in the background. He thumbed through them, paused, and scrolled back. There, in the background, behind the newlyweds, was another couple standing at the bar. The man Alain did not recognize. But the woman… It was Irena King, and it confirmed his suspicions. Williams might be the surname she’d stuck with, but Grace was connected to the King family. He sighed.

Pour me a drink, Maxime. I think I’ll be joining you soon.

He snapped another picture, sent it to the twins, and kept scrolling down to older images. A tree-lined street, historic buildings lit up at night, a quaint timber home with bay windows. A town in Alabama? Further down, he found still older images. These were photos of photos. Faded but still discernible. A woman standing in front of a red barn, white fencing arcing away. The same woman in the home screen image, only younger. A tidy house at the end of a dirt driveway, a small pink bicycle with training wheels abandoned on the lawn. A man in the driver’s seat of an old flatbed truck. Not the man in the home screen image, but one with the same nose as Grace. Her father?

Behind, she shifted on the bed. Not a readjustment of her position to make herself more comfortable. No, she was up to something, and she thought she was being so quiet. He kept scrolling, though his attention was split. More snapshots of photos. An orchard, a vegetable patch, and an herb garden to rival the Jardin de Simples at Chateau de Villandry. There was no doubt about it. This was the herb garden of a practicing witch. From the age of the photos, the curled corners, the faded colors, it would have to be Grace’s mother’s garden. Impressive.

The slide of a drawer opening pricked his ears. She must have opened it with her foot. Dexterous little thing. The thought of what he could do with that knowledge curled his toes. She’d look sublime in his swing in his playroom.

Alain didn’t turn around. Not yet. Not until he got the image of her naked and spread for him out of his mind. If she were looking for something to aid her escape, she wouldn’t find it in that drawer. He smirked. She’d find other things, though. The mere thought of her discovering his toys brought his beast close to the surface, and a prickle of dark, coarse fur sprouted across his knuckles. He pushed his wolf back, the fur receding, and he clicked out of her gallery and into her call log.

There it was. The number on the scrap of paper. He navigated to the call history. One phone call from Grace to it forty-five minutes ago. Grace would have been at the Musee de Cluny. He clicked into the details. It had lasted less than a minute. He clicked back out to the recent call list. A second call from the number, this time to Grace, fifteen minutes later. Had she been standing outside his building? He checked the details. The call had lasted for seven minutes. Enough time to get inside, climb the stairs, and ride the elevator to his apartment. The final call was brief, the time coinciding with his arrival. A warning.

Behind him, a sucking in of breath from Grace. He turned around, biting back a smile. Her eyes were wide, and a pair of nipple clamps attached by a delicate chain dangled from her toes. Dexterous indeed. “They go on your nipples, chérie.”

She looked up, startled, a deep flush spreading across her neck, working its way up her face.