5.
1230 Words
Ivy surfaces from darkness like someone clawing her way out of a frozen lake.
A sharp inhale slices through her chest. Her heartbeat slams against her ribs, fast and frantic. Ceiling beams waver above her. Massive king-size bed beneath her, dark oak dresser against the far wall, leather armchair by a stone fireplace that's seen decades of use.
Everything is masculine. No clutter. No softness. Just clean lines and the faint scent of cedar and wildness.
This is the Alpha's territory. Somewhere she shouldn't be but doesn't know that.
This isn’t her motel. This isn’t anywhere she knows. Her pulse spikes, panic burning like lightning under her skin.
The last thing she remembers is teeth, snarls and her palms erupting in blue fire and then darkness swallowing her whole.
A shadow shifts. Ivy jerks upright, breath stuttering.
He leans over her, too close, too still, sunlight sliding behind him and catching the edges of his hair in gold. His presence fills the room the way a storm fills a horizon.
“You’re awake,” he murmurs, voice low, gravel wrapped in heat.
She scrambles backward so fast she tangles in the sheets, nearly toppling off the bed. “Stay—stay away from me.”
Kai doesn’t reach for her. Doesn’t even blink. He just studies her with a patience that feels like restraint. Or warning.
“You collapsed,” he says, calm in a way that grates. “I brought you somewhere safe.”
“Safe?” The word shreds her throat. Nothing about this is safe.
Then she looks down.
Her stomach drops through the floor.
She isn’t wearing her clothes.
An oversized black shirt hangs off one shoulder, soft cotton shorts hugging her hips. Her skin is clean. Her hair is brushed. Someone touched her. Stripped her. Washed her.
Her breath stops. “What did you do to me?”
Kai’s jaw ticks a tiny, aggravated pulse. “You were hypothermic. Unconscious. Covered in blood—”
“Oh my God.” Heat rushes up her neck, humiliation and terror knotting in her chest. “You pervert!”
She grabs the nearest object, a wooden box, and launches it at him. Kai dodges easily, the box exploding against the wall behind him.
His wolf, Valor, rumbles with amusement inside his chest.
“I wasn’t going to leave you in filthy, bloody clothes,” Kai says, voice tight with irritation.
“Who changes an unconscious woman?” Ivy demands, checking her body with shaking hands, scanning for anything missing, anything wrong. “What is wrong with you?”
She moves before thinking.
Before breathing.
Instinct takes the reins.
She launches off the bed, hitting him like a furious, uncoordinated storm. She jumps onto his back, legs locking around his waist, fingers digging into his thick hair, wild strands that shine brunet-amber in the light. She pulls like she’s trying to rip out handfuls.
“You creep! You absolute freak—!”
Kai flinches, genuine pain flashing across his face. “Ow—f**k—”
He spins, trying to dislodge her, but Ivy clings like a feral cat running on pure adrenaline. Her nails scrape his scalp. Her knees jab his ribs. She shouts insults in his ear she didn’t know she had the creativity to invent.
Valor snarls with delight.
“Get. Off,” Kai growls.
“Make me!” she fires back, pulling harder.
Thinking is impossible. Words are impossible. She’s a wildfire, and he finally snaps.
In one fluid motion, he grabs her wrists, his hands huge, hot around her skin and peels her off him with strength that steals the breath from her lungs. She yelps as he spins her, momentum pitching them back toward the bed.
They hit the mattress in a tangle of limbs, sheets puffing around them. Kai pins her wrists above her head, his weight braced above hers. And then everything stops. Not because she fights.
A growl rumbles in his chest, vibrating through her palms, through the mattress, her bones.
“What… what are you?” she breathes, voice trembling. “Why are you making that sound? Are you a wolf or something?”
She means it as sarcasm, but the question lands between them like truth.
Kai doesn’t answer.
He can’t.
Because suddenly they’re too close.
Close enough that he sees the flecks of frost-blue in her irises.
Close enough that her breath brushes his mouth. Close enough that Valor whispers with a certainty that shakes him: "take me."
Kai should move. He knows he should move. Apologize. Back away. Release her.
He doesn’t.
He stares at her and Ivy Dalton is devastating.
Her raven hair spills across the pillows like ink on snow. Her lashes cast shadows on her cheeks, dusted with freckles he somehow missed last night. Her lips part on a shaky exhale—pink, soft, a little swollen from yelling at him.
The shirt slips lower on her shoulder, baring skin that looks impossibly soft. The neckline drags loose, revealing the curve of a breast rising with each uneven breath.
A pinch of desire tightens low in Kai’s gut.
And Ivy feels it.
She sees it flicker across his face. Worse, something inside her responds.
Her thighs tense. Her breath catches. Her heartbeat stumbles into a rhythm she doesn’t want to name.
No.
Absolutely not.
She does not want this man. She shouldn’t want him. But her body isn’t listening.
The betrayal of it tears a soft sound from her throat. She hopes he didn't hear her.
"Observations that are working you up," he murmurs without thinking.
Ivy's lips part. Air puffs from her nose as she tries to compose herself, but it's useless. The tension between them is a living thing, coiling tighter with every passing second.
She's effortlessly sexy. Dangerously tempting. And he doesn't even know her.
Valor purrs his approval.
But Kai can't afford distractions. They're in the middle of a war with rogues, rival packs circling, his father's legacy a noose around his neck. He needs to focus, not thinking how badly he wants to taste every inch of a stranger's skin.
Even if stopping feels impossible when they're trapped this close.
Ivy seems to reach the same conclusion. Her hand lifts, fingertips hovering inches from his chest. The air between them vibrates.
"Do something," she whispers, voice hoarse. "Or let me go."
Kai's control fractures more.
He didn't plan the move, but now she's closer, now there's no space left between intention and action.
"I don't want to get attached to such a nice view," he says, voice dropping to gravel, "if you're just going to choke and leave."
Ivy's jaw drops. Her eyes sharpen, outrage flickering across her features. "Excuse me?"
“Is this too much for you?” he pushes, voice dipping softer, closer, far too intimate. “Do you want me to stop?”
For a heartbeat, he expects her to slap him. Shove him away. Demand he get the hell off her.
Ivy yanks one hand free, curls her fingers into his shirt, and drags him down.
Their lips collide.
Heat detonates—feral, consuming, inevitable—like two storms slamming into each other mid-sky.
Kai makes a sound he’s never heard from his own chest, half growl, gasp, and then the kiss deepens, dangerous and hungry and alive. The whole world falls away.
- Writer
