“That must have been traumatic.” He comes over and hands me a glass, but he doesn’t sit beside me. Instead, he takes an armchair, leaning back comfortably with a highball glass of something amber-colored.I’m not sure if I should downplay what the experience was like. It was definitely traumatic. After sitting in a bare office room, shivering in my ceremonial robe while Mother and Father screamed at me, I was whisked away home to collect as much as I could stuff into my luggage in thirty minutes. A change of clothes and I was on a private plane to an uncertain future.Not even my sisters knew what happened to me. Not even my best friends.Yet, I can blurt it all out to this stranger. “When I arrived in London, I didn’t even have a place to stay. I went to a hotel and used the credit card Father gave me. A few days later, he wired me money and a promise that I would be taken care of, but at seventeen, with nothing but my passport and someone else’s money, it was difficult to get an apa

“I am engaged!” I cough out.“And we’ve established that you don’t want to be, so that’s one challenge overcome.”And once again, I’m being steamrolled by a man who thinks he can just have me.Meanwhile, my body is still shouting, he can have you any time he wants! But the chemistry between Nathan and I isn’t enough for me to walk from one cage into another.“Changes need to be made here if this pack is going to survive,” Nathan tells me. “You and I are the only werewolves in the allied packs to invoke the right in a hundred years. Imagine what we could do together.”I have imagined what we could do together. Just not in the way he’s proposing.“That way, too.”Is he reading my mind?He must see my panic, because he explains, “Your scent. Let’s drop the pretense. I know you want me. And I want you.”What’s it called when everything swells up and you can’t breathe? Anaphylaxis?That, but for my pussy.“Think about what I’ve said.” He switches smoothly back into what sounds like a busin

Tara can’t look me in the eye now. “Not like at the festival. It’s a real whip, and it really, really hurts. I felt so bad for Josh because he kept saying ‘sorry’ after every lash.”“No way.” I push myself up from the bed and bolt across the room, as if I can escape the ceremony by getting further from my sister’s description of it.“Do you want me to keep talking, or have you heard enough?” Tara asks, genuine concern behind her words.I don’t want to hear anymore, but not knowing will only make whatever I imagine after worse than it probably actually is. “Fine.”She hesitates, but continues when I shoot her an icy glare. “After the whipping, he transforms and the two of you…mate.”“While he’s a werewolf?” Maybe I’ve been around humans too long, but that sounds so disgusting to me. Plus, everyone else in there is doing it, too? “Do the acolytes like, watch or something? This is so gross!”“Nobody watches. That I know of,” she quickly revises. “But trust me, it’s not as mortifying as i

I arch up as his sucking kisses move across my collarbones and chest, grind my pelvis against him in desperation. My panties are soaked, my pussy aching with need that only intensifies when his mouth closes over my nipple. He grazes me with his teeth and I shout, long past moaning. I don’t care if every thrall in the mansion hears me. All I want is for Nathan to know how he affects me, how much I want him, how totally I’ll surrender my will, my dignity, everything I have if he’ll just take me right here and now.Sparks of sensation race through my blood at every sweep of his tongue over my tightly drawn up flesh, and when he turns his attention to my other breast, I swear my cunt flutters the way it does when I come from touching myself. It’s not enough to satisfy my craving for him.“I smelled you,” he groans against me. “The night of the full moon. I hunted for you. I knew you wouldn’t be there, but I searched for you. Your scent was inescapable. Maddening. What were you doing?”“Ma

“I—”“You don’t actually know me.” Now that the dam has broken, I can’t hold back the flood of rage I’m feeling. “You don’t know anything about me.”“I’d like to get to know you,” he says, too baffled to shut me up.“After we’re mates, right? When you can rearrange all the little bits of me?”“Of course not!”I shake my head and keep my voice low and neutral so we don’t cause a scene. Not here, at a restaurant owned by a pack member. It’s too full of eyes and furry fucking ears. “If you knew me at all, you’d know I don’t spend hours upon hours in libraries. I hate libraries. I hate reading. I’ve tried to do as little as possible since we left school.”“Noted, then,” he tries to appease me.But I don’t stop there. “You would know that Negril is the last place I would want to vacation because I sunburn through eighty SPF sunblock, and I loathe sand. And the thing that would make me happiest in my life? Would be staying as far away from my parents as possible.”“Negril is far away,” he s