Page 16 of Defiant
I pace, dragging my feet across the hardwood planks toward a large square window on one side of my office. I stare up at the moon, wondering what the hell she’s put into her beams tonight. Has every damn wolf gone mad?
I know I feel like I have.
I don’t react this way to women. I select them online, have them researched to ensure they’ll meet my needs—younger, good ass, beta but not quite vanilla—then carefully construct our meetings via friends. I control everything. Idon’tmeet women when I’m out on shifted runs in the forest through disputed territory.
My nostrils flare at the memory of catching Elena’s scent. The way my paws had turned automatically in that direction, sprinting full out, my wolf not even cautious about potential danger, just desperate to find the source of that scent. And then I’d seen her. Naked and laying in the moonlight like some dark goddess, some Greek myth sprung to life.
Pluto’s voice breaks me out of the reverie. “Maddox … she just … that smell. It’s so intense that I nearly couldn’t see straight.”
I acknowledged that understatement with a grunt.
“You can’t let Stone—”
“Stone’s not touching her,” I snarl as I hang up the phone before I snap at him for trying to tell me what to do.
No one’s going to touch Elena—no one but me.
I turn back to my computer and take a few deep breaths before tossing my phone carelessly to the side of my wireless keyboard. I sit down in my leather chair and try to gather my composure as I click to open the database for the Lobos and search her first name. Twenty-five Elenas pop up, but I dismiss them quickly when their photos load. No. No. No. I stop dead when I see Elena’s face staring back at me, defiant, her black hair loose in the photograph, a white tank top showing just a hint of her cleavage. A look of defiance that I’m already familiar with appears on her face.
She was telling the truth.That first thought hits me like a right hook across the jaw, a burst of painful reality that I didn’t quite see coming.I’m an asshole.But that second thought isn’t new—it’s something I’ve known about myself for a long time. You don’t get to be in charge by being a nice guy.
I’ve got one of my own shifters locked up in my basement.
My eyes dart toward the door just in time to see Matthew enter with a tray of food. He’s got a Philly cheese steak sandwich and some sliced green apples for me and my office fills with the scent of sauteed mushrooms and onions topping the sandwich, making my stomach suddenly remember that it’s empty. I nod in thanks and gesture vaguely for him to put the food on the desk before I turn back to my screen, eager to read all the details I can about Elena DeMarkus.
Her major is biology and I briefly wonder why, wonder what she’s drawn to, what makes her tick. She’s on the track team with a partial scholarship, running the sprints and one hundred meter hurdles—that explains how fast the little vixen was. I put a hand to my chin and scratch my beard as I lean forward, closer to the screen, hiding the contents with my bulk like some girl might hide a naughty book. I don’t want Matthew to know what I’m reading.
But, ever the proper butler, Matthew sets down the tray without glancing up at my screen. Then he walks over to my bar on the right side of the room, grabbing a glass and a water bottle. He returns, and sets them both down with a soft plonk-clink, but doesn’t leave.
I glance over at him, trying to hide my annoyance. Matthew’s typically comfortable being invisible, so when he has something to say, I stop and listen.
“Should I make anything for your … guest?” Matthew hesitates on that last word.
I sigh. Fuck me. I should have thought of that. I nod briefly and lift my hand from the mouse to gesture at my own plate. “Same. But bring it here. I’ll feed her.” I meant that I’d bring food to Elena because she’s probably shifted into a wolf right now and I don’t want her attacking Matthew, who’s only human. But, as soon as the words leave my lips they take on a whole new meaning, complete with a naughty fantasy where I picture a naked Elena kneeling at my feet and accepting bites from my bare hands.
I slide my chair forward a bit so that Matthew doesn’t see the hard-on forming in my lap at the thought of her lapping at my fingers.
The older man nods and slips out, closing the doors to my office behind him.
I grab an apple slice and bite into it, letting the sharp sweet taste distract me as I glance back at the screen, willing myself to look only at the facts that surround Elena’s profile and not her picture. I need to go back down there in full control. I need to figure out what the hell I’m going to say. I need to figure out who Elena is and just why the hell she smells so good. Good enough that another alpha wants her based on scent alone.
Oh fuck.
That thought propels me back to my feet. I shove the rest of the apple into my mouth and stomp over to the books that line my shelves, the library of wolf history that’s all but wasted. I could pull up the computer database to get the same information, but in this case, I know exactly which book I’m looking for. Hell, I even know which chapter. This particular book holds a fantasy I used to beat off to when I was a teenager, back when adulthood still seemed like this awesome mystical thing, instead of the shithole reality it is. Adulthood is a pendulum swinging between monotony and bloodshed.
I snag the book, a green hardback that’s got golden scrollwork on the spine.The Mating Ceremonies of Wolves Throughout the Centuries.It doesn’t have a great porn title, and it’s filled with so many facts and figures that accidentally flipping to the wrong page can be a total boner killer. But Chapter Seven used to fascinate me because it told about a wolf shifter that was literally one in ten million, a type that hadn’t been born for at least three generations. No one I’d ever known had met one.
I lick my finger as I flip through the pages hurriedly and find the illustration that used to make me wild. It’s an etching of a woman, her head thrown back in carnal pleasure as her mate ruts her from behind, her breasts and nipples in his hands, her stomach on display as she arches back on her knees and takes an alpha’s knot inside her.
My dick pulses at the image as if it’s been trained to do so.
I force myself to look over at the paragraphs that introduce this section and actually read for once.
This chapter will cover what to do upon the rare occasion that an omega wolf is born into a pack, beginning with ways to identify the omega. Omega wolves are unique, and not only because of the anatomy that will allow them to fully satisfy their alpha mate. While there is nothing that will identify an omega for certain before the appearance of their wolf, one of the most telling factors in identifying an omega is their wolf’s late appearance in life (omegas have been known to show up as late as the twenty-fifth year), but also for their sweet scent, which carries a much more floral tone than other wolves and responds to an alpha’s purr—
I drop the book on my fucking toe and hardly notice the throbbing hiss it sends up my spine because my mind is otherwise occupied.
Oh god.
