ChapterSeventeen
Dominic Dane
My hands shook so hard,I was having trouble keeping myself in control. So much trouble pushing the beast down. My eyes were closed and my teeth gritted, and every ounce of willpower I owned was being put to the test.
That smell. The way she’d looked at me. Her flushed cheeks and her wet panties…
Mine, the beast growled, knocking the breath out of me as he tried to take control once more. He wanted out. He wanted to take her right now—so what if there were other agents in here, too? He didn’t give a shit. He wanted them all to know who she belonged to. He wanted her almost as badly as I did, and it was probably the most dangerous thing any of us had ever felt.
She was just fucking impossible. Wasn’t it enough that I had to endure the scent of her all day, every day? Back home, we were never close. I never felt like I was suffocating on the smell of her—of spring and sunlight and fucking rainbows.
I’d felt it first when I went to her apartment. I could hardly breathe through my nose without losing control and ripping all those clothes off her with my bare hands. She’d been in leggings and a tank top, her tits taunting me, those legs, and her tight ass…Fuck, Teddybear. She always wore jackets and loose pants at the office. I never knew before…but now I did. Now, there was no fucking doubt in my mind that every inch of her was perfect.
I had to share the same bed with her, too. I had to barely sleep with one eye open, just to make sure I wouldn’t lose control without even realizing it. And then I had to wake up and watch her sleeping, surrounded by silk and that long pink hair of hers that drove me nuts. How the fuck am I supposed to hold myself back from that?
It was physically painful to get out of the bed without touching her, but I did it anyway. And I went out to talk to Derek only for a few minutes, and when I came back in, I heard my name leaving her lips. I heard her voice, breathless, and I smelled the scent of her wet pussy that turned my whole body inside out. I don’t even remember how I went to the bedroom door, how I opened it, just that I saw her lying there, cursing herself, cursing me…wearing nothing but a bra and soaking wet panties like she’d made it her mission to end me.
Fuck, Theodora, my mind screamed, and the beast roared. If I gave him even a second of hesitation, he’d have me in that bedroom again, fucking her while the whole world watched. Just the thought of my cock inside of her had my skin burning. I was still hard, ten minutes later, and I couldn’t even stand to try to walk it off because the agents would see it. I couldn’t afford for them to know how I felt about her. It was bad enough that I had to endure how they looked at her, how some of them got turned on whenever she was in the room. It cost me to stop myself from grabbing them by the necks and throwing them out the fucking window.
How dare they even turn their eyes on her? None of them was worthy. Looking at her was a privilege none of them had earned.
I, least of all, but here we were.
“Dominic,” Tailsburry called, and I raised my finger to tell him to give me a moment. My beast was still there, waiting for the chance to take over, and I couldn’t let that happen.
He played with my mind, too—sent image after image of her face when I’d cornered her in the bedroom, reminded me of the scent hanging on her fingers that was still in my nostrils. The taste of her that I’d sucked off her finger was still on my tongue, and that moan she’d given me…fuck, it was still in my head. The smell of her skin—of spring and sunshine and all things sweet was one thing. But the smell of her wetness leaking out of her was a different monster completely, possibly the only one that was going to defeat me.
And to know that she’d been imagining me while she fucked herself made my chest want to explode.
How in the fuck had she gotten under my skin like this? I never allowed it to happen. I never cared to, but the more I talked to her, the more I touched her, the more I lost sight of everything else. She was all that mattered. She was the sun, and my being revolved around her. It had started the day we met in the janitor’s closet two years ago, and since the moment I saw her smile, thoughts of her had been a constant in my life. Fuck, she didn’t just get into my head—she’d made a permanent residence of it, too.
Leaning back on the couch, I let go of my breath and stuck my hand in my pocket to find the button—the one she traded me for a smile. I never really knew why I kept it. I never knew why it calmed me, but it was the only thing in the world that did. So, I kept it with me at all times, played with it, analyzed it with my fingers, until my beast calmed down completely.
I knew it wouldn’t last. I’d have to see her again in a few minutes, and even though I’d asked her to shower to get that smell off her, it was still deep in my nostrils. Seeing her face was all it was going to take for me to fall back into my beast’s trap.
But until that happened, I could try to distract myself for a bit.
Standing up, I glanced down to make sure my cock wasn’t still hard, and I made for Jamison standing near the table, tapping away on his laptop.
“Give me the reports,” I told him, and he raised his head in surprise, like he hadn’t heard me approaching at all. Some agents they were.
“Again?”
I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath. Now was not the time to toy with my patience.
“Sure, man. Sure,” Jamison said and scrambled to his backpack to get me what I asked for—the only thing that was going to force me to stop thinking about fucking Teddy until she couldn’t stay awake. My cock jerked instantly at the thought. Fuck, I couldn’t even be in my own mind safely anymore. My body kept betraying me, no matter how strong my resolve.
But Jamison put the folder in my hands, and I went to the other side of the room to lean against the wall, as far away from everyone else as I could get. As far away from her when she came out of the bedroom. She’d already showered—I smelled the scent of coconut and heard her going through the room as she got dressed.
Don’t let her get dressed, my beast said, and wanted me to go to her right now, before it was too late.
But it already was.
The pictures in the folder made my chest squeeze tightly. The beast withdrew in itself, growling in anger. When was he going to learn that I was in control here? My father never had the chance to teach me much—our beasts don’t really force themselves out of us until adolescence, but he did tell me one thing that I never forgot: If you can’t best your beast, you’re no werewolf—just half a man. I’d taken those words to heart, and I still lived by them.
That is why I forced myself to take in every detail of the picture in front of me—of the crime scene where the ODP had found Michael Bennett’s body.
The blood didn’t make me flinch. I’d seen plenty of it during the years. But the way Michael Bennett’s head was cut off, the way his fingers were cut just an inch below the knuckles, and the way his whole torso was coated with his own blood like someone had taken the time to make sure every inch of skin was covered in it…that was the same way they’d killed my father.