Page 70 of Craved By a Wolf

He stepped up to her. “I’m as strong as an ox and I don’t need to rest. What I need to do is go with you.”

“Why?” Her look turned cautious. Curious. Far too wary. All the warmth left her eyes as she gazed up at him. “Because you know fae and can read magical texts and help out, or because you want to stand guard over me? Which is it, MacKinnon?”

The cold edge to her eyes and the barriers he could see coming up between them said she knew which one it was, and she didn’t like it.

She backed off two steps, her face an icy mask that chilled him. “I don’t need a guard dog, wolf. I don’t need someone trying to control me or thinking they own me. I certainly don’t need someone who believes they need to shadow my every step because they can’t trust me.”

“Hella.” He reached for her and she glared at his hand, making it clear she wasn’t going to be taking it this time. The wounded look she gave him as she turned away from him told him to give her space, to give her time to cool down and use it wisely to figure out what he could say to make things better and make her see that he did trust her.

He just didn’t trust the incubi.

She muttered things beneath her breath as she grabbed her carpet bag and set it down on the dressing table on the other side of the large room.

He remained where he was even though the small distance between them pained him and he wanted her close to him again, wanted to rip down the barrier he had made her put up and show her that he could be the man she needed him to be.

For what felt like the hundredth time since he had met her, he cursed his wolf instincts.

He also cursed his inability to keep his big mouth shut until he had filtered his thoughts when he said, “It will be different when we mate.”

She whipped to face him, clutching a dress in her hands, shock written in every line of her face and in her scent too.

“That’s it. That right there is the final straw. You don’t get to make decisions for me, Grant MacKinnon!” She threw her dress back into her bag and grabbed it. “You most certainly don’t get any say in whether I become your mate or not. I won’t stand for it. I don’t want another overbearing, narcissistic control freak in my life. I don’t want someone who doesn’t treat me like an equal. I don’t need someone who wants to control my every move. I’m going down to help my friend and I’m going to request another room, and you’re staying the hell away from me unless you want to find out how true the whole ‘woman scorned’saying is. I’ll fry your balls right off your body if you come near me again.”

She hurried through a door into an adjoining room.

Kin sank onto his backside on the navy bedclothes on the king-sized bed and stared at the wooden door she slammed closed behind her.

“Way to balls everything up,” he muttered to himself and leaned forwards, resting his elbows on his knees.

He placed his head in his hands and sighed, trying to figure out a way to make Hella forgive him and to make her see he hadn’t meant it like it had sounded. He hadn’t just decided they would mate and that was that. He had meant it more likeifthey mated. Only it hadn’t come out that way, because his wolf side couldn’t bear the thought of her not being his, so it had twisted his words into something more definite.

And demanding.

He groaned and palmed his forehead, desperately seeking a solution before Hella came out of the room.Ifshe came out of the room. For all he knew, it had another exit. He focused his senses on her and found her there on the other side, moving around. Not gone yet. He needed to find the right thing to say to her, so she wouldn’t ask her friend for another room and end up leaving him.

Or seek to fry his balls off as punishment.

The door opened and he lifted his head enough that he could look at her.

Although, she had found another way to punish him for trying to control her.

She dropped her carpet bag by her pointed black stiletto boots and his gaze tracked her stripy black and white stockings upwards to the ruffled skirt of her corseted black dress.

He growled at how short it was and how it flashed a strip of creamy thigh between the top of her stockings and the hem of her skirt, and pushed to his feet.

She gave him a disinterested look as she finished pinning her blue hair in a tangled mass at the back of her head and strode past him, her bare shoulders tipped back.

MacKinnon was going to put her in her place.

But then his gaze caught on her unmarked nape.

He stilled and stared at it, the sight making him ache for another reason as she drifted away from him, heading for the door. Gods, he wanted to sink his fangs into that spot and hold her with them as he claimed her.

He wanted his mark on her.

He needed the bond with her.

Something he wasn’t going to get if he continued messing everything up by letting his instincts take the reins. She would leave him, and she would take his heart with her, and he would be a hollow shell for the rest of his days.

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