Page 77

“Please what?”

“Please. Anything. Everything. Whatever you want.”

I wrap my hand around him. I stroke slowly, firmly, watching his face as the control frays, as the gold floods his irises completely and the growl builds in his chest. His wrists flex under my grip. He could break free in a heartbeat. He doesn’t.

I rise up on my knees. I position him at my entrance. I hold his gaze.

“Mine,” I say.

I sink down onto him. Slowly, inch by inch, taking him deep, and the fullness of him inside me after days of separation is so overwhelming that my head drops back and a sound tears out of me that echoes off the bedroom walls. He fills me completely. The bond flares so bright I can feel it in my teeth, a rush of connection and completion that makes the doubled heartbeat thunder.

I ride him. Slowly at first, finding the rhythm, the angle, the depth that makes us both lose our minds. His hands are still under mine on the mattress and the restraint is costing him everything, his body trembling, sweat breaking out across his chest, the growl in his throat constant and building.

I release his hands.

He moves so fast I don’t see the transition. One second I’m pinning his wrists, the next his hands are on my hips and he’s pulling me down onto him as he drives up and the force of it lifts my knees off the mattress. I grab his shoulders and hold on. He sits up, his chest against mine, his mouth finding the silver scar on my neck, and the bond surges between us so hard it steals my breath.

“I love you,” he says against the scar. “I love you. I love you.”

I come with his mouth on the mark and his arms around me and his heartbeat pounding against my chest, and the orgasm feels different from the ones that came before. Not stronger. Clearer.

The bond is still there. I can feel its amplification, the way it turns every signal between us up until nothing is quiet. But this time I know what I’m feeling. I know where it comes from. And I’m choosing it.

He follows me over the edge. His arms crush me against him and he buries himself deep and comes with a sound that’s halfway between my name and a howl. The bond surges between us.

Nothing changes. The mark was already permanent. The connection was already sealed.

What’s different is me. For the first time since his teeth broke my skin, I’m not experiencing the bond as something that happened to me.

I’m choosing to belong inside it.

We stay there. Sitting up, tangled together, his face in my neck and mine in his hair, both of us breathing hard, both of us holding on. The doubled heartbeat has never been louder or more synchronized, and the rhythm of it, his and mine together, feels like a language I’m finally fluent in.

“I’m going to need a complete inventory,” I murmur against his temple. “Of the wolf stuff. Documented. Organized. I want temperature ranges, healing rates, sensory capabilities, shifting parameters, and a full explanation of the bond mechanics. In writing.”

He laughs. The real one, the quiet one that shakes his chest and warms his eyes and makes him look young. “You want a technical manual.”

“I want data. I’m a financial analyst. We don’t operate on faith.”

“I’ll write you a manual.”

“With citations.”

“With citations.” He pulls back and looks at me and his eyes are gray again, human, warm, and the love in them is so complete and so undisguised that it makes my breath catch. “Babochka. You are the most extraordinary thing that has ever happened to me.”

“I know,” I say. “You’re lucky I have good taste in monsters.”

He kisses me. Soft. Tender. As if he understands exactly what I’ve given him and has no intention of wasting it.

We shower. We eat pizza standing at the counter, falling easily back into the domestic rhythm that existed before truth and violence blew it apart.

We go to bed. He pulls me against his chest, my back to his front, his arm around my waist, his mouth on the silver scar. The doubled heartbeat slows into sleep rhythm. Synchronized. Chosen. I close my eyes.

For the first time since I came to Chicago, I’m not investigating anything. I’m not decoding anything. I’m not mapping financial structures or cataloging biological anomalies or building a case against the man holding me. I’m just here. In the arms of a wolf who loves me. In a city that belongs to his pack. In a life I chose with open eyes.

My father would understand. Not because he would tell me to stay. He taught me better than that. He would tell me to look at everything. The good and the terrible. The loyalty and the violence. The man who cooks for me and the wolf who kills for me. The lies Dominic told and the choice he finally gave back.

He saw the Voronovs clearly and stayed for fifteen years anyway. Not because they were good. Because people can be dangerous and loyal, violent and protective, wrong and still worth loving.