“I’m not a wolf right now,” he tossed back as he began to walk up the stairs.

“You’re always a wolf, Lex. What’s more, you’re an alpha wolf, a warrior,” Cade said quietly and went back to working on the meat, effectively dismissing him.

Lex paced around his room for half an hour. He wanted to let Nina sleep. She was tired and upset over Gabriel’s death. At the same time, he wanted her more than he could wrap his head around. Cade was right, he could feel the wolf just beneath the surface, pushing him to mark her, to claim her as his woman. Once he came inside of her she’d be marked as his. His biological stamp would be on her and a bond would be forged. She wouldn’t be happy with anyone else and neither would he. They’d become integral to each other.

Making his mind up, he left his room and walked down the hallway. He stood at the head of the stairs and looked down, seeing Cade in the kitchen whistling and cutting up vegetables, the tray of uncooked meat marinating on the counter.

He went to the door to the guestroom and tapped quietly. If she were sleeping she wouldn’t hear him anyway.

She opened the door and they stood, silently staring at each other for a few moments.

“Nina…”

She grabbed his hand and pulled him inside the room, shutting and locking the door behind herself, leaning on it for strength as she took him in.

He pulled off his shirt and she greedily drank in the details of his upper body. Strong, thickly muscled, not an ounce wasted. Not too much muscle—what was there wasn’t for show. It was the body of a man who worked out. Not just a body but a tool. Danger poured off him in waves—he was a big, bad man and she wanted an extra helping of it. She wanted to eat him up in great gobbling bites until she was positively stuffed with him. Oh he made her weak in the knees!

She took one step, then another until she was standing very close, then reached out a hand to stroke over his chest. She leaned in and closed her eyes as she took a deep breath and had to reach out to hold on as she nearly fell over with the intensity of her reaction.

Her body tightened up, ni**les stabbing the front of her shirt, skin flushed and heated. Her pu**y bloomed with desire, her honey making her slick. The world became a pinpoint of focus. Suddenly it was just the two of them, nothing else existed that mattered but having him inside of her body.

Lex gripped her forearm to keep her standing. “I know. It’ll pass in a moment.”

She looked up at him with widened eyes. “You know? What do you mean, you know?”

“I feel it too. The first time is the hardest, but each time I get a deep whiff of you, it nearly knocks me to the ground. I get so frenzied with lust that I have to grind my teeth to not drag you to the nearest horizontal surface and plunge inside of you.”

“What is it?”

He pulled her shirt off and unhooked her bra and they both hissed out when bare skin met bare skin. The feel of those diamond hard ni**les—so pretty and delicious—pressing into his body made him delirious with want.

“Pheromones.”

“What?” This was slurred as she became drunk with him. Her eyes slowly slid closed as his hands moved up to cup her br**sts, pinching her ni**les between clever fingers.

“Chemicals, personal chemicals. Yours call to me, mine call to you.” He leaned down and kissed the spot just below her ear and she moaned.

“I know what pheromones are! But that’s mumbo jumbo. You’re just horny, I’m just horny. It’s not science.” Even as she said it she didn’t believe it. The totality of what she felt for him—the way her body responded when he touched her—it was more than mere horniness.

He made a tsk sound with his lips against her skin. “Liar. You know what I’m talking about and you know it’s the truth.”

“So if we f**k this…intensity will lessen?” She was breathless as she asked.

“It will always be intense, Nina. You’re my woman. Once we’re bound the intensity of our connection will deepen.” He said this in between pressing kisses down the long line of her neck.

She ignored that and arched into the questing hand that reached into her panties. She turned off her brain and just felt. Opened herself up to sensation. It was time that rational, by-the-book Nina went away for a while so Nina who hadn’t been f**ked in years could get some.

Her hands slid down his chest and found the waist of his jeans and she yanked them open, satisfied as she heard each pop of the long row of buttons releasing. Suddenly he was there in her hands. Hard, velvety smooth and so hot. She encircled him with her fingers and looked down, smoothing a thumb over the head where a bead of se**n pearled. He moaned and watched as she brought her thumb to her mouth.

He was salty, musky, masculine.

She squeaked in surprise as he picked her up and stalked to the bed, tossing her onto the mattress as he shucked his jeans and climbed up, halting on all fours above her, looking down into her face.

“Do you give yourself willingly to me?” he said, his voice low and laced with desire.

She writhed beneath him. The heat from his body blanketed her. She could smell him, the clean salt of his skin, the woodsy scent of his cologne, beneath it, the elemental Lex that she’d come to…oh god. She shoved that thought away quickly with rational Nina.

She nodded. “Yes. Oh god, Lex, please. I need you inside of me right now.” She didn’t even recognize her own voice, it was sultry, smoky.

“All in due time. I need to taste you. All of you.” He started by taking her lips again in a kiss that was designed to melt her, to make her bones jelly, and it was a good thing she was lying down because she didn’t think her legs would have supported her—he was quite successful.