Page 12 of The Beast's Baby
He didn’t tear easily.
“See anything you like?” he asked, nodding to the folder.
“He’s got a nice face,” she conceded. “But I don’t think he’s for me.”
“You haven’t even talked to him,” Jay remarked. “Perhaps give him a chance?”
She sighed, putting the folders aside, shaking her head a little. “I don’t think so,” she said. “You’re going to have to choose for me.”
He was taken aback, especially by the challenge he sensed behind the words. As though she was saying that he specifically was going to have to choose for her. As though she wanted to know what sort of wolf he could see her with.
“We didn’t want to do that,” he said. “We’d rather you feel comfortable.”
“You don’t seem to understand that I will never feel comfortable,” Isobel snapped, that same flash of anger that had been in her eyes last night, lighting them up again. “This isn’t a negotiation,” she added. “You’ve made it abundantly clear that you’re the ones making the decisions around here. I’m deciding to accept that. It seems it’s in my own best interest. But for you to come in here and expect me to partake? Willingly? In some smoke screen meant to convince me I have a choice?”
She snorted, crossing her legs, leaning back on the couch and he was growing aware of how long her legs were. How her top fit snugly around her hips and waist. The way her hair fell across her breasts and—
“Excuse me,” she said, snapping two fingers in front of her, getting his attention on her eyes. “I’m up here.”
But there was self-satisfaction in it. There was a smile in her eyes. There was something knowing there as well. As though she had just won a small victory over him, and he couldn’t believe she had the audacity to sit there, knowing exactly the effect she had on men and somehow still feel triumph when that natural effect took hold.
“You’re a very attractive woman,” he said to file the edge off. Acknowledgment always did that. It let the air out of the proverbial balloon. Someone so full of themselves needed a reality check once in a while and having someone boldly state what others probably skirted around, buying drinks and filling her ear with idle chatter, would rattle her. She did look rattled. It was his turn to feel self-satisfied. “We have wolves in those four folders that are a perfect match for you.”
“So, you’re literally match making me?” she asked.
“No,” he replied. “That’s not how I mean it. I’m saying that they should hold to whatever standards you’re looking for in a mate.”
“What if what I’m looking for is someone human?” she cut him off.
He stared at her.
She didn’t look like she was about to falter in her meaning even a little bit. She was telling him that if he said yes, she would let him…
“I’m not amenable,” he said.
“No?” she asked. “You can’t slip your photo in a folder and bring it here?”
“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded, not liking the defensive tone in his voice and being unable to control it. Her face as he grasped her neck came unbidden into his mind and with it the fantasy of bending her over the arm of the couch. His cock responded and he crossed his legs to stave off the erection.
She smiled then.
Because she knew. Of course, she knew how she affected him. It must be written all over his face. He was so unused to this type of raw desire that he had no way of hiding it. And now… She could probably smell it all over him.
But how much of her teasing him was done by the human and how much was being done by the wolf now that it was free of its cage?
“I’m choosing,” she replied to his previous question.
“You wantmeto fuck you?”
The word was like a slap. He rarely cursed. He even more rarely went on dates that made him like the woman enough to invite her home, or to come with her to hers. He hadn’t slept with anyone since he started the job with MRM. So, three years. He didn’t spend much time thinking about it. He liked the rush and the no strings attached aspect of it when he was in his twenties. Now, he was too busy to concern himself with sex and especially the intimacy that typically came with it. He worked, he slept, he ate. He had no interest in being in a relationship. The few times he’d tried it he’d been the one to end it, growing bored much too quickly of the shared monotony.
But with her…
She kept surprising him and there was something darkly enticing in that. Something that kept pushing him out of his own comfort zone and into zones he hadn’t ever stepped into before. He was learning that he apparently couldn’t resist stepping.
“Does it have to be a wolf?” she asked. “That fucks me?”
He swallowed at how easily she made use of the term. And at the fact that technically it didn’t have to be a wolf. But they had agreed they would begin Phase Two with wolf pairs and then move on to wolves paired with humans to keep the results even. And to monitor the differences.
