Page 53 of The Alpha Dire Wolf
“If you want to talk, Lincoln, you need to do what normal people do these days. Send me a text message so I can read it and ignore it until I’m ready to reply. Nowleave.”
Lincoln shook his head.
“Am I going to have to call the sheriff to get him to remove you from the property?” I threatened.
“You won’t do that.”
I raised a finger at him. “You better believe I will! You broke in to my grandmother’shouse!” I was shouting at him now. “That’s a textbook reason to call!”
How dare he violate the property of a dead woman like that? That was bothering me the most, I realized. His desecration of her house. Of the only thing I had left of her. The lack of care, of respect, for the woman who had once lived here.
“You won’t call,” he rumbled as I pulled my phone from my purse.
“Try me,” I said, unlocking it.
“You won’t, because you want to know why I’m here. You want to know what I have to say. Whatwehave to talk about.”
He paused, leveling a look at me that was hard enough to make my stomach tie itself into knots. Nobody had ever looked at me that way. Certainly not my ex. The absolute intensity directed straight at me from Lincoln had a force to it that I’d never experienced before. A wildly powerful, barely contained carnal interest. In me.
“You want to know why I’m keeping my distance,” he continued after a moment, “but inviting you in. To talk.”
“Did you just invite me in. Tomygrandmother’s house, thatyoubroke into?” The audacity …
Lincoln stepped back through the doorway. “Are you coming or not?” he called from inside, the only answer he was going to give.
It took me several long seconds to overcome my anger at him, but during it, I noticed something else. The prickly warning sensations that had plagued my spine were gone. At some point they had vanished. Now I looked at the house and thought about going in.
Nothing. It was safe.
Infuriated at Lincoln still but sensing no further danger, I went to the house and up the steps, pausing in the frame of the door to peer around inside. Just in case. But there seemed to be no setup.
“Close the door.”
The command came a moment after I crossed the threshold, cutting me off before I could unleash a fresh tirade of anger atthe arrogance of his breaking in. The quickness of it shattered my carefully constructed argument, the pieces falling around me like wilting flower petals.
“No,” I said as I watched him. He was pacing back and forth, like a caged animal desperate to break free. With his size and muscles, the intensity could not be ignored. “Not until you calm down at least.”
Lincoln came to an abrupt halt, looking down at his clenched fists. Taking a deep breath in, he exhaled with a shudder, much of the tension leaving his shoulders as he did.
It should have worked. I should have felt more at ease around him. Instead, the ferocity of what he’d been keeping caged inside swept outward and washed over me. That should have been intimidating or outright scary. What it should not have been was alluring.
Drawing me in toward him, like I was the moth and he was the flame, was not part of the agreement. There was no containing something like him, no matter what a part of me was saying. No,screaming. I could not fix him. Could not make him better.
So why was I taking a step toward him, reaching blindly for the door to let it close behind me, which would trap me in the house with him?
Yet throughout it all, his stare never left me, never strayed. Lincoln had eyes for me, and me alone, and that was … unfathomable. Who was I to capture the attention of such abeastof a man as him?
Like a hunter, he watched my every move. Stalking me with his eyes. Waiting, wary, but fearless. Bold.
“What do you want with me?” I heard myself say into the silence. It wasn’t quite the angry answer-demanding riposte I’d intended. But it was what had come out.
“It’s not about what Iwant,” Lincoln said, growling from somewhere deep in his chest at the final word, his eyes burning with a very clear-cut definition of what he meant.
Skin tightened everywhere across my body at the insinuation. Meanwhile, in the center of my stomach, a roiling ball of heat to rival the sun exploded into being, threatening to flood every corner of my body with its mind-melting warmth. If my danger sense was going off, it was overpowered by the roar of blood rushing through my veins, every nerve ending brought to life by one single word.
“We barely know each other’s names,” I whispered into the furnace that was once the foyer of my grandmother’s house. I didn’t trust myself to speak any louder.
“I know,” Lincoln replied, one hand clenching around the back of a nearby chair in the sitting room. The wood creaked under his grip. “Trust me. I know. Yet …”
