Chapter Four: The West Corridor

POV: Zayden

I told her to stay out of the west corridor.

At 1:07 a.m., she was standing in the middle of it.

Barefoot. Silk sleep shorts. A thin white tank top that clung to every curve and left nothing to my imagination. Hair loose, damp at the ends, one hand pressed flat over her chest like she was trying to hold something in.

I'd been in my study for four hours, drinking nothing, pacing. Trying not to follow the heartbeat I could hear through two floors of stone. Trying not to count the seconds between beats.

Now that heartbeat was thirty feet away and walking toward me. Every step echoed inside my chest. My wolf paced beneath my skin, restless, furious at the walls I'd built. He'd been silent for twenty-two years. Now he wouldn't shut up.

I could smell her from here. Soap and warm skin. And underneath, unmistakable, arousal.

"I told you," I said, and my voice sounded like gravel dragged over concrete, "to stay out of this hallway."

Naya's eyes went wide, then dark. "I couldn't sleep. Something was pulling me here."

Pulling.

Of course. The bond didn't care about rules.

I opened the study door. "Inside."

"Alpha Lopez, I"

"Now."

She went. God help me, she went without arguing, and I shut the door and turned the lock.

The room already smelled like her. Vanilla, warmth, want. My wolf threw himself against the inside of my skull.

"Don't call me that in here," I said.

She backed up until her shoulders hit the wall beside the bookshelves. Chest rising fast. Lips parted.

"Then what should I call you?" she whispered.

Every answer I had was dangerous.

I planted one hand beside her head. Close enough to feel her breath on my throat. "You watched me all through dinner."

"I wasn't"

"You were." A muscle jumped in my jaw. "You looked at me like you wanted me to bend you over that table in front of my entire pack."

Her breath caught.

She didn't deny it.

That was the moment I should have stepped back.

Instead, I caught both her wrists in one hand and pinned them above her head against the wood.

She gasped. Not from fear. Her eyes went heavy, her spine arched off the wall, and the sound she made slid straight through me and lit every nerve I owned.

"Zayden," she breathed.

My name. In her mouth. And this time it wasn't a vision.

"Tell me to stop," I said hoarsely.

"Don't."

I kissed her. Hard. Her mouth opened under mine, hot and desperate, and she kissed me back like she'd been starving for years. My wolf howled in triumph. Mine. Mine. Mine.

Then I yanked the black silk tie from my collar, wound it twice around her wrists, and knotted it to the brass rail of the library ladder above her head.

"Tell me if it hurts."

"It doesn't." Her voice shook. "Don't stop."

Both my hands were free now, finally.

I found her ribs. Slid up. Closed over her breasts through the thin cotton, hot and soft and heavier in my palms than I'd imagined. Her nipples were already hard. I dragged my thumbs across them, slow, then again, and she whimpered, head falling back against the wall.

"That's it," I growled. "Let me hear what you sound like when you're mine."

Mine.

I hadn't meant to say it.

She moaned, long and low and unashamed. I pinched one nipple, gently, then harder, and her hips rolled against me. She was shaking. Her fingers curled helplessly above her head. I dropped my mouth to her neck and dragged my teeth across her pulse, and she cried out.

I dragged the cotton down and took her nipple into my mouth, and she came apart, sobbing my name, again and again, every syllable louder than the last.

"Zayden. Please. Please."

Louder. Louder than she meant to.

Somewhere above us, a door opened.

Footsteps. A laugh. Santana's voice, drifting down the stairwell, calling for her cat.

I clamped my palm over Naya's mouth.

Everything stopped.

Her eyes met mine, huge and glazed, and I felt her breath, hot and ragged, against my skin. My daughter was forty feet away. My daughter, who trusted me. Whose best friend I'd just pinned against my bookshelf with my hand on her breast.

The footsteps faded.

I tore the silk from her wrists and let go like she'd burned me.

Naya slid down the wall, catching herself, lips swollen, hair a mess, nipples still hard beneath the wrecked fabric. I turned away, gripped the desk, and forced air into my lungs. Twenty-two years of discipline, gone in one night. Against a wall. With my daughter's best friend.

"That," I said, "will never happen again."

"You don't get to pin me to a wall, call me yours, and then tell me it was a mistake." She straightened, rubbing her wrists, chin lifted. "I'm not a child, Zayden. And I'm not going to pretend I didn't want it."

"It has to be a mistake," I said, low and rough. "You're twenty-one. I'm forty-three. I'm Santana's father."

"You didn't seem to care two minutes ago."

"I care now." I met her eyes, and it was the biggest lie I'd told all night. "Believe me. I care."

I turned my back on her. "I need to ask you something," I said. "And you're going to tell me the truth."

Silence.

"Since you arrived at this house. Have you felt anything strange around me?"

She laughed, shaky and breathless. "You mean besides that?"

"Naya."

"I don't know what you want me to say."

"Heat. Pressure. A pull. A voice in your head that isn't yours." I finally turned. "Anything."

She went very still.

For one second, something flashed across her face. Recognition. Fear. She opened her mouth and closed it again. Whatever she'd almost said, it wasn't embarrassment. She was hiding something. And so was I.

I could hear her heart racing, wild, giving her away.

"I don't know what's happening to me," she said quietly. "I've been burning since I walked through your door. I can't sleep. I can't think. I hear things. And I know I shouldn't say this, because you're Santana's father, and you obviously hate that I'm here"

"I don't hate you."

The words were out before I could stop them.

She looked up.

"Then why won't you look at me?" she whispered.

Because if I do, I won't be able to stop.

I said nothing. If I opened my mouth, the truth would tear out of me, and the truth would ruin every life in this house.

She wrapped her arms around herself, and God, she looked so young and so stubborn and so completely unafraid. Her eyes shone in the low amber lamplight.

"I don't know why," Naya said softly. "Everyone says you're terrifying. I've seen grown men flinch when you walk by. And you just had me against a wall, and I still feel safe with you."

Every muscle in my body locked. I stared at her. The stubborn set of her mouth. The dark eyes I'd only ever seen on one other person. I had spent two decades pretending I'd forgotten them.

Safe.

Not aroused. Not afraid. Not curious.

Safe.

The word hit me like a blade between the ribs, because I had heard it before. In that exact voice. That exact whisper. Twenty-one years ago, in the dark, from a woman hours after she'd given birth, exhausted and smiling, who had begged me to keep a secret.

Seraphine had looked up at me and whispered,

I feel safe with you, Zayden.

Three hours later, she vanished.

And her daughter had just spoken her last words back to me.