Page 27 of Guarded By The Alpha

I dealt with hers first. Then mine. Then I was pressing between her thighs on the table, surrounded by footage of her mother's prison, and nothing in the world existed except the heat of her and the need clawing through my chest.

"Tell me if⁠⁠—"

"I will." She pulled me closer by the nape of my neck. "I'm not fragile."

I pushed into her and the world went white.

She was tight and hot and perfect, her body gripping mine like she'd been made for this, for me. The wolf howled with something that felt like triumph.

"Roan." My name in her mouth was the best thing I'd ever heard.

I moved. Slow at first, building a rhythm that made her nails dig into my shoulders. Her head fell back and I took advantage—pressed my mouth to her throat, her jaw, that spot on her shoulder the wolf wouldn't stop fixating on.

"Harder," she said. Not asking. Telling.

I gave her what she wanted. The table creaked beneath us. Her sounds shifted—sharper, more urgent, her breathing falling into the rhythm of mine.

"Right there—don't stop⁠⁠—"

I had no intention of stopping. My hand found where we were joined, thumb circling her, and she made a sound that cracked something open in my chest.

"Come for me." The words came out lower than I meant them. More command than request. "Nova. Now."

She shattered around me with my name on her lips, her body clenching and releasing in waves that pulled me over the edge with her. My teeth found her shoulder—not hard enough to break skin, but hard enough to matter—and the pull between us sharpened into something that felt like a circuit finally closing.

I stayed inside her as our breathing slowed. Her hand came up to trace the place where my mouth had found her shoulder, and I watched her do it with gold still at the edges of my sight.

"That," she said quietly, "was not in the plan."

A sound escaped me. It might have been a laugh.

"No," I agreed. "It wasn't."

Late evening. The team had scattered to rest.

I found Nova in the corridor outside my door—not knocking, just standing there with her arms crossed and her camera bag over her shoulder, the habit of a woman who steadies herself by documenting.

"Thank you," she said. "For the files. For this."

I held her eyes a moment. Nodded once.

She went to her room. I went to mine.

I went over the plan until my eyes blurred, and then I went over it again. The weight of two days pressed on my chest, and under it, the new weight of what had shifted between us in that room.

At some point I must have slept.

I dreamed of gold eyes in the dark, and a woman who didn't flinch from what I was.

The alert came at three in the morning.

Gideon's voice, flat with the tension of a man who'd just read something bad: "Caught a message. Council, internal, locked down tight. Four words. Speed up the Hale retrieval."

I was on my feet before he finished. The wolf came up hard, every protective instinct flaring hot.

"Where's Drake?"

"Don't know. He's moved—new timing, new approach. The two days we built the whole plan around just turned into the window he's working inside."