Impulse

His breaths were coming in pants now, and he nodded. “Anywhere, I don’t care. Just get us out of here.”

He slid over, easing her across his lap as he did, and she helped him when his hands started to shake, twisting herself around the steering wheel until she could settle into the driver’s seat.

Driving stick was harder than she remembered. Then again, she’d never practiced with a dominant wolf on the verge of a panic attack shaking in the passenger seat. She whispered a silent apology to Jackson for riding the clutch on his beautiful car and tried not to spare Julio too many worried glances as she picked a street at random and drove away from the hotel.

Fifteen miles away, she helped Julio into a tiny room at an establishment nowhere near as nice as the last one.

He’d been avoiding her gaze, and he ran his hands through his hair as he sank to the bed.

“I’m a jerk.”

Sera went to the door to hang the Do Not Disturb sign and engaged the chain lock for good measure. When she returned to the bed, she knelt between his legs. “Look at me, Julio.

Please?”

“I’m fine now.” He groaned. “It’s all just so stupid.”

She curled her hand around his and squeezed. “You’ve got two choices. Do you want kisses and pets, or do you want the bullshit-free tough love?”

His shoulders began to shake with laughter. “The latter. I bet it’s cute.”

“Oh, it’s damn cute.” She squeezed his hands. “Listen to me, mister alpha wolf. You went through some seriously crazy shit. You don’t want to talk about it? I get it. You don’t want to let other people see it get to you? Fine. But don’t you dare call it stupid. Because if you think you’re stupid because you can’t shrug off being tortured after a couple months, think about how pathetic you make the rest of us feel.”

Julio met her gaze with a shaky sigh, all traces of humor gone. “He wasn’t even coming for you,” he told her quietly. “I would have killed him if he had been.”

“I know,” she replied just as softly. “We are the way we are. It’s how we’re built, the way we’re supposed to be. You need to protect me. I understand.” She pressed one hand to his chest, fingers spread wide over his heart. “I need to protect you too. That’s what you have to understand about me.”

He covered her hand with his, then pulled her into his lap. “Sera.”

She pressed a finger to his lips. “One more thing. I don’t break, okay? I bend. The rest of you stand strong until you shatter, but I ride the rough spots so I can get back up when they’re over. But sometimes that means I don’t learn, because I never get hurt badly enough to teach me a lesson.”

His brows drew together in a frown. “I don’t know what that means.”

Of course he didn’t. She sighed and closed her eyes. “I get it all tangled up. Dominance and submission. Life and sex. I threw myself into you all the way, and it wasn’t fair. I forget that the people worth submitting to… It’s not play, not for you. It’s another responsibility, and I shouldn’t have acted like you wouldn’t take it seriously.”

The world tipped, and she landed on the bed with him looming over her. “I take it seriously,” he whispered. “And you’re worth it.”

Sera’s breath caught. “We don’t have to. I don’t need games to want you. You’d make it hot even if it was just missionary under the covers with the lights off.”

“You’re not listening to yourself.” He leaned closer, until his breath heated her lips. “This isn’t play for me.”

The urge to submit trembled through her. She relaxed into the bed, slid her hands up to his shoulders and then over her head. “What is this?”

He followed the lines of her arms to grasp her wrists. “Pleasure, if you want it.”

Oh God, she did. So much she was shaking with it, so much she wanted to beg him not to stop. But it was always about what she wanted. What she needed. “What do you want?”

“To take you,” he rasped. “To watch the look on your face when I do it.”

She wiggled her wrists, teased him with the hint of a challenge. Forced him to tighten his grip until the strength in his fingers melted something low in her belly. “You want to hear my dirty, shameful secret?”

“No.” He scraped his teeth over her jaw. “But I’ll listen to a little bit of your truth.”

“I’m a simple creature.” She had just enough leverage to turn her head and brush her lips over his ear. “I know you hated the fighting. But you were fighting to protect me, and that made me feel…”

He licked her earlobe. “Cherished?”

That was as close a word as any. Human words didn’t capture the feeling, but she tried.

“Cherished. Safe. Turned on.” She shivered and arched her head back, all but begging him to shift his mouth to her throat. “Like you can fill up my empty places, and that’s before the sex starts.”

“I’d try.” He kissed the side of her neck, then parted his lips and repeated the caress, hot and wet.

Thought scattered, and she pressed her breasts against his chest with a sigh of pleasure.

“You do. You already do.”

Julio held both her wrists with one hand and slid his other down, under the hem of her shirt.

“Say it again.”

An order, for all its gentleness. She squirmed for a breathless moment in an attempt to urge his hand higher. “You get me so hot.”

The noise he made was half laugh, half groan. “You feel it, don’t you? We could stay like this, and it’d still be pretty damn fun.”

“What? Dry hump like teenagers?” She tried to sound outraged, but it was difficult with giddy laughter threatening to spill over. Fun—the one thing that had been missing from sex for so long, because it was harder to laugh with strangers. She rubbed up against him with a throaty moan before biting his chin. “Is all the squirming cranking your engine?”

Another groan. “Actually? You smell really, really good.”

She smelled like some off-brand bottle of travel-sized shampoo she’d found at the drugstore, and maybe strawberry bubble gum. Nothing fancy, nothing that should have put that glazed look in his eyes. Then again, the scent of his skin under the sweat and blood was just as intoxicating. “Pheromones,” she whispered against his jaw. “Lots and lots of pheromones.”

“Mmm.” His hand drifted higher, sliding up to the lacy edge of her bra, and she closed her eyes and focused on the soft drag of his fingertips across suddenly sensitive skin.

He was wrong about one thing. He might not be playing games, but this was play. The beautiful, perfect kind. Not about rules or roles or trying to fulfill someone else’s expectations, but slow exploration and laughter mixed with pleasure. She wasn’t a game to him, because sex was the game, and they were playing it together.

His fingers were still locked around both of her wrists, his hand large enough to cage her easily. She flexed and tugged against his grip solely for the rush of heat that followed.

Anticipation, tightening her nipples and making her so wet she was almost embarrassed. “You like tormenting me, don’t you?”

His palm covered her nipple through her bra, caressing in a slow, firm circle. “Why wouldn’t I like this?”

“I don’t—” The word caught on a whimper, one of helpless need. “More.” That was an easier word to say, and it encapsulated everything throbbing inside her. “More, more, please, Julio. I need more.”

“That’s it.” He dragged her shirt up with his teeth and watched her as he curled his fingers under the top edge of her bra cup.

She hissed in protest and ground up, rubbing against his erection as encouragement to go faster. “You could be inside me already. I’m so past ready, and wouldn’t this be more fun if you were already inside me?”

He smiled, slow and wicked. “Not fun enough for you like this, I guess.”

Too much fun, and perversely even more so when he denied her. The usual twinge of unease didn’t even accompany the thought—not when he was so smugly pleased with himself and her reactions. Maybe she was still a little bent, but he didn’t seem to care.