Page 100 of Bad Girl
He’s hidden her away.
What’s he hiding?
Imagine ignoring your only brother.
Ah, but has he bonded with her yet?
When I find my mate…
I blocked him in the end. It was the cleanest solution.
Work was simpler. I was on annual leave. Nika was recorded as off sick—which wasn’t entirely inaccurate. It didn’t seem fair for her to burn through her leave entitlement for something that was, by any reasonable medical definition, beyond her control.
I set my phone down beside the plant on her nightstand.
Then I turned to her.
She was still deeply asleep, her face pressed into the remains of the nest, one hand curled loosely beside her cheek. I drew her close and she sniffed—twice, automatically—before settling against my chest without waking.
I held her and let myself think the thing I’d been filing away since day one.
We had less than twenty-four hours left.
The heat would end. The rut would ease. And then we would be two people in a flat in London—a woman who had reservations about my wolf and me.
Where would that leave us?
The uncertainty of it settled in my stomach like a stone.
I don’t like it, Kael said quietly.
No.
Neither did I.
??????
Her taste. Her scent. That soft, supple skin.
I’d licked and sucked almost every inch of her—cataloguing her the way Kael catalogued territory, committing every detail to memory. The tiny black spot on her nape. Every scratch and bruise that had bloomed across her perfect skin over four days.
It would all fade once the heat let up. The marks would disappear. Her scent would mellow back to something manageable. Her body would cool.
And we’d be back to two people with reservations about each other.
The questions never stopped, even in the depths of the rut.
How could she be so perfect?
How could her wolf be so bad in the best of ways?
How could I make her mine—truly mine—without her feeling like she’d lost herself in the process?
She stirred beneath me. Still damp from our last round.
“You’re too hot,” she grumbled into the pillow.
“That’s all you, baby,” I murmured, gripping her hip as I ground my knot deeper.
