Chapter 6

Axel

The injured skater looked at me as if I had just insulted her bloodline. Not that I cared.

“My name is Violet,” she said. “Not injured skater.”

Blaze agreed with a low growl. He urged, ‘Kiss her.’

‘Never!’ I grated.

Grant had made the deal clear and I hated every part of it. Hated that they knew I used to skate with my mom until I was twelve. Then everything changed. Most of all, I hated that the girl standing in front of me smelled like warm sugar and vanilla, and my wolf had been half-insane since the moment I entered the rink.

When I didn’t move, she raised her eyebrow. “If you think you can’t help me, then you can leave.”

The audacity? How dare she ask me to leave. I’d do whatever I wanted to.

“Start with a lap,” I ordered.

Violet’s mouth tightened. “I already warmed up.”

“Then another one won’t kill you.”

Her eyes narrowed, but she pushed away from the boards. She moved carefully at first, favoring her good ankle. Her skating was not bad. Even injured, she had balance. Her lines were clean, and she knew how to hold herself. But the hesitation was there. Every time she put weight on her right foot, her body paused.

My nose wrinkled uncontrollably. “It’s because I can’t stand to see a bad performance, not that I care about her,” I tell my wolf sternly.

Coach told me she had some accident.

I shouldn’t be surprised. Humans were clumsy, and fragile. When she came back to me, I said, “Your ankle isn’t the problem.”

She stopped too quickly and winced before hiding it. “It’s wrapped for decoration, then?”

I said rudely, “The ankle is healing. Your head isn’t.”

She swallowed. “You don’t know anything about my head.”

“I know you hesitate before shifting your weight. You look down before you land even when you’re not jumping, and you’re waiting to fall before you move.”

She blushed slightly as if she was embarrassed. “You always this charming?”

“Only when I’m forced to waste my time.”

A flash of hurt crossed her face before she covered it with anger. She turned toward the ice. “I told Coach I wanted to go slow today.”

“Okay,” I gritted and skated closer. The moment I did that the scent hit me harder, and my body responded like it had been starved for years. My mouth went dry. I wanted to lower my face to the side of her neck and inhale. And let’s not forget the fucking sparks that exploded all over my skin. Instead, I said, “Take position.”

She stiffened. “What position?”

“I need to support your balance.”

She glared at me but shifted forward. I moved behind her and placed one hand at her waist. Her waist was soft under my palm, small enough that my hand covered half of it. She was nearly a foot shorter than me, and from behind, her body fit against mine… perfectly.

Violet went still beneath my hand and I smelled fear. Her breathing changed, and her shoulders tightened.

I removed my hand immediately. “I need to touch you to help,” I said, voice rougher than I intended.

Her cheeks flushed. “I’m not used to people grabbing me.”

Something dark unfurled in my chest as I imagined someone else touching her. Someone else had her in their arms, circling her waist. The thought made the animal in me restless, prowling beneath my skin. I looked at her and up close, I saw another faint mark near her temple. Yellowed bruising along her jaw. A stiffness in her ribs when she breathed. And bruises and scars on her wrist.

“How did you get hurt?” I asked in a cold voice though inside I was close to violence. What was this girl doing to me?

She faced forward. “I slipped on the stairs.”

It was a blatant lie. I’d be a fool to believe those were the bruises from a fall. Rage moved through me as she would not tell me the truth. My wolf was demanding the truth and wanted to protect my mate at all costs. My natural instinct wanted to cocoon her in bubble wrap and stick a handle-with-care label on her. I pushed it down.

Shit. I reminded myself. For fuck’s sake, she was a human.

This time I placed my hand carefully on her waist. She tensed a little. My other hand hovered near her elbow without gripping it. “Push with your left. Trust the right only enough to glide. Don’t force it.”

She obeyed, and we moved together. Every small movement brought her closer. Her scent wrapped around me until my head felt heavy with it. Her waist shifted under my hand. Her hair brushed my cheeks, my neck, my hands, and I saw the faint purple showing beneath the black dye at her roots.

What a strange fashion choice.

We continued across the ice slowly, carefully. Her body wanted to hesitate before every turn, but she fought it.

My irritation returned when I realized that I was actually helping her against my better judgment.

“How did you manage it?” I asked, in a condescending way.

She glanced over her shoulder. “Manage what?” My eyes went straight to her pouty lips.

I pushed my wolf down. “Getting me assigned to you. The hockey captain. The one person on this campus with better things to do than babysit a limping figure skater,” I said arrogantly.

Her expression hardened. “You think I asked for you?”

“You expect me to believe you didn’t?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

I tightened my hand on her waist. “Whatever game you’re playing, find another man.”

She stopped and turned so suddenly that we both fell. I shifted in a way that I fell beneath her and her soft body landed on mine. Her hair fell like a curtain around us, hiding our faces from the world. My chest rose and fell as my mind went to gutters. Her sex was right between my thighs and my cock pulsed with intense need. I had this crazy urge to grind myself against her body, remove the layers of fabric between us and then drive my cock so deep inside her that I began and where she ended.

Her face became beetroot red. She pushed herself up against my chest as my hands tightened on her waist. She blew a strand of hair from her face and said haughtily, “Trust me, you weren’t even on the list.”

For a few seconds, I had no answer. Blaze woofed.

Then she removed my hand from her waist with more force than necessary, got up and skated ahead alone. I watched her go, my pride in smithereens.

By the time practice ended, I was wound so tight I could barely speak.

The need to kiss her had become a brutal thing inside me. It sat under my skin with teeth.

When I returned, instead of going to my room, I went to the forest instead to calm down Blaze. The woods behind campus belonged to North Ridge territory. I stripped behind the trees, shoved my clothes into a hollow beneath a fallen trunk, and let Blaze take over.

The shift tore through me and then Blaze ran. He ran for miles, and returned only when he was exhausted. The night had deepened. I planned on taking a shower and going to sleep, when her scent hit me close to my house.

It came from the direction of Colin Bradford’s house, where a party was going on, where music thudded through the windows and students crowded the porch with drinks in their hands.

Fury slammed into me. What I wanted was in my enemy’s fucking house. My hands curled into fists as I stared at the lights spilling from Colin’s windows. My chest vibrated with a frustrated snarl. I had just let Blaze out and he was happy enough, but now he was again going crazy, wanting to go there.

“The human girl is nothing to me!” I growled, pushing him down, and walked inside my house with my dick pointing north. Painfully north.

In fifteen minutes, I was standing in front of Colin’s house after taking a shower and applying tons of cologne.