For some reason, it irritated Felix that Drew knew her nickname when he hadn’t. “I’m not looking for a short-term lover, Drew,” he said bluntly. “I’m ready for more.” He’d been ready most of his adult life, his drive toward building a home and a family a powerful one.
Eyes meeting his for a long minute, longer than Felix’s wolf was usually comfortable with when it came to a dominant, the other male nodded. “I get that. Dezi won’t push where she isn’t wanted—you tell her no?”
Felix ducked his head, ate another bite of lasagna . . . then admitted his muck-up. “I accepted her friendship.”
Drew groaned, leaning his elbows on the table to drop his head into his hands. “Damn it, Felix, you know better. She’s interested in you—and you know how she’ll take that.”
Yes, he knew. Dominants didn’t really understand subtle when they were sexually interested in someone. Blunt was always the best response. “I’ll tell her tomorrow. I just . . . didn’t want to hurt her feelings.” His hand fisted under the table at the lie; the cold, hard truth was that he’d wanted to talk to her again, wanted to hear that husky voice rasp over his skin as she asked him questions about his work that seemed to hold a genuine interest.
He reminded himself that Carisma, too, had asked him questions like that at the start. Humoring him, he’d realized afterward. He’d poured out his dreams into her hands, and all she’d given him in return was a pat on the cheek and a kiss good-bye before she’d gone on to mate with a fellow soldier. Yeah, no way in hell was he ever going through that again.
Chapter 3
Desiree was excited about a man for the first time in what seemed like forever. She’d gone through her young and wild phase like most leopard females, but that had been years ago. Though touch was as important to her as to any changeling, she’d been abstaining from intimate skin privileges for long, lonely months. There was just no one she wanted to be with, and though friends had offered to help her ease her touch hunger, she’d turned them down.
There was nothing wrong in being with a friend, in finding comfort in each other’s arms, skin to skin as her soul craved, but she wanted more. Felix . . . There was something there, something that had her smiling as she arrived on watch to find him putting her bonsai in the passenger seat of his beat-up old truck. It had hurt her the previous day when he hadn’t taken it home, though she’d told herself he could hardly carry it in his mouth.
But, oh, he was a beautiful wolf. It had taken all her self-control to keep her distance when she’d returned to this area in the evening just in time to see him exit the shed in his lupine form; she’d wanted to run her fingers through his luxuriant fur as badly as she wanted to pet that gorgeous hair of his. “Hi.”
A quick glimpse from below a fan of long lashes, his skin stretched taut over the dramatic bones of his face. Not a blush this time. No, this was harsh tension. Her smile faded. Stopping a couple of feet away, she leaned against the side of the truck. “Is something the matter?”
He blew out a breath, his shoulders rigid under the battered gray T-shirt he wore, the fabric skimming down the hard planes of his upper body. “I can’t do this.” Quiet, intense words.
A punch to the stomach couldn’t have taken her more by surprise. The spark between them, she’d been certain he’d felt it, too. “You don’t like me?” She wasn’t the giving-up type, had to know if there was something she could do to stop him from walking away before she’d even gotten to know him.
When his cheekbones flushed, his fingers tense on the edge of the open door, she realized she’d come perilously close to using her dominance against him. Shit, shit, shit. That wasn’t how it worked, how she wanted this to work. The cold truth was that a dominant could compel a pack submissive to obey her on the sexual level. Felix wasn’t pack but as a blood ally, he was close enough—his wolf might just obey her.
Even the idea of it made her skin crawl.
Turning away, she braced her hands on her knees, nausea twisting her gut into knots and shame flooding