Page 48 of The Wolf Professor

Suddenly her eyes blazed. “What if I can’t resist you either? What if I don’t want to?” Her jaw was set now, stubborn. Beautiful.

He watched helplessly as she uncrossed her legs, got up and moved around the desk. When she was almost brushing against his body, she put her head close to his and whispered, “What if I want you to do all those things to me that you think are wrong and wicked? What if Ireallywant that?”

Max groaned. “Charlie,” he croaked, lowering his head, drinking in the intoxicating scent of her. His mouth brushed her neck, his incisor grazing her skin as she arched into him. “You don’t know what you’re asking…”

“Don’t I?”

He screwed his eyes shut, shook his head. “What if I lose control?”

“I told you, I feel safe with you, Max. Safe… and wild. And that’s what’s so wonderful about whatever this is between us. You bring out all of me. I want to do the same for you. You want everything to be safe, you want to fit life into a nice safe box. But you know as a historian that so much that happens isn’t safe. It’s vibrant and dangerous and beautiful. Life, relationships, it’s all messy. It always has been. All I know is that what I feel for you is real. And amazing. And I don’t want it to stop.”

Gods, she shook him to the core. On the surface she seemed so young, naïve even, and then, suddenly, like a hot knife through butter, she cut through his intellectualizing, his desperate attempts to be in control, to do the right thing.

He couldn’t move away. He knew he should, but he was held like a bee caught in a honey trap. Her lashes swept her cheeks as if waiting for him to kiss her.

Unable to stop himself, he stroked around the line of her jaw, rubbed at her swollen lips with his thumb pad, gazing into her glittering dark eyes.

He wanted to kiss her so badly.

But if he kissed her lips—and this was crazy, when he’d kissed those other lips so ardently less than an hour ago—he’d be admitting to a level of intimacy between them that he’d never imagined possible with a woman.

“Do you want me to leave?” she asked, her eyes searching his face. “Honestly?”

With that steady, dark gaze on him, how could he lie? He groaned. “No, I don’t want you to leave. But Ineedyou to.”

She let out a little growl of frustration.

Max broke away, dove a hand through his hair. “Charlie, I have to put some distance between us. I need to think this through without my damn wolf getting in the way. Leading me… leading me to wanting you… every damn minute of the day.”

She was staring at him, her lips glistening and still so close. And oh fuck, how he wanted to claim her.

“Charlie, I’m a lone wolf, a sigma. We have to work things through alone,” he said, knowing his words just sounded like lame excuses. “None of my behavior since you arrived has been logical or, for that matter, appropriate…”

She reached out and put a finger to his lips, and he couldn’t stop himself from taking hold of her hand and kissing it. And there they stood for many moments in silence.

He heard her draw in a ragged breath. “If that’s what you really need, then okay, I’ll go away for a few days. But I’m still working for you, right?” She tilted her chin at him and he nodded. “There’s a stack of notes to be collated, I can take them with me.”

He laughed ruefully. “Oh yeah, sure, the book… that is getting nowhere fast. I can’t seem to work on any of it with my headspace the way it is…”

“Then let me at least help you while I’m gone, Max. I can take your notes from the archives today and knock them into order.”

“You’d do that?” He gazed at her incredulously. Gods, this girl was kind and generous as well as the most desirable creature on earth.

“Well, youarepaying me to be your research assistant. Guess you need to get your money’s worth.” Again, that that dimple, the twinkle deep in her eyes. No one had ever teased him the way Charlie did. Even in the most goddamn awful moments, she could somehow lighten the mood.

He huffed a sigh. “Okay. Yes, thank you. I’d really appreciate that, Charlie.”

She nodded and moved away from him, starting to pack up the files.

It was all Max could do not to take her into his arms and beg her to stay. But he didn’t.

Instead, he glued his feet to the floor and watched through the window as she left shortly after, taking her little suitcase and her laptop and his files of notes.

And as her car disappeared round the bend, it struck him that he felt so gods damn alone.

All his life, he’d told himself this was what he wanted.

To be a proud lone wolf.

---