Page 34 of Hungry Like the Wolf

“Let me help you,” he said, his voice low and soft, the way it sounded when he recorded his stories, not the way it sounded when he talked in his real life.

She turned, giving him her back and released the clasp, her hands shifting to her front. He wasn’t that much taller than her, certainly not tall enough to see over her shoulder and down, but the way her elbows turned to sharp points made him think that she was clutching the bra over her breasts, holding them in. Lord knew he felt like he needed something to hold himself in. He reached out and took the two halves of the band in his hands. She gasped.

“Sorry,” he said quickly.

He tried to touch her skin as little as possible as he examined the hook, which had been bent down.

“Sit tight,” he said, dropping back and going to the cabin’s small kitchen, to the silverware drawer, retrieving a butterknife that had a floral pattern on the handle. He came back to the bedroom and slipped the knife in between the hook and the fabric, prying it upward with gentle force, until it was the right shape again. He put the knife in his back pocket and then, with both hands again, brought the band’s halves together, the hook slipping easily into the eye.

He resisted the urge to trail a fingertip down the divot of her spine from the bra’s clasp down to the lacy trim at the top of her panties. But that was mate stuff. And as she had told him last night, this was a mating of convenience, nothing more. A farce until he could shift and she could be on her way, as if they’d never met.

So instead, he coughed into his hand and took a step away from her.

“I fixed it.”

“Thank you,” she said, her voice just above a whisper. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I’m your mate,” he said, regretting the words as soon as they fell from his mouth, no matter how right they felt. But she smiled at him, a soft, shy smile, and he smiled back with all of his teeth. He liked making her smile. He liked fixing things for her.

He remembered what JJ said down by the lake, about how you hoped your mate would be kind and help you, that they would take care of themselves and want to take care of you. And if that was all he could do, if all Nadja could take from him was fixing small things, making her life a little bit easier for as long as it took for his life to change forever and for her to go back to hers being exactly the same, he would do it. He would do it, and it would have to be enough.

He cleared his throat. “It’s supper time at the mess,” he said.

“Will you come with me?” Nadja asked.

What he wanted to say was “Always.” What he wanted to say was “I’ll follow you anywhere you go.” But those were things you said to a mate, not to your therapist who was selflessly pretending to be your mate to save your skin.

He couldn’t explain it, but he did want to follow her everywhere. To fix her bras and change her oil and hold her every night until she smelled so much like him and he smelled so much like her that it would be as if they were together even when they were apart.

And so instead, he said, “Of course I will.”

Which was almost as good and yet nowhere near enough at the same time.

CHAPTER 14

When JJ had told her there was an office in the mess hall, she hadn’t expected a utility closet with a slab of wood on top of stacked milk crates at the back and two file cabinets at the front. With the door closed, despite with the light from the unshaded single bulb dangling from the ceiling, the room was dim. The ancient computer that sat on the makeshift desktop groaned loudly as she connected to the internet, spitting and complaining as she logged into her Voyours account, a process that took the better part of ten minutes.

JJ had been right. There was no way she could stream. Hell, even uploading a video would take so long that all of her clients would die of old age waiting. She made a quick text post about needing to “take a break” for a “family emergency.” She knew that half of her subscribers would take that at face value while the other half would probably assume it was code for rehab. She didn’t care about that. After all, she didn’t owe them anything more than what they paid for.

It wasn’t about the money anyway. She made enough to live off of from her day job. The cam girl gig was to eat. Literally. Back at home, with high-speed internet, streaming two or three nights a week was enough to sustain her, even if it wasn’t enough to fulfill her. Her stomach growled, reminding her aloud of the very real predicament in which she found herself.

The full moon was in just under two weeks. If Robbie didn’t shift before then, they would have to explain to the pack why they didn’t want to make it official. That would be the worst-case scenario. But if he shifted before then, she could leave immediately after and return to civilization, to the life she’d carved out for herself. A life where she was always at least a little bit hungry.

A knock on the closet door startled her.

“Come in,” she said, swiveling on the squeaky desk chair.

JJ stood in the doorway, leaning on the jam with his hands in his jeans pockets.

“How goes it?” he said, nodding his head at the computer.

“Shit,” she said. He smiled, his canines glinting in the yellow fluorescent light. “How do you get anything done without internet?”

He shrugged. “Internet would make certain things easier. But it might make other things more of a liability. Plenty of people here like that they can’t be reached.”

She felt chastised—just a little—and sighed.

“You okay?” he asked.