Tonight, eating dinner with Gavin was low on Ryenne’s priority list. As much as she loved her best friend, the wolf inside her was itching to get out. She needed to punch someone, fuck someone, or run. She couldn’t do either of the first two with Gavin. Maybe he could help her figure out how to do the third somewhere in this huge, densely populated city.

The plane ride home from Paris had been uneventful except for this feeling of needing to jump out of her skin. She had prowled the aisles as much as the flight attendants allowed.

Once home, she had exercised in her building’s gym. Running miles and miles on her treadmill and lifting weights had left her exhausted and sweating. Then she soaked in the tub to ease her muscles. But now, only a couple of hours later, the needs had returned.

“Wow, Ry, you are sending out amazing amounts of pheromones. It’s too bad they have no effect on me,” Gavin said.

She leaned closer to him over the restaurant table. She hadn’t wanted to come out at all, but he had convinced her that neither one of them was in a fit state to cook, and that she especially needed to eat and keep up her strength if she was going to learn to control her inner beast.

“It’s like this itch I can’t scratch,” she explained to him. “Like every man in this room is attracting me, even ones I wouldn’t normally be attracted to.” She looked up and locked eyes with a man at the bar. His dark skin was ebony in the shadowy corner, his bald head reflecting the only light near him, a wall sconce several feet away.

“Well, if I found lady bits the least enticing, and if you weren’t like a sister to me, I might help you out,” Gavin said with a smirk. “But lady bits? Ew.”

Ryenne knew she should laugh at that. She knew she would have a week ago. But now, her entire world had changed. She was a shifter and she would always be a shifter. There was nothing she could do about it except learn to control these urges. Lucien told her she would, but right now it was hard to believe.

A man at the next table caught her gaze. He had sandy brown hair flopping over one eye, a chiseled jawline, and his tight t-shirt showed off lots of muscles. But he was with a woman who was shooting daggers at Ryenne with her eyes.

Not only was Ryenne happily in love with Lucien, but she thought she shouldn’t give in to some of these urges or she’d never learn to control them.

The man quirked up one side of his mouth. There was cruelty in the lines of his face and in his icy blue eyes.

With effort, Ryenne turned away from him and focused on her friend and her dinner. The rare steak was bleeding juices on her plate and the smell tantalized her. She dug into it with unusual exuberance.

“Have you heard from Lucien?” Gavin asked. “When is he coming?”

She swallowed a bite of steak. “Next week, sometime.”

“That’s not too long.”

She couldn’t wait for Lucien to arrive. Not just for the usual reasons that her heart and her body missed him. But he could help her get through this transition by allowing her to scratch all three of her overwhelming itches with him.

“Excuse me,” a voice said from above and slightly behind Ryenne.

She and Gavin glanced up and saw the guy from the next table. She looked over. The woman wasn’t there.

“Sorry to interrupt your meal but I couldn’t help noticing you,” he said. “My girlfriend and I have an open relationship. I was hoping you might let me borrow your girl.”

Ryenne’s eyebrows shot up. “His girl?”

A huge smile broke across Gavin’s face.

“This girl,” Ryenne said, “makes up her own mind. And this girl has no intention of doing anything with you, open relationship or not.”

“Come on, baby, you might like it,” the man said.

Ryenne gave Gavin a look that she hoped conveyed “Is this guy for real? What decade is this?”

The smile on Gavin’s face grew wider and he sat back in his chair as if ready to watch a show.

The guy put his hand on Ryenne’s shoulder and she smacked it away.

“You like to play hard to get?” he asked.

“I don’t play,” she said. “I am hard to get.”

A timid female voice asked, “What’s going on?”

“Your boyfriend here claims you have an open relationship,” Ryenne answered. “And he’s trying to get me to go home with him.”

The woman turned furious eyes on her boyfriend. “Jake?”

“What?” he said, all posturing male. If he’d had feathers, he would have puffed them out. “I have needs. You know that. You don’t always fulfill them.”

The woman darted embarrassed glances around at the other restaurant patrons who had begun to take notice.

“Then I suggest you take care of those needs all by yourself. Because you’re not getting this... girl,” Ryenne said.

“Baby,” he cooed, stroking a strand of hair off Ryenne’s forehead. “Don’t be like that.”

Ryenne pushed closer to him. Close enough to smell the body odor he’d tried to cover with Polo and to notice the lipstick stain on his collar. “Call me baby one more time and I will break your arm.”

The man didn’t flinch away. “Come on... baby.” He put emphasis on the word.

Before the word had fully left his mouth, however, Ryenne had stomped on his instep and twisted his arm around to his back.

“Ow,” he whined.

“What are you doing?” the girlfriend asked.

“I warned him,” Ryenne said in a reasonable tone of voice.

“Let go of me,” the guy ground out between his clenched teeth.

“Not until you apologize to me and to your girlfriend.”

“For what?” he spat.

“For disrespecting us.”

“I wasn’t disrespecting you. I was paying you a compliment.”

She twisted his arm up higher.

“Ow!” He started struggling and kicking behind him.

Ryenne felt her control slipping and her claws started to break through her fingers. “Apologize, I said.”

“No,” he said, continuing to struggle against her.

Gavin’s eyes grew wide. “Ry,” he said, his voice a warning.

The girlfriend had her phone out. “I’ll... I’ll call the police if you don’t let him go.”

With a huge effort, Ryenne let go of him, pushed him away, and retracted her claws. “You’re not worth it. Come on, Gavin, I’m not hungry anymore.” She stormed away from their table.

“Hey, I’m not done with you,” the guy said, hunched on the floor, cradling his arm. “You dislocated my shoulder, you bitch.”

“Oh yes, we’re done.” Ryenne continued striding out of the restaurant. Gavin threw some cash on the table and followed.

Outside on the sidewalk, she gulped in huge lungfuls of air. “I’ve gotta run, Gav.”

“Geez, Ryenne, are you okay?”

“No,” she said, pushing down her wolf instincts. “I need to fight or run or something. Get me out of here before I hurt someone.”

He hustled her down the street. “What if they call the cops?”

“I don’t care. I can’t worry about that right now.”

Gavin led her the couple of blocks to Central Park, Ryenne holding herself together by sheer force of will.