Page 29

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“Two hours,” the guard says at the door.

He unlocks it; I step inside, and the door shuts behind me.

Declan’s standing against the far wall with his arms crossed. No chains. Orange jumpsuit, sleeves shoved up over forearms as thick as my calves, hair tied back. He’s been watching that door, I can tell. The second he sees me, his hard face opens up, and the hum in my chest that’s been faint for a week roars back to full volume. There you are. I don’t know which one of us thinks it first.

He takes one step toward me, his slow, sexy grin starting. Then he stops.

His nostrils flare. And the grin’s gone. His eyes go from gray to molten gold in a blink, and a sound comes out of him that I feel in my bones.

“Who,” he grunts

I shake my head. “Who, what?”

“Who touched you?” He does not sound human at all. “There’s a fucking Alpha on you. On your back. On your hand. Who the fuck put his hands on my wife?”

Oh.

Oh. Whitfield. Assistant DA Brandon Whitfield, Alpha, mated, completely harmless. He shook my hand before the hearing, and afterward he did that thing some men do, where they steer you through a doorway with a palm on the small of your back, like you might not know how doors work. I didn’t even register it. That stupid shit happens all the time.

I wave a dismissive hand. “It was just the opposing counsel.” “He shook my hand, held the door. He also lost this morning, badly, if that helps.” I try for cute.

Doesn’t work. Declan’s right in front of me now, six and a half feet of furious wolf, breathing me in with his teeth bared. Claws popping at the ends of his fingers… A rational part of my brain, the one with the law degree, says I should find this alarming. Possessive. A huge-ass red flag.

The rest of me is soaking through my panties…

Because he’s not mad at me. That’s clear as day through our bond. He’s not even really mad at Whitfield. Nope, it’s something so much simpler than that. Mine. Somebody else’s scent on mine. Wrong. Fix it. And God help me, I want him to fix it. I want it so bad my knees are weak.

So I don’t say a word about what I actually came here for. I hold his golden eyes, slip my suit jacket off my shoulders, and let it drop.

And I tell him, “So do something about it.”

Declan makes a guttural noise. Then his hands are on me… He spins me around, and presses his face right where Whitfield’s palm was, dragging his beard and his open mouth over the silk of my blouse. He scents his way up my spine from the small of my back. Then he takes my right hand, the one Whitfield shook, and rubs it over his throat, his jaw, his hair, presses my palm flat to his mouth and breathes out against it, hot, delicious. Then my neck. My hair. He pulls the pins out of my bun, shoves both hands into my curls, and rubs his cheek against my scalp like a giant, pissed-off cat. He’s growling the whole time, low and constant, and somewhere in the middle of it the growl changes and turns into that purr. The one that melts my heart and makes me horny all at the same damn time.

By the time he’s done, I’m limp against his chest, panting, and I’d bet there isn’t one square inch of me that doesn’t smell like Declan fucking Greene.

“Better?” I manage to croak out.

“Getting there.” He runs his nose over his mark on my neck, and I shiver all over. “You fucking like it, wife.”

“Uh-huh, I’m a feminist.”

“You’re dripping, love. I can smell it.”

“Both things can be true,” I fucking pant.

He huffs a laugh against my skin. When I turn around, his eyes have cooled to gray with gold still sparking at the edges. Fucking hot.

I make myself take a step back, out of his arms, before I completely lose my head.

“I need to ask you something. And I need to do it before you touch me again, because you know perfectly well I can’t think when you touch me.”

He goes quiet, nods once. He knew this was coming…

“The man in the alley off Water Street. Was that the man in the car outside my apartment?”

“Yes.”