Chapter 2 The Boss

Aria stood under the hotel shower until the water ran cold and her skin turned pink, she scrubbed between her thighs twice, hard enough that the soap stung the places he had stretched, the bite mark on her shoulder had already darkened into a clear imprint of teeth, she pressed her fingers against it and felt the dull throb answer back.

Soap could not touch the scent, it sat under her skin, low and heavy, and her wolf kept rolling in it like something shameless.

She dressed in the only clean clothes she had left, a black pencil skirt and a cream blouse she had shoved into her bag the night she walked out of the pack house, the fabric pulled tight across her breasts, every step sent a deep sweet ache through her core, Damon’s cum was gone, washed down the drain, but the memory of how it had felt flooding her lived in the muscles.

The business card still lay on the bathroom counter.

Damon Blackwood

Alpha — Shadowfang Pack

CEO, Shadowfang Holdings

She had taken the job two weeks ago under her mother’s maiden name so no one in either pack would connect the new HR director to the rejected Luna of Moonridge, Shadowfang Holdings was supposed to be clean, corporate, human-facing, a place where she could disappear into policy manuals and never scent another dominant male again.

Instead she had let the Alpha of that pack bury himself inside her until she sobbed.

Her phone buzzed, the Council message was still sitting there, unread beyond the first line, she forced herself to open it fully.

Official Summons — Territorial Council, regarding custody and former mate status of Aria Hale, ruling: one-year cohabitation contract on neutral ground between the former Luna of Moonridge and Alpha Kael Voss, shared residence, joint public appearances, failure to comply will result in full custody transfer of the minor pup to the primary pack parent and permanent severance of maternal rights under Pack Law 17.3, secondary clause: access rights during the contract period shall be extended equally to Alpha Damon Blackwood of Shadowfang should he formally petition, signature deadline: seven days.

Seven days.

Aria deleted the message, then immediately wished she hadn’t, deleting it changed nothing, the clock was already running.

Shadowfang Holdings occupied the top twelve floors of a black-glass tower in the heart of the city, Aria stepped out of the elevator on the executive level at 8:57 a.m. with her shoulders straight and her face blank, the receptionist, a young she-wolf with careful eyes, took one inhale of Aria’s scent and went visibly pale, there was no hiding the claim still saturating her skin.

“Ms. Hale,” the girl managed, “Mr. Blackwood asked that you be brought to his office the moment you arrived.”

Of course he had.

The CEO’s office was a corner suite of glass and dark wood, floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the skyline, Damon stood with his back to the door, shirtsleeves rolled to his forearms, speaking into a phone in a low controlled voice, he ended the call the second the door clicked shut behind her.

He turned.

Black eyes dragged over her from the damp ends of her hair to the modest heels she had borrowed from the hotel’s lost-and-found, his nostrils flared, the temperature in the room seemed to rise.

“You washed,” he said, not a question.

“I had to.”

“It didn’t work,” he set the phone down and walked toward her with the slow deliberate gait of a man who already knew the outcome, “my scent is in your skin, in your wolf, she’s still carrying me.”

Aria held her ground even as her pulse kicked hard against her throat, “last night was a mistake, a one-time mistake, I work here, you’re my employer, that is the only relationship we are going to have.”

Damon’s mouth curved, he stopped close enough that the heat of his body bled into hers, “you signed an employment contract with my company, you also spent four hours last night taking my cock in every way I wanted, your wolf submitted so prettily I can still taste it, do not stand in my office and lie to both of us.”

“I rejected my mate less than twelve hours before I met you,” she said, voice low, “I was hurting, I needed—”

“You needed to be fucked until you forgot his name,” Damon’s hand lifted, he did not ask, he simply gripped her chin and tilted her face up, “I gave you that, and I’m going to give it to you again, the Council summons arrived on my desk an hour ago, secondary access clause, your ex is trying to chain you back to him for a year, I’m going to make sure that when he does, you’re already so full of me he can scent it from the door.”

Aria’s breath caught, “you knew who I was.”

“I knew the second you walked into that bar,” his thumb brushed her lower lip, “rejected Luna of Moonridge, fresh bond-break, smelling like rain and rage and a cunt that hadn’t been properly used in years, I followed you in, I waited, and when you looked up at me with those wrecked eyes, I decided I was going to ruin you for him.”

The words should have ignited fury, instead they sent a humiliating rush of heat straight between her legs, her wolf arched inside her, shameless, Aria hated her for it.

Damon’s gaze dropped to her mouth, then lower, to the rapid rise and fall of her breasts under the cream blouse, “lock the door.”

“No.”

“Lock the door, Aria, or I will do it myself and the entire executive floor will hear what I do to you next.”

She locked it.

The second the bolt slid home he had her backed against the heavy wood, mouth claiming hers in a kiss that was all teeth and hunger, his hands shoved her skirt up to her waist, he growled when he found she had worn underwear, plain black cotton, already damp, he ripped them off at the seams and stuffed the ruined fabric into his pocket.

“These are mine now,” two thick fingers shoved inside her without warning, Aria cried out against his mouth, she was swollen from the night before, sensitive, and so wet the sound was obscene, Damon fucked her with his hand hard and deep, palm grinding against her clit, while his other hand yanked her blouse open, buttons scattered across the floor, he shoved her bra down and sucked one tight nipple into his mouth, teeth scraping, tongue lashing.

“Listen to that,” he rasped against her breast, “soaked for your boss, for the Alpha who filled this cunt four times last night, tell me you don’t want it.”

She couldn’t, the words would have been a lie and both of their wolves would have known it, instead she moaned when he added a third finger and curled them against the spot that made her vision spark.

Damon pulled his hand free, spun her around, and bent her over his desk, papers scattered, he shoved her skirt higher, kicked her legs wider, and freed his cock, the thick head dragged through her folds once, twice, coating itself, before he slammed home to the hilt.

Aria’s cry was muffled by her own forearm, the stretch was brutal, raw from the night before and still perfect, Damon did not give her time to adjust, he fucked her with deep punishing strokes that forced her hips into the edge of the desk, one hand fisted in her hair, pulling her head back, the other reached under her to rub tight relentless circles on her clit.

“This is what the next year is going to look like,” he said against her ear, “your ex gets the contract, I get this cunt, every morning before meetings, every night after, whenever I scent you getting wet for him I’ll drag you somewhere private and remind you who made you come so hard you sobbed.”

She came with a broken sound, walls clamping down hard around him, Damon snarled, fucked her through it, then pulled out only long enough to flip her onto her back on the desk, he shoved her thighs wide, hooked them over his arms, and drove back in, the new angle let him go impossibly deep, he leaned down and sucked bruises into the soft skin of her breasts while he pounded into her, the wet slap of their bodies filling the office.

“Look at me,” he ordered.

She did, black eyes, flushed face, the tendons in his neck standing out with restraint he was clearly choosing not to use.

“You’re going to sign that contract,” he said, voice rough, “you’re going to live under the same roof as the male who broke you, and every time he looks at you he’s going to scent me on your skin and know that the night you left him you let his rival own this body.”

He came with a guttural groan, burying himself to the root and flooding her with thick hot pulses, Aria felt every spurt, every twitch, the excess already leaking out around his cock and dripping onto the polished wood of his desk, he stayed inside her, still hard, still buried, while their breathing slowed.

His hand stroked possessively over her stomach, then lower, to where they were joined, he gathered some of the cum that had slipped out and pushed it back inside her with two fingers.

“Leave it,” he said quietly, “I want you sitting in your first HR meeting with my cum dripping out of you, I want every wolf on this floor to know exactly who you belong to now.”

He pulled out slowly, the sudden emptiness made her whimper, Damon tucked himself away, then reached down and helped her stand on unsteady legs, he buttoned what remained of her blouse as best he could, smoothed her skirt down, and pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth that was almost gentle.

“Your office is the third door on the left, there is a private bathroom attached, clean up enough that the humans don’t notice, do not wash me off completely, I’ll know.”

Aria walked out of the CEO’s office on trembling legs with her ruined underwear in his pocket, his cum painting the insides of her thighs, and the Council’s seven-day deadline burning in her phone.

She made it through the morning on pure willpower, the HR team was small, competent, and carefully polite, none of them commented on the way their new director’s scent was saturated in their Alpha’s claim, wolves knew better.

At 12:40 her phone rang, unknown number, she almost ignored it, then she remembered the Council deadline and answered.

Kael’s voice slid through the speaker like a blade.

“You let him fuck you.”

Aria closed the door to her office, “you lost the right to comment on who I let into my body the day you chose her over me.”

“I can scent him from here,” Kael’s voice was low, controlled, and shaking with something that sounded almost like rage, “the secondary clause was not my idea, the Council added it when Shadowfang petitioned this morning, he moved fast.”

“What do you want, Kael?”

“Sign the contract, come home, we can renegotiate the terms once you’re back on Moonridge land.”

“Home,” the word tasted like ash, “you mean the house where my son calls another woman Mama, where you never marked me, where you saved every soft word for Lila while I slept alone for three years.”

Silence stretched, when Kael spoke again his voice had dropped into the register that used to make her wolf submit without question.

“I made mistakes, I am correcting them, sign the papers, Aria, or I will take the pup and you will never see him again, pack law is on my side.”

The line went dead.

Aria sat very still in the leather chair that still smelled faintly of Damon’s office, between her thighs his seed had begun to dry in sticky trails, her wolf was restless, torn between the lingering satisfaction of the morning and the old bitter ache of the broken bond, her human heart was a mess of fury and fear and a humiliating unwanted pulse of heat at the memory of how Damon had taken her over his desk.

She had seven days.

Seven days to decide whether to chain herself to the male who had broken her, under the same roof, while the male who had ruined her for anyone else held equal rights to her body.

Her phone buzzed one more time, a new message from a number she had not saved but already knew.

Damon: Neutral estate, Friday night, both of us will be there when you sign, wear something I can tear off, I’m going to fuck you while he watches, then I’m going to make him clean my cum out of you with his tongue.

Aria’s thighs clenched, her wolf shuddered in pure shameless want, the human part of her closed her eyes and tasted blood where she had bitten her lip again.

The contract had not even been signed, and she was already drowning.