by Diana Seere
A flicker of emotion registered in Asher’s face as he stood. Sam touched Zach’s arm, her voice low and soothing.
“I think we need to give Zach the benefit of the doubt. He still works here. Let him go home, Asher.” Her use of Stanton’s first name was touching. “He’ll be back tomorrow for work. He’s suffered enough. I can see his frustration.”
Zach looked down at his crotch. Was it that obvious?
“We can acclimate him to his new reality,” she insisted.
Zach’s new reality was blurring around the edges as he smelled her, floors away, her hair tickling his nose, the need to bury himself in the unnamed woman such a primal craving that he couldn’t stand being away from her for a minute longer. Crossing the small office, he grasped the doorknob and turned, looking only at Sam.
“I am one hundred percent in control of myself. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Slamming the door on Asher Stanton’s protests, Zach ate up the floor, strides long and determined as he bypassed the elevator and went straight for the stairs. A magnetic pull told him to go up, two stairs at a time until he reached the twelfth floor.
Barreling through the metal door, he tore down a hallway, pivoting until he stared at the sign.
The Platinum Club.
He’d been here once before, for a LupiNex holiday party, but memory served as no anchor, his body very much in the present, second by second, step by step, as her scent grew stronger. Loud, booming laughter filled his ears, the sound like church bells, like heaven, like every musical note forged into a single drumbeat meant for him.
“Excuse me. Can I help you?” A catlike woman wearing a dark pantsuit and gold hoop earrings gave him a smooth look, her face placid but authoritarian. Old enough to be his late mother but too sophisticated, she looked like she ran the place.
“I’m here for—” He halted, hearing the change in his voice.
No.
No.
He met her eyes, seeing a cold disapproval morph into disbelief as she reached into her jacket and pulled out a phone.
“Derry!” she called out, the word meaning nothing to Zach. Racing away from her, the unnamed woman’s scent strengthening, he turned to the right of a large bar and found a beast of a man with a blonde human in his lap, the two drinking out of large wineglasses.
“Sorry, chap, the Plat’s not open yet. We’re—”
“Here’s the sangria! Derry, get another glass.”
Zach turned to find a goddess holding a pitcher, her long black hair like spun obsidian, her scent the answer to every mystery he’d ever pondered.
And just then he realized how terribly wrong he’d been moments ago.
Nothing was under control.
Least of all him.
Sophia Stanton would’ve recognized him even without the supernatural senses her bear shifter nature gave her. And right now every one of those senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste—was electric with the sudden charge of awareness. She registered his skin, his muscles, his blood, the wave of his hair, the tangy, tantalizing allure of his sweat.
She would’ve recognized him if he’d shrunk to a tenth of his original size, been dipped in blue paint, dressed as an elf, and stuck in a toy shop window with a price tag on his ear.
“You,” she whispered.
Him, a voice inside her echoed.
The pitcher of sangria in her hands suddenly felt like a brick, a millstone, a lifetime.
His lips parted, but only a soft, deep growl came forth.
Heat flooded her as she recognized the new part of him. Not completely human anymore, this man, the one who had humiliated her so long ago, yet the one she couldn’t forget.
No, she wouldn’t even admit it to herself. He hadn’t hurt her; he was simply a fool. An idiot. Too stupid to realize what a tremendous loss he’d suffered when he’d turned down her invitation last year. A real man—shifter or human—would’ve been honored. Real men begged for her attentions and thanked her profusely afterward, right before they begged for more.
Being a bear shifter, even a female bear shifter, she’d frequently indulged. Not as often as Derry—let’s be serious, her twin brother had been pathological in his sexual escapades before he’d gotten engaged to Jess—but as often as she pleased, which was quite often.
She wasn’t ashamed of who she was. Unlike her brother Gavin, who was always running from his nature, trying to control the wolf within, she reveled in who she was: a bear shifter with a passion for life. Not just sex, but adventure. Action. Achievement.
That night in the elevator, however, this man standing before her now with lust radiating from his eyes had turned her down as quickly and as forcefully as her previous lovers had begged for more.
But how things had changed. He didn’t look as if he would reject her now.
My goodness. He was as flushed and eager as an adolescent shifter at his first orgy. His eyes were black as licorice, the golden brown shoved aggressively aside by some biochemical process in him, his sensual mouth moist from hungry swipes of his tongue. The man was bigger—taller even—with the thick build of a beast in command.
She could hear his accelerated pulse, the shallowness of his hot breath, and even the lurid thoughts in his brain—a mantra of words such as kiss, lick, taste, pound, thrust, take.
You.
“How lovely to see you again,” she purred, savoring the way his eyes darkened further, the rush of his blood pumping through his veins, making the pulse on his neck jump.
She hadn’t made an impression then, but she certainly was making one now.
Sophia held out her hand, eyes holding his, letting him know she saw his arousal, that she could manipulate it, that—this time, at last—he was her prisoner. “I don’t believe I ever got your name. I’m Sophia Stanton.”
He dragged his gaze away from her face to stare at her hand a moment before grabbing it between both of his and bringing it to his lips.
At the feel of his tongue against her knuckles, her amusement faltered, replaced by a blast of molten need.
Him.
If it weren’t for years and years of practice, she would’ve melted to the floor in a puddle, speech impossible. But she did have practice managing her own desire, and she brought it to heel, with far more effort than was reasonable, by snatching her hand out of his grip. Heart thudding in her ears, she staggered back a step. “Your name?” she demanded, although her voice quivered.
He raised his head slightly, and his eyes met hers. Dark pools of hot pleasure she wanted to dive into naked and screaming the name she didn’t know.
“Zach Hayden,” he said, his voice rough. She heard a faint howl at the edges of his speech, the way a werewolf sounded when he was on the verge of a shift.
She studied him more closely, acknowledging he was not only more muscular now but taller, impossibly so. As a shifter, she was so accustomed to seeing incredible transformations in her friends and family, she hadn’t paused to think why her brother’s human employee, whom she’d fruitlessly propositioned once on a drunken whim ages ago, was now a sexually potent werewolf with claws straining at his fingertips.
Wait.
The accident at the lab. The human researcher. It must’ve been him.
And he was about to shift—here, now.
Belatedly she realized the danger. They were at the Platinum Club, not a shifter haven. This was no place for a man to turn into a wolf. She was here with Derry and Jess as the club opened, so thankfully the place had few patrons, but there were enough—plus the human workers who could not be exposed to an uncontrolled shifter.
Assuming that was what she saw unfolding before her.
“Derry!” Eva appeared, her typical smoothness pushed aside by concern. “Can you help with this—he’s—this human? Shifter?”
“I’ve got him,” Sophia declared.
“Are you sure?” Derry’s voice was a curious mixture of concern and amusement.
“Since when have I ever had a proble
m managing your kind?”
“My kind?” he replied, the amusement taking over.
“Men in heat,” she shot back.
“Take him downstairs!” Eva called out to her. “Morgan will be expecting you.”
Shoving aside her questions for later, Sophia risked touching him again, clamping her hand around a muscled bicep that was tightening into a predator’s foreleg, and hauling him with her to a service corridor behind the bar.
Even that slight contact, her fingers on his arm with thick fabric between, burned hot enough to make her flinch. Each step they took together was timed to her heartbeat, loud enough now to drown out the sounds of the bar’s Friday night dance music blaring from the speakers overhead, the nightclub about to open.
The service elevator, thank God, was already on this floor, and she pushed him inside and joined him, breathless and confused. She set her palm on the metal plate that would bring them to safety downstairs.
To the secret Novo Club.
“Sophia.”
His voice didn’t make the usual path—it didn’t travel through the air to her ears to her brain, where the nerves deciphered the sound and filed it away rationally. Instead, the sound of her name on his lips pierced her skin, sliced through flesh, muscle, and bone until it found her heart, where it embedded itself deep inside, barbed and deadly.
The chestnut waves of his hair were spreading into his cheeks, his eyes flashing golden over his narrowing jaw.
She slapped him. She was taller than most men, with the strength of a bear who lifted pianos for exercise, and her hand knocked him off-balance. “Control yourself!”
His animal features flickered, faded. Very human, very male eyes captured hers. A slow smile spread over his lips, and she shivered.
“I thought you didn’t like men who controlled themselves,” he said slowly, raising an eyebrow.
A memory struck her as powerfully as her hand had just hit his jaw: her hand sliding up his (then narrow) chest, pushing away the lapels of his lab coat to feel the beat of the heart that, for some reason, she’d wanted to touch.
“Come home with me,” she’d said, mindlessly following the impulse to get him into her bed, gift him with her body.
But he’d refused her. The shock hadn’t left her for days—if ever.
For he had been the only man to refuse her.
She put a hand on the wall of the elevator for support. Silently she begged the elevator to descend more quickly. To the Novo Club. To safety. Something was wrong with him. Something that could hurt her. Trained as a nurse, she wasn’t too proud to admit there were times everyone—even she—needed assistance.
And as Zach’s look intensified, every nerve ending in her body simultaneously stood on end, buzzing, the sound of thousands of vibrations all coming together to form a single beat.
One that drowned out all her fear and replaced it with something worse.
Fate.
Chapter 2
The world was a heartbeat.
And Zach was its heart.
As he watched the elevators close, he felt like four chambers of red, pounding flesh, beating in sync to pump himself into the world, taking it over, king of it all. Sophia’s fear bubbled off her like hot water on a griddle, bouncing and tingling until it evaporated into nothing but the memory of the ripple. She was pure beauty in pulsing form, every single cell of her deliciously large frame filled with nothing but attention to him.
Just as nature intended.
Power coursed through him like a drug, making his head light with an irrepressible urge to smile, to laugh, to take in the wonder of his connection to, well, everything.
Everything but her.
Time to fix that. Now.
Drawn to Sophia, he reached for her shoulders, finding resistance that only spurred him on, his body moving as if choreographed, her hot, sweet mouth against his before he knew it. She was tall, impossibly so, but even more outrageous was the fact that he was taller. Last year she’d towered over him.
Last year he’d ached to say yes to her offer of a one-night stand, but principle had left him lonely that night. Her reputation preceded her: Sophia Stanton, the wildly sex-positive billionaire heiress who bedded men the way most women shopped for shoes.
Now, though, their mouths fit perfectly together, tongues tangled as his hands, big and strong, plunged into her long hair, grasping close to her scalp with an intensity that made her gasp—and made him grin. Power was intoxicating, a thrill ride that made the kiss like a roller coaster, highs and lows a dizzying race, stomach fluttering, body braced for impact.
He knew exactly where he wanted to impact her, too.
“Zach,” she moaned in that maddening British accent, the sound shooting straight to his cock, her silky dress nothing more than an obstacle in his hands, her thigh pressed against his aching erection like she was propping up his world. Her palms crawled up his broadening back, fingernails digging into the thick muscle he’d acquired. As his breath quickened, he devoured her mouth to the point of madness, hands finding luscious breasts with nipples like marbled diamonds, taut and ready to be licked by the thousand tongues that filled his mouth, all ready for her.
“Sophia.” The syllables rolled off his tongue as he broke the kiss, but he couldn’t bear the space between them, her expression dazed, cheeks flushed. With more force than he assumed she possessed, he found himself pulled back into a fevered kiss, her mouth demanding his full attention once more.
Dominance didn’t come into play as they tangled together in a twisting tumble of flesh. Sophia gave back every ounce of force, matching him with a fervor that made him insane.
Made him need to rut. To breed. To spill himself into her.
To mount her like an animal and take as much as she gave.
And then take some more.
Nimble fingers moved against his shoulders, harsh and needy, as Sophia groaned deep in her throat, then tore away, leaving Zach openmouthed and chilled. Her eyes took him in, worried and alert, fingers going to her mouth in shock.
“You’re shifting. Completely. We have seconds, if we’re lucky!” she gasped.
The elevator’s ding went ignored as fire shot through his blood, his ears perked and growing. Every sound intensified, his vision going sharp as he opened his eyes to find Sophia pushing him away, her hands flat against his chest, eyes bright, hair mussed.
“Morgan!” she cried out as Zach’s vision made every feature of the elevator stand out, the edges of each metal panel like glow sticks. As he took a step out onto the floor, his shoe sole cracked against stone, the sound close to a thunderclap to his heightened senses, then stopped, his foot growing, the ping! ping! ping! of thick loafer stitches popping like Bubble Wrap.
The length of his forearm was nothing but fur, his bones aching with a maddening release that turned pain into unadulterated pleasure. Sophia’s scent, a mix of soap and sweat and pussy, oh, pussy, made him lunge at her, catching her at an angle, her ass up against his front in a second, his cock ripping through the trouser seams as he morphed and grew, blood racing where he needed it most, jaw stretching to accommodate more kisses.
More teeth.
He arched against her ass as the shreds of his clothing pooled in strips of forgotten civility, his hands peeling her dress up, her ass moving in rhythm with his thrusts. So close, so close, so—
The needle that struck his hindquarters from behind was a gnat, a mosquito bite, a pinprick, but the tiny reservoir of humanity left in him knew what it was before the tip withdrew. He turned to find Sam and Asher Stanton behind him, Asher’s face twisted with bitter cynicism.
The last words he heard before he hit the floor came from a deep baritone dripping with contempt and, Zach swore, a slight laugh.
“One hundred percent control?”
And with that, the world went dark.
Sophia was too stunned to respond right away. Hand planted on the wall for support—Zach had almost knocked her over—she struggled to
regain her composure. It wasn’t simply shock from his loss of control, from his sudden dangerous shift, or even the way he’d grabbed and kissed her.
It was her own loss of control. If they hadn’t been in the elevator, if they hadn’t reached the Novo—their private shifter club—if they hadn’t been surrounded by others…
Would she have stopped him?
The absurdity of it struck her out of her daze. Of course she would’ve stopped him. He’d morphed involuntarily into the lust-driven, half-animal state typical of pubescent shifter males who were learning the scope of their powers.
“Does he live?” Asher asked, sneering down his long nose at Zach’s prone, half-naked body, now human, on the floor.
The LupiNex researcher, Dr. Samantha Baird, was already kneeling at Zach’s side. Sophia had met her last winter when a powerful serum made from modified shifter DNA had been stolen from the lab, endangering the safety and secrecy of their world.
Sam pressed a hand to his throat, then his heart. “Yes,” she said, nodding in relief. “He’s breathing. Strong pulse. Merely unconscious.”
“Unfortunate,” Asher said, each syllable cold and clipped.
Sam looked up in outrage. “How can you say that? This man almost died working for your family. And now he has been sedated by an elephant tranquilizer.”
“That… man… asked for death when he touched my sister,” Asher said.
Anger drove Sophia to shake off the last of her shock. She straightened to her full height and planted herself in front of her eldest sibling, who was so often confused about his place in her life. “If my brothers insisted on murdering every man who touched me, the bloodshed would land each one of them in prison. And deservedly so.” She glared at him, holding his gaze. “And trust me, Asher. You don’t want to know the number.”
Asher didn’t back down. He never did. Raising his chin, he held her golden brown eyes with his dark blue ones. “Although you have seen fit to choose quite a menagerie of partners in the past, it was my understanding you had invited them to share your favors.” His gaze flickered downward. “Unlike this mongrel.”
