Page 25 of Moon Destiny
His wolf.
The hair on my nape lifted. He’d warned disobedience would cause me pain.
His reply was soft. “There’s no need for me to ask, Brooke. If I don’t want you to drink, then you won’t.”
My lips parted. I waited for anger to flare along with the tension that simmered between us. I should have been angry at yet another display of his arrogance. Instead, a heavy, dragging sensation spread through my core and pooled between my legs. Evergreen and leather and that tantalizing hint of cologne teased my nose.
“Are you…” My throat had gone so dry I had to swallow before I could go on. “Are you doing this?”
He made me wait a beat. “Some of it’s the mate bond.”
“Some of it?”
“Mmm.” His voice dipped lower. “And I think some of it’s because you actually do enjoy being told what to do. At least when I’m the one giving the orders.”
My nipples tightened. I sucked in a breath. “You’re wrong.”
“Here we are!” The server reappeared holding a platter groaning with food. I avoided Hugh’s gaze as she deposited pasta, bread, salad, and wine on the table. She added two big wineglasses and beamed at us. “Unless you need anything else, I’ll leave you to it.”
“This looks great, thank you,” Hugh said, sounding like a perfectly normal man who hadn’t just made my panties dampen with desire. “Oh, and we changed our minds about the wine.”
“No problem.” The server plucked the bottle and glasses from the table.
I held my tongue until she left, and then I swallowed against the desert my throat had become. “You can’t talk to me that way,” I said weakly.
“You’re right,” he said at once. He closed his eyes for a long moment, clearly locked in some kind of internal struggle. When he opened them, his face was strained, and it was like he had to force out his words. “It’s…difficult when you challenge me. My wolf responds. The way you’re feeling… I feel it, too. I’ve been fighting it since I bit you. It’s why I asked Dylan to stay with you today.”
Oh god. That meant he was just as aroused—and didn’t want to be. How humiliating.
I waited for a hole to open beneath my chair and swallow me up. When it didn’t, I dropped my gaze to my plate of delicious looking pasta I no longer had an appetite for. “So what happens now?”
“I can reject you.”
That brought my head back up. “What do you mean?” The book hadn’t mentioned that.
“You won’t find that in the book,” he said, as if he’d read my mind. He hadn’t, though. The book had mentioned that, noting that it was a vampiric trait. Werewolves could only hear each other’s thoughts when they spoke mind to mind, and even that was limited to relatively short distances. It was a relief to know Hugh hadn’t been listening in on my thoughts, even if I was a little freaked out that there were vampires in the world.
Hugh gestured to my plate. “You should eat before it gets cold.”
“Tell me about this rejection thing.”
“Eat first.”
I picked up my fork without thinking, and I’d swallowed a bite before I realized I’d obeyed his command. Worse, something within me had wanted to. It craved his approval.
Was it coming from me…or some kind of metaphysical bond I had no control over?
More heat flooded me as I stared at the pasta on my plate. He was completely wrong about me enjoying this. My body might be off the rails, but my brain wanted nothing to do with Hugh Dalton and his orders.
I clenched the fork until the metal dug into my skin.
“Brooke,” he said. “Look at me.”
His voice was wrapped in a command, which meant I lifted my head without stopping to think whether I wanted to.
He met my gaze—and then deliberately lowered his own.
My breath caught. I didn’t need to know werewolf rules to understand this was an apology of sorts. By dropping his eyes, he was giving me the upper hand.
