Page 57

She wanted me. What I did not know was whether she would choose me.

Those were different things. Nell could want me her whole life and still decide that the cost of my world was too high, that the pack politics and the Alpha obligations were more than she had signed up for.

If she didn't choose — if she walked away — the other packs would not let her walk far.

She knew too much. She had dismantled the Volki. She was inside the Blackwood infrastructure in ways that made her a target the moment she stopped being under my protection. I could not let her walk out into the world unguarded and unallied. I wouldn't let her get more than a block away from me. I just needed to give her the opportunity to say no first.

She didn't protest when I laid her down on the bed.

"Tell me to stop," I said.

"Fucking bastard."

"Nope. My parents were married before they had me." I reached for the hem of the shirt. Slowly. Giving her every second to move away from me. Not that I'd let her get further than the foot of the bed. "Tell me to stop."

"I don't want kids."

"Might be too late for that."

Her eyes went wide. "Fuck you."

I pulled the shirt over her head. Dark nipples pointed accusingly back at me. I filled my mouth with one of them, palming the other with wicked promises.

"I have a career," she whimpered as she arched into my mouth.

"I would never take that away from you." I licked the tip of her nipple while I snaked a hand up the short skirt she was wearing. "You're too fucking brilliant to keep out of the office. I'd build a daycare on the office floor. Or you could work from home."

"Gah," she said when I thrust two fingers inside her. They went in easily with how wet she was.

"Was that a no?"

"I fucking hate you."

"I'm fucking obsessed with you. Since the moment I lifted your limp body in that park, I have not stopped thinking about you. When you type, it makes me hard. When you tap a pen against your lower lip, I fucking nut in my pants. But if you tell me no, I'll stop."

She whimpered. I watched her throat. Watched her lips. She was trying to form words. The lie would not surface.

I pressed my mouth to the hollow of her throat. I was going to mark the fuck out of her when she accepted the bond, right where everyone could see and know that she was mine.

Every time she reached for me, I pulled back. I was edging her not to deny. To force her to admit it; that she was mine as much as I was hers.

She made her displeasure known. This was Nell. She was not passive in any room she occupied, including this one. The sounds she made when I redirected my attention had an edge of fury in them that was making me harder.

"Tell me to stop," I said, against the inside of her knee.

"I hate you," she said through clenched teeth.

I wrapped my tongue around her clit. She gasped.

I ran the smooth part of my canine against her labia, letting her feel a hint of the point. She cried out.

I brought her to the edge with my mouth. The tension gathered. I pulled back. Not far, just enough that her core was clenching without release as it tried to capture my tongue and bring it deeper inside her channel.

"Magnus!"

"Tell me to stop." I sucked her clit like it was the center of a Tootsie Pop.

"Fuuuuck"