Chapter 1: The Wrong Room

I walk into the wrong room and the first thing that hits me is his scent.

Not the champagne. Not the flowers that probably cost more than my rent. Not the sixty people in expensive clothes pretending they don't notice each other's net worth. His scent, cutting through all of it, landing on me like a hand around my throat, and my wolf, my carefully controlled, eight years of discipline wolf, drops to his knees before I even find the source.

I grab a glass from a passing tray and smile at nobody and try to remember how to breathe.

The party I was supposed to be at is one floor down. Invitation from a guy named Dex, free drinks in exchange for the three hundred he owes me, which I should have known was too convenient. I got off on the wrong floor, followed the noise, and walked into whatever this is. Dark suits. Women in silk. The kind of crowd that doesn't get photographed because they own the photographers.

I need to leave.

My wolf needs me to stay.

We are having a serious disagreement about this.

I scan the room for the exit and find it, two men in front of it who weren't there thirty seconds ago, big, still, professional, and I file that under problems and keep my face neutral because neutral has kept me alive longer than anything else I own.

Then I see him.

He's at the window with his back to the room and he doesn't need to face it. That's the first thing I understand about him. The room orients around him without his participation, people shifting, conversations angling, energy bending toward him the way it bends toward something with too much gravity. Dark hair. Shoulders that his suit is losing the argument with. One hand in his pocket like the city behind the glass is something he's considering purchasing.

My wolf stops breathing.

I take a long sip of champagne and tell myself to move. Side door. Bathroom exit. Fire escape if it comes to it, I have done worse. I take one step back toward the wall and the man at the window turns around and his eyes find me immediately, like I made a sound only he could hear, and everything in my chest turns over at once.

Silver eyes. Actual silver, not grey, not light brown, silver, and they are aimed directly at me across a room full of people like nobody else is standing in it.

A scar along his jaw. A face that was built for making people feel small. And an expression that says he has been waiting for exactly this... for me, here, in this room, and he is not remotely surprised.

"Interesting," he says.

The word is quiet and it still resonates to every corner of the room.

My wolf presses forward so hard my hand tightens on the glass and I have to consciously loosen my fingers before I break it. Because that voice, that one word, does something to the part of me that I have kept locked and suppressed and pointed firmly away from anything that could destroy me, and that part doesn't have language, it just has direction, and right now every bit of it is pointing at him.

He starts walking toward me.

Unhurried. Like the room is clearing a path because it knows better than not to.

It is.

He stops close enough that I get the full weight of his scent and my brain goes offline for three full seconds before I drag it back by force. Up close he is worse. More. The scar is older than I thought, the silver eyes are darker, and the way he's looking at me is doing something to my ability to form a coherent exit strategy.

I tilt my chin up. "Wrong floor," I say. "I'll get out of your way."

He looks at me for a moment, that silver gaze moving over my face like he's reading something written there that I don't know about.

Then he reaches out and takes the glass from my hand.

Slowly. Deliberately. His fingers brushing mine for exactly one second, and my wolf surges so hard I actually step back, and he watches me do it with that not-quite smile and sets the glass on the nearest table.

"No," he says quietly. "You won't."

He turns and walks back toward the window.

And I am standing in the middle of the room with my heart slamming against my ribs and the warmth of his fingers still sitting on my skin like a brand, and the two men in front of the door still aren't moving, and my wolf is still down, fully down, turned toward him with a devotion that eight years of survival instinct cannot touch.

I am in so much trouble.