He was quiet.
“I’m sorry.”
“God damn it, Dana,” he said. “I can’t stop thinking about you. Ever since I became a wolf, you’re on my mind. At first I thought it was because you bit me. But then it wasn’t you. It was someone else. So, then, I didn’t know. I want you so bad, more than I ever did before I got bit.”
“You’re lonely here,” said Dana. “It’s normal. When you get out, you’ll meet someone else.”
“I don’t want someone else.” He grabbed her hand. “Come on, give this another shot. We were good together.”
She pulled her hand away, thinking of what Avery had told her the night before. That being a female alpha made her more attractive to other male wolves. Was it affecting Hollis as well? He said that he wanted her more now than he did before. “Hollis, this isn’t your fault.”
“My fault?” he said. “I just want you, Dana.”
“No, you don’t,” she muttered.
“Don’t say something like that,” he said.
She got up off the couch. “I’m going to help you. I’m going to find some way to make this go away.”
He got up too. “That’s not what I want.” He took her by the shoulders. “You’re the most attractive woman I’ve ever seen. I don’t want any part of that to go away.”
“You don’t know what you want,” she said. “Now let me go.”
His fingers dug into her flesh. His face swam closer.
And then his lips were on hers.
There was an explosion of wrongness in her chest, a hundred times stronger than anything she’d felt when Avery had tried to kiss her.
She put her hands on his chest, summoned the strength of her wolf, and pushed.
Hollis was propelled across the room. He landed on the couch, stunned and winded.
“Don’t ever do that again, Hollis,” she said.
* * *
“So, not only do I have this disgusting desire for you, but I’m also attracting every lone wolf for miles as well?” Dana hissed in the darkness of Cole’s cell.
The lights came on.
Cole sat up in bed. “Dana. This is a lovely surprise.”
“Fuck you,” she said. “Fuck you, Cole, I’m not doing this anymore.”
“Doing what?” he said, sliding his legs out over the bed.
“This shit with you. I’m not letting you do this to me. I’m done with you. We’re over.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Really?” He looked down at his bare feet. “Well, I have to admit I was a bit crude with Avery Brooks the other day. I shouldn’t have spoken about your body in that way, should I? I made you angry.”
“This has nothing to do with that,” said Dana. “You can tell anyone you want how my tits look like strawberries—”
“Raspberries is what I said, I believe. And it’s true. They do, very much. You have fantastically beautiful breasts, and I miss them desperately.”
“Stay away from me.”
He stood up. “If you wanted away from me, why did you come to my cell in the middle of the night?”
She was feeling shaky. Damn it. Why did everything get so much harder when she was around him? She hated him. He was making her into something she didn’t want to be. She needed to hold onto that.
“To tell you that it was over,” she said.
Cole walked over to her.
“Stay back,” she said.
He didn’t listen. Before she could stop him, his arm was around her waist. “It can’t be over for us, beautiful. Haven’t I told you that we are deeply bonded?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “I know all about the fact that we’re werewolf mated or whatever. But that doesn’t mean that I actually want you. It’s animal instinct. It’s not me.”
He sighed. “Dana, Dana, why must you continue to try to separate yourself from your nature?”
“Let go of me,” she said.
He brushed his fingers over her cheek. “I sometimes think I’m destroying everything I’ve worked for because of you. I keep waiting for you to understand everything, to accept it all. And you keep resisting.”
“I will always resist,” she said. “Let go of me.”
He let go of her.
She was surprised. She struggled to keep her balance.
He turned away from her. “Sometimes I wish I could have killed you when I had the chance.”
“The mating bond, Cole? I’m going to find a way to break it.”
“There are people who want to kill you now, you know. I don’t let them.”
“Are you threatening me?”
He still wasn’t looking at her. “No,” he said quietly. “I don’t think I could bear hurting you.”
She fingered the scar on her stomach. “You hurt me before, Cole.” She pulled her shirt up, exposing the long twisted line of red flesh. “Look. You did this to me.”
He turned around. He nodded. “Yes. I had my claws in you. Tearing you apart.”
Her heart sped up. For some reason, that was intimate. Something that only she and Cole shared. Their own disturbing kind of first date or something. The way he’d tried to kill her before he’d decided he’d much rather fuck her.
Cole dropped to his knees. He pressed his lips against the scar.
She gasped, her eyes fluttering closed.
His fingers went to work on the buttons of her shirt. Starting at the bottom, he began to unfasten them, planting a kiss on her skin each time.
She sighed softly as his mouth went higher and higher.
He slid her shirt over her shoulders. He reached around her to deftly unclasp her bra.
And then her breasts were in his mouth again. “Raspberries,” he whispered.
“No,” she said. It felt so nice. So right. Cole’s lips, Cole’s tongue, Cole’s fingers. He wrung a symphony of ecstasy from her body. Every touch thrilled through her, perfect and right, urging her further into the madness that was their coupling. The more he touched her, the less she cared about anything except him. “I’ll break this.” Her voice cracked.
He covered her breasts with his hands. “To break it, one of us has to die.”
“What about the lone wolves?” she said. “The ones who are sniffing around?”
He tugged her face down, kissing her lips. “You’d never let one of them do it. You’d fight as hard as you could. You belong to me.”
She pulled away. “What if I did?”
His hands went to her shoulders. He pushed, and she was on her knees too, facing him. He unzipped his jumpsuit and placed her hand against his chest. “Then I’d hunt him down, and I’d kill him, and I’d take you back.”
“You’re locked up, Cole.”
He guided her hand lower. “You’re mine, Dana. I’m all you want.”
“That’s not true. I have to have a choice. I can’t be controlled by the wolf.”
He laughed softly, moving her hand right where he wanted it, and letting go of her. “You have a choice, Dana. You don’t want to admit to yourself what you choose.”
Her fingers curled around his hardness. Her hand lurched up. Back down again.
He groaned. “You’re mine.” His lips were on hers.
And she stroked him there in the tiny cell. God help her, she stroked him. And she liked it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Gray?” said Avery’s voice from his bed.
“It’s me,” she said. Her voice shook. She made her way across the room.
“I’ve been looking for you. Just because we’re off suspension doesn’t mean our deal is off. You’re not supposed to go anywhere without me.” He flipped on the bedside lamp, and she saw him illuminated there, his muscles half-shadowed in the scant light. He was a very good-looking man.
She pulled her shirt over her head.
“Gray, what the fuck?” Avery was on his feet, grabbing a pillow from his bed and slamming it against her chest, covering her.
“It’s the only way to get me unmated to him,”
she said. “I have to do it with another wolf. For whatever reason, you’re feeling things for me, Brooks. So, if we just do it, then I won’t have to feel what I feel for him anymore.”
Avery swallowed. “Shit.”
“It wouldn’t be that bad, would it?”
“We work together,” he said. “We’re partners.”
“You already kissed me. That didn’t screw anything up.” She was pleading with him. Her visit to Cole had left her aroused but unfinished. She was excited, moist, and eager. Avery was there. He was half-naked and gorgeous.
“Well, it kind of did, though,” said Avery.
She knocked the pillow onto the ground. “Look at me.”
He didn’t. He stared up at the ceiling. “Don’t ask me this, Gray.”
“Who else can I ask? Who else can I trust? I need to break the bond. Please.” She closed the distance between them, pressing her naked chest against his.
He grunted. “You’re not playing fair.”
“You think that’s not fair?” She slid her hand under the band of his boxer shorts.
He grabbed her wrist. “Gray, don’t.” He looked deep into her eyes. “This is fucked.”
“My life is fucked,” she said. “Help me get it back.”
“Damn it,” he groaned. And then he was kissing her, his tongue nudging its way into her mouth. His hands moved on her, running over the smoothness of her skin.
It felt good. It didn’t feel like the way things did with Cole, like the earth was spitting out flowers and rainbows, but it felt nice. She kissed him back as hard as she could. She wouldn’t let this stupid wolf thing fuck everything up for her. She was stronger than the damned wolf. She could fight it.
He pushed her down on his bed, crawling over her. He planted kisses on her neck, her ear lobe, in the hollow of her clavicle. His mouth found her breasts.
His lips closed around her nipple, suckling her.
Revulsion suddenly shot through her.
She convulsed against him, and it was incredibly horrible. Dark, black, inky badness. She’d never felt quite so bad.
Avery pulled back. “Gray?”
She tried to breathe. “Fine,” she managed. She was okay. She needed to overcome this if she wanted to be free. It was the wolf, and that was all. The wolf didn’t want this. But she was stronger than the wolf.
“You’re shaking,” he said. He leaned back. “Look, I don’t know about this.”
“Skip the foreplay, okay, Brooks? Let’s just get it done.” She struggled to unbutton her pants, but her hands were shaking. A lot.
He helped her, but he stopped with her pants midway over her hips. “I don’t like this.”
“Brooks, we don’t have to like it.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I kind of do.”
“No. You don’t.”
“I need to be a little bit happy to function, if you know what I mean,” he said, glaring at her.
Dana stole a look at Avery’s crotch. There definitely wasn’t anything bulgy going on with his boxers. She put her hand on him.
He ripped her away. “Jesus. What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’ll go down on you,” she said.
He scooted backwards. “Let’s just put the brakes on here.”
Dana sat up.
Avery flopped backwards on the bed.
She looked down at herself. “Is it because I ran so much that my boobs shrank, like you said?”
“What?”
“You know, you told Cole I didn’t even have breasts. Maybe if they were bigger—”
“No.” He glared at her. “Don’t do that. Don’t act like an idiot woman who’s insecure. You know you’re gorgeous.”
“So then...”
“I started touching you, and you were writhing like you were in pain,” he said. “It kind of turned me off. Completely. And this whole thing is weird anyway. I mean, we’re only doing this because you think it will break the bond you have with Randall, not because you actually even want to.”
“Well, you only kissed me because I’m a female alpha, so I figured you wouldn’t have a problem with it.”
“Seriously?” He got off the bed. He fished her shirt off the floor and threw it at her. “Get dressed, Gray.”
“We don’t have to stop—”
“Yes, we do.” He yanked on a pair of jeans. “I’ll make coffee.” He disappeared out of the bedroom. She could hear him clattering around, filling the coffee maker with water.
She shrugged back into her shirt and joined him in the kitchen.
He was shirtless, dumping heaps of coffee grounds into the machine. His hair was mussed, and she realized that she felt something here. A surge of familiarity and affection. And yes, attraction. He was very pretty, Avery Brooks. She couldn’t help but smile. “You think I’m gorgeous, huh?”
He looked up. “Always have.”
“Well, you’re not so bad yourself, you know.”
He smiled ruefully. “I thought I was a means to an end. A way to get rid of Randall.”
She shrugged. “Not just that.”
He closed the coffee maker. “Look, Dana...”
He’d used her first name. “Yeah?”
“You know, I never thought that if I was that close to being with you, I’d lose my hard on. But, um, I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You thought about being with me?”
He gave her an embarrassed grin. “Yeah, it usually goes much better in my head.”
She arched an eyebrow, smiling. “Really?”
He flipped the coffee maker on and leaned up against the counter. “I can’t figure you out.”
She moved closer, placing her hands on his bare chest.
He sucked in breath.
She ran her fingers over him. He was firm and unyielding. “I do feel things for you, Avery.”
He caught one of her hands with his own. He bent down and kissed her.
She closed her eyes, giving in to it. And then a shock went through her, a feeling of loathing and disgust, like she’d been doused in crude oil. She stiffened.
He pulled away. “That. Every time I try to be close to you, that happens.”
“It’s just the wolf,” she said. “It’s the bond with Cole. We have to keep going to get rid of it.”
Avery turned, placing his hands on the kitchen counter. He stared down at the floor. “I don’t know if I can.”
Damn it. Why did Avery have to be such a nice guy? Cole wouldn’t care about her relative discomfort. He’d take her, no matter how she reacted, his silky voice in her ear, convincing her that she wanted it, guiding her to the pleasure—
Don’t think about Cole, she scolded herself.
“We’re going on the road,” he said. “We’ll be hunting down all of Randall’s betas, staying in hotels...” He straightened, turned to her, and caressed her cheek. “Just the two of us.” He planted a kiss on her forehead. “We’ll try again.”
She bit her lip. She nodded.
* * *
Hunting down the betas was annoyingly slow work, mostly because of all the back-tracking they had to do. If any of the wolves they talked to reacted to Cole’s scent, then Dana and Avery had to cart them back to the SF headquarters. This often meant that they drove out early in the morning, found a beta, and then drove all the way back. They talked about the idea of trying to load more than one beta in the back of their car, but there wasn’t a lot of room, and the logistics might not work out.
For every beta they found, there were two or three on the list of potentials who didn’t react to the scent. They could take in a beta, go to test more wolves, and then not find anyone. By that time, it might be late, making the drive back to headquarters with the beta difficult and torturous. Of course, there was no way they could put up a beta in a hotel.
For one thing, the betas were not exactly cooperative. Many of them had no idea that they’d been bonded to Cole, although some of them did have vague memories of shifting months
and months ago, like Coraline did. Whether they remembered or not, they didn’t take kindly to the idea of being forced to leave their lives and be sequestered at the SF for an indefinite period of time. Even when Dana promised them they were working on breaking the bond, they didn’t seem too happy. After all, they weren’t aware they had any problems. All of this had been dropped on them out of the blue.
She and Avery had to do a lot of talking and explaining. They had to say a lot of the same stuff over and over. They had to engage in a lot of fear tactics. When none of that worked, they had to use their tranquilizer guns.
It was tedious and hard work, dealing with people that were angry with them all the time.
So the weeks went by, and they didn’t actually end up staying in hotels that often. And when they got home to headquarters, they were both exhausted.
There wasn’t much chance to try again, as Avery had put it.
But they did manage a few attempts. None of them went well.
In a hotel in Maine, after a string of days finding no betas whatsoever, she managed to push down the bad feelings long enough to get completely naked with Avery. Things were going well. She thought they were, anyway. Sure, she was gritting her teeth and sweating, half of her body fighting it, but she was overriding all the bad feelings, and she was determined.
Avery backed out, though, right at the end.
Maybe it would be more accurate to say he limped out.
“You’re not exactly hot stuff when you look like that,” he muttered.
Another time, they started making out on her couch in her apartment at headquarters, after getting back from a very long day of dragging in an uncooperative beta. It was late at night, she was tired, and Avery barely got his hand inside her shirt before she started feeling the nasty tug of wrongness. It was like soot in her veins, gunks of darkness. It was hard to breathe. When she’d started turning purple, Avery had stopped the entire thing.
“You looked like you were dead. Maybe some people are into that, but I’m not,” he’d said.
And so it went. They tried, but it was uncomfortable for Dana, even painful, and Avery couldn’t stay aroused in that situation.
There also didn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to her reactions. Sometimes, she could manage kissing him for ten or twenty minutes without bad feelings. The sensations wouldn’t start until they were being intimate. Other times, all Avery had to do was brush a hand over the small of her back, and she’d be ripped in two by a horrid feeling.
The good news was that they were making progress working through the list of Cole’s potentials. Even if she was still Cole’s mate, they were taking away his betas out in the world. Every wolf that they locked up was a wolf that Cole couldn’t force to shift. Those wolves couldn’t kill people. That was important to Dana. She knew they were doing good work. They were saving lives.