“Not on the job.” His voice came out hoarse. The drink and her hand were right beneath his nose. The sharp alcohol odor of the cocktail and the steel-and-roses scent of Raluca herself nearly overwhelmed him, the contrast as intense as that of the heat of her body and the cold of the drink.
“Really?” Raluca didn’t set down the glass. It stayed right where it was, taunting and tempting him — not with the cocktail, the drink itself was nothing, but with the idea of accepting it from her. Of drinking from her hand.
She couldn’t possibly know what that meant to a werewolf... Could she?
“Would one sip of alcohol affect your reflexes to the extent that you’d be unable to protect me?” Her tone was lightly teasing.
She didn’t know. He could hear it in her voice. Nick wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or relieved. She was just fucking with him. She probably thought it was harmless, playful revenge for every rude and teasing thing he’d said that day. But she’d accidentally struck a nerve, and he couldn’t match her lightness in his reply.
“No, of course not. I’m a fucking werewolf —” The word slipped out despite his resolve to not use it around her. “Fuck! I mean, sorry!”
Raluca’s eyes glinted in amusement. Apparently watching him get flustered was worth hearing him swear. “You were saying?”
Nick plowed on, trying to regain his composure. “Anyway, no, it won’t. I’d have to drink a bottle of Jack for it to affect me at all. Two bottles before it would really fuck with — mess up my reflexes. Wolves have a high tolerance.”
“Company rules, then?”
He knew she was leading him on purely to make him lose his cool, to get her own back, and because she apparently found him just as irresistibly teaseable as he found her. He knew it. But that didn’t make it any less tempting. Nick had to go slower and slower with the zipper, keeping tight control over his hands, or they’d start shaking and she’d feel it.
“Do I look like I care about fucking rules?” His voice came out rougher than ever. He sounded like he was squaring off with some punks in an alley, forcing them to retreat with the power of his voice alone.
He expected Raluca to glare or scold him or kick him out of the dressing room. Instead, she just kept on looking at him. He’d never seen anything like the silver of her eyes, bright and hot as molten metal. He could’ve sworn they hadn’t looked anywhere near as metallic when they’d come in. If they had, he’d have gotten her a pair of shades. Even the most oblivious passerby would notice that those weren’t human eyes.
“Then drink,” Raluca whispered. “Or else take off your jacket. It’s hot in here— you’re burning up.”
“I’m not hot,” Nick said. “That’s you.”
Her lips curved into a smile. Had he seen her smile before? If he had, it sure hadn’t been one like this, provocative and sensual and daring.
She’s just fucking with me, Nick told himself. Any second now, she’ll tempt me into making some kind of move on her. And then she’ll go full-on princess and tell me to get my filthy hands off her, and I’ll have to slink away with my tail between my legs.
She will not, growled his wolf. She is teasing, but she means it, too.
Nick ignored his fucking crazy wolf. He had to stay cool. Stay professional. Keep —
Raluca moved the glass until its rim touched his lips, then tipped it backward. Icy liquid washed against his mouth. He had to either drink or let it spill down the front of his shirt.
Or step back and make her look stupid, pouring a cocktail on the dressing room floor, Nick thought.
He had a split second to decide. The last was so obviously the best option — harmless, but giving her a taste of her own medicine — that he had every intention of doing it.
Instead, Nick opened his mouth and drank from her hands.
She doesn’t know what she’s doing, he reminded himself.
But it didn’t matter. The part of him that was pure wolf, uncivilized and untamed, knew what it meant. He’d just signaled his intent to give himself to her and hold nothing back, offering her a power over him that had nothing to do with dominance or submission, and everything to do with love.
I drink from your hands. His wolf’s voice was low and deep, shaking Nick to the core as he silently spoke the ritual words. I give you my heart.
Nick drained the tiny glass in a single swallow. When he spoke, it was in his wolf’s snarl. “You don’t know what you’ve done.”
“Yes, I do.” Raluca turned at last, making his hands slid
e over her body as she moved to face him. Her voice was changed too when she spoke again, not the light ring of crystal but the deeper resonance of a tolling bell. “I’m doing what I want to do. Finally.”
They collided as much as embraced. For a split second he still thought he could step away, but then her mouth found his, or his found hers, and then no fucking power on earth could make him stop. Her lips were soft and hungry, seeking rather than yielding. And hot, so hot. Her mouth was like a furnace, her tongue a caress of fire. He could still taste the cocktail she’d given him, bourbon and bitters, and the fainter vodka-cucumber-mint-elderflower of the one she’d had earlier. Her scent rose up until he thought he could taste that too, flame and metal and roses, sweet and spicy, hot and strong.
The glass dropped from her hands. He didn’t hear it break, so maybe it hit the carpeted floor and rolled away. But he couldn’t spare a moment to look for it, not with her cool hair falling all over him and her hot hands cupping his face as she kissed him with a wildness he’d have never imagined. He caught a glimpse of her in the mirror, all silver hair and ivory skin and skirts like ocean foam. Then her hands reached up, and her hot fingers ran through his hair, and he bent to her touch.