She clenched wildly around my fingers the moment I said it, confirming what I already suspected: Bethy was a closet exhibitionist.

Fuck.

I pressed down hard on her fluttering clit and smothered my growl against her neck.

I couldn’t pull her into my lap fast enough as she proceeded to moan-squeal and fall apart, squirming against my palm, scrabbling blindly for any piece of me that she could get her hands on.

Damn. The girl knew how to orgasm.

She soaked my hand riding out her bliss. Her fingers wound around my neck and her mouth crashed into mine, initiating our first kiss—for the second time.

I took what she offered like it was my last fleeting chance at salvation. Consumed her lips as if they were the one truth left in the world that could expunge the bottomless void of pretense, regret, and disappointment that permeated my existence.

She had no memory of the first time we had kissed. My sister Milena’s pack had seen to that. Bethany’s memories of the forty-six hours she and I had spent together in Argentina and Brazil ten years ago had been wiped out almost as soon as our time together had ended. A fact that I was both resentful of and eternally grateful for.

They were some of my worst life memories. Also my best.

And this—our second first kiss—was every bit as soul-shattering as the one we’d shared those many years ago.

Not simply because she tasted better than any woman I’d ever known. Or because having her mouth fused with mine had the bizarre effect of making me feel like I was breathing for the first time in my life. It was the utter lack of artifice in the way her tongue laid waste to mine, sucking it into her own mouth and devouring it on an unladylike moan.

What made Bethany so great—what had separated her from all other girls in my mind since that first kiss we’d shared on a dance floor in Argentina—was the same thing that still set her apart from all others: She was real. She wore her heart on her sleeve and waved it at the world. When she kissed me she threw every emotion she had into it.

I felt it. And it felt more genuine and pure than anything I’d experienced before or since that first time she’d kissed me.

My wolf felt it, too.

The urge to bite Bethany again grew stronger the more she clung to me, her soft body melding into mine, rubbing against me where I was most vulnerable ... and hard as a fucking boulder. I fought the urge, asserting authority over my wolf each time her perfect scent caused my eyes to shift and my mouth to water, each time the bold thrust of her tongue against mine taunted my canines to breach the surface of my gums. She was kissing me now as if she couldn’t wait another second to have all of me inside her. Still, somehow I managed to keep my wolf’s darker, more possessive urges at bay.

Until my little exhibitionist wedged her hand down the front of my jeans and wrapped her slim fingers around my cock.

“Fuck.” I said it aloud that time as I felt my balls draw up and my canines extend down. I swiftly broke our kiss and angled my face away from hers, pressing down on her head and her shoulder with a disjointed, “In your mouth. Now.”

My words came out gruff and demanding, like a command, and I wanted to flay myself. I’d just ordered sweet, totally off-limits Bethy to get on her knees and suck my cock in a crowded dance club.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I prayed enough blood supply would make its way to my brain that I might formulate the right words of apology—the means to salvage this blessed insanity unfolding between us.

But then I heard her murmur, “Yes, Sir,” with a playful giggle, and I felt her slink down the front of my body to her knees on the floor between my thighs.

There was a God after all. And miracle of all miracles, he didn’t completely hate me.

I lost more blood supply to my giddy brain as Bethany made quick work of the button and zipper of my fly, allowing my grasp on my wolf to slip even further as more of my pack members on guard throughout the club drew stealthily closer, surrounding us. I sensed uneasiness emanating from some of them, along with the scent of Stephen’s blatant disapproval. I directed a low growl of warning at the backs of several heads—a reminder to check their opinions and keep their feelings to themselves.

I was Alpha, whether my perpetually disapproving head Beta Alcaeus thought me worthy of the title or not.

Alcaeus had likely tipped Stephen off to the danger of who Bethany was after our phone call. If he hadn’t, then Mike had surely said something to Stephen and the rest of them. I’d scented Mike’s anxiety the moment I’d stepped onto the dance floor. None of my men had any objection to public copulation, so it could only be an objection to my choice of partner.

It didn’t matter. I wasn’t stopping this.

Even though a nagging voice in my head insisted that they were right: I shouldn’t be doing this. That Bethany could never be mine … that she would hate me if she ever learned the truth of what I now was—not to mention what I had done ten years ago.

Nothing else mattered as Bethany’s perfect pink lips wrapped around the head of my cock.

Not Sloane’s tantrums. Not Alcaeus’s dire warnings. Not the fact that we were in a crowded, noisy club where someone might catch us, or the reality that I was now set on a path that would no doubt lead to the motherload of all fucking disasters.

As she swirled her tongue and moaned around my shaft, sucking me farther into her mouth, I gave in to my wolf’s fantasies, reveled in his visions of biting her repeatedly as I indulged in my own fantasies of fucking her senseless, claiming her in every way, again and again. By some miracle, I managed to keep my hold gentle on her head, willing my fingers wrapped around her blonde hair not to squeeze too tightly as she bobbed up and down, bathing me in her saliva.

When her mouth came off my dick with a pop and she babbled something or other about my “beautiful penis” before lowering her head to suck one of my balls into her mouth, I knew I’d commit murder to keep her. Go to war with my sister’s pack if they tried to take Bethany away from me.

She was mine.

And I may have growled it aloud as I pulled her by the hair from my exploding balls and back onto my cock, forcing myself between her parted lips and clear to the back of her throat as I erupted with a sudden violence.

Gentle! Be gentle, I reminded myself too late.

It registered that I had her nose pressed up against my groin, my fist locked in a death grip at the back of her head, and I’d pushed myself partway into her throat.

She needs to breathe, I reminded myself. She’s human. Fragile.

I was still coming, but I told myself I had to let go and pull away. That it was too much; I was scaring her. I might hurt her.

Then I felt her swallowing, her throat pulsing around my spurting head, milking my cum while working my cock farther down into her throat like a goddamned porn star, and I nearly lost all semblance of self-control, my hips lifting off the seat to thrust fully into her mouth to fuck her throat. “Ah, yes … fuck yes! Fuck … fuck … fuck …”

That’s it. I was marrying her.

She was perfect. We were meant to be. Amid a moment of blinding euphoria, it hit me that this was what true love must feel like.

And I might’ve said some of those things out loud, because a few of my men actually broke form to turn around and look at me.

I barked at them in Portuguese and they quickly recovered, righting themselves. But the intrusion into my blissed-out Bethany bubble served to jolt me back to reality, helping me to regain my eroding self-control.

Pulling my still mostly rigid cock from the heaven of Bethany’s throat, I swept her off the cold floor and into my arms, kissing everywhere but her mouth while she panted for air. And the moment she’d filled her lungs with sufficient oxygen, my mouth was stealing it back again until she was breathless once more.

“Your turn,” I told her.

Setting her ass down on the edge of our small café table, I eased her onto her back, keeping her spread legs hooked over my forearms to hold her up and open for me as the scrap of silk she called a dress pooled at her waist, leaving her exposed—in nothing but a thin, soaked-through thong that I was seconds away from ripping apart with my teeth.

Her glassy sky-blue eyes fluttered open, and as her dreamy, dilated pupils focused on me, a surprisingly shy smile kicked up the corners of her swollen lips. But then some sort of comprehension passed over her features, as if she was just now remembering where we were, and her eyes skated about, dazedly taking in the broad backs of my security detail surrounding us on all sides, forming a tight superhuman wall that shielded us from prying eyes.

Confused, slightly guarded blue eyes returned to me. I saw fear there. And a whisper of accusation.

Aw, hell.

I swallowed. “Friends of mine,” I reassured her. Not a complete lie.

Her brow furrowed. She glanced from the huge men encircling us back to me with a look that called bullshit. I saw the wheels turning. She was thinking they were mafia.

“It’s the truth,” I insisted. There was no way we were stopping now. “We’re all in town for an international … manny … convention …”

Eh, fuck it. I dove for her pussy.