Pepper is waiting out in the hallway and-dammit!-he left a little puddle of pee there.
Fuck.
Well, at least it was on the hardwood, not a rug I couldn’t afford to replace.
“Watch your step-there’s dog pee!”
I call back to Billy.
“I’ll clean it up.”
I hear Billy growl in the bedroom, and Pepper pees some more.
“Don’t be mean to him!
He’s just a puppy!”
I run for paper towels.
Billy catches me on his way out.
He kisses me one more time.
“I want you,” he says and leaves.
Those are his parting words.
I stare at the door he left through, a slow smile creeping over my face.
“Noted.”
Billy
I savor Aubrey’s scent on my skin as I take the elevator to the garage.
My face tingles where her silver nose ring burned me.
My balls have to be a dark shade of blue-they ache like a motherfucker, but my wolf is whistling while he walks.
I just made Aubrey come.
I had her naked in my bed.
Her scent won’t just be all over my place, it will be on my sheets.
But as I tear out of the garage in my Porsche, the sound of Brick’s rebuke rings louder in my ears.
No one works from home at Moon Co.
Twenty-five percent of the employees are wolves.
That means no one is sick-ever.
Brick runs his business with iron rule.
He doesn’t demand evenings and weekends unless it’s necessary, but you sure as hell better be at your desk when he needs you.
I’ve always been the guy putting in the sixty hour weeks.
I’m there first.
Leave last.
I make it my job to be on top of every single aspect of the business that might bite us.
I work with Eagle-our corporate attorney and Brick’s brother-in-law-to problem solve every liability.
I run that company as much as Brick does.
Maybe more.
So yeah, me fucking around with video meetings yesterday was as far from normal as it gets.
What is happening to me?
I roll down my windows and let the polluted New York air with the stench of the streets slap my face.
Aubrey’s scent fades, and I pick up the variety of scents on the street-the sweet grease of donuts, the singe of rubber, the exhaust.
As my disgust for the city crawls over my skin, the pleasure from touching Aubrey vanishes.
I’m left only with anger.
Why in the fuck does she have this affect on me?
How could I let my need to get into her panties interrupt me doing my job for Brick?
I disappointed my alpha-again.
And this time under the auspices of making up for last time.
What if…this wasn’t about making things up to Brick at all?
What if Aubrey is actually my downfall?
The Adalwulf crone predicted Madi would bring about the end of the Blackthroat pack, but that didn’t happen.
What if she got it wrong?
Or what if it wasn’t a prediction at all, but a curse?
A curse that twisted and found its way to me.
The Adalwulfs had made a pact with witches generations ago, and now every generation produces a wolf-mage-pack seeress to help guide their alpha.
Their old crone died with Odin, their last alpha, but my sources tell me a new young seeress has taken her place-Aster, the virgin mage.
It may be that they sent Madi as a curse to destroy Brick, and when that didn’t work, redirected it to me.
Why else would I be so entranced with a lowly human?
I hate humans.
I care nothing for art.
Social justice means nothing to me-I’m a wolf operating in a separate society.
I yank down the visor to look at my reflection in the mirror.
Angry red blisters appear along my nostril and upper lip where Aubrey rubbed her silver nose ring.
I enjoyed the kiss.
Enjoyed the passion behind it.
Enjoyed knowing I inspired that passion.
I allowed myself to be marked by a human.
All the while, my alpha needed me, and I was absent from the pack.
What in the fuck is wrong with me?
I need to get a grip.
No more working from home.
No more fucking the enemy.
I will pay her for her work on the mural and get through the bachelor / bachelorette party and wedding, but that’s it.
If we happen to collide in bed a few times while we’re at it, I won’t complain, but I can’t let her distract me.
I can’t succumb to whatever strange allure she has.
Aubrey Cook is trouble.
Her chaotic beauty is dangerous.
No matter what happens over these next few weeks, I can’t let her under my skin.
Aubrey
Well.
For a guy whose parting words were “I want you,” I would have to conclude that Billy White didn’t want me that badly.
Either that, or stuff went down at Moon Co, and he’s been drowning in work because I haven’t seen or heard from him since he bailed two days ago after Brick called.
Which is why I’m back to getting a rise out of him by tromping all over his boundaries.
Grayson, the beefy door guy, let me into Billy’s apartment yesterday, and today with no explanation other than that Billy had told him to give me access.
There was no note or text message from Billy.
We are on radio silence.
Well, whatever.
Fine by me.
I got a lot of work done on the first mural.
I also enjoy having Billy’s place to myself.
Figuring he probably has nanny cams all over the place, I made myself at home today to annoy him, helping myself to his coffee in the kitchen and the food in his refrigerator, which is almost all meat, for the record.
I guess he’s one of those paleo diet guys.
Now I’m in his bedroom en suite’s giant, two-person shower, washing off the paint before my date with Madi tonight.
Yes, I did think it was appropriate to get naked in the same place he gets naked.
I pop the lid off Billy’s shower gel.
It’s in a glass bottle-who brings glass bottles into a shower?
I truly hope he arrives home while I’m in the shower and finds me here, making myself at home like a bad hook-up who won’t leave the morning after.
I haven’t decided whether I’d let him have his way with me or leave him hungry as I flounce out in the sexy go-go boots Caroline gave me.
But I’ve been in his shower for a full thirty minutes, and he hasn’t shown up.
I guess I need to get a move on, so I can meet Madi.
I was hoping we could go over together from here, but she texted to say she has to work late, and she’ll meet me over there.
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