Nate eased me onto the sofa, his eyes tracing my form, clad in tattered scraps of clothing, bound by Mira’s intricate red ropes. The sight—my skin flushed, my glare sharp with defiance—only stoked his hunger. His lips curved into a roguish grin, undeterred by my scowl. Within him, his wolf roared, a primal cacophony thudding against his skull, urging him to close the gap, to possess me with unrestrained ferocity, to sate the beast clawing at his restraint.
The frantic desperation from earlier—when he’d stepped off the plane, Layla’s scent a tidal wave crashing over him, thick and urgent—had ebbed. Now, silence wove between us, heavy and electric, the air shifting to a different cadence. Stripped of the chaos of Mira’s villa, the raw, unspoken tension between man and woman pulsed through t
