––––––––

Cole couldn’t get enough of staring at Tess.

He hadn’t minded standing here under her barrage of questions, because he could finally see her clearly and smell her sweet scent.

Even Gray Wolf was behaving. He’d been calm around the Guardian, but now his wolf was downright ... happy.

Mate.

Cole wanted to role his eyes at Gray Wolf’s persistence.

Before breaking into her apartment, Cole had paced around like a schoolboy afraid to walk up to the girl he wanted to ask out.

But he’d had to insert into her apartment ahead of her arrival.

Plus, he hadn’t been able to get rid of Rory and Justin, who were determined to watch his six. But when he asked for help without questions, they did their part to get past Tess’s building security, so he couldn’t complain too much.

Well, except that pair would demand he tell everything in exchange for their assistance. Especially Justin, the nosy bastard.

The moment Cole stepped inside this room, his body had come alive at the overload of her scent.

The only thing better than smelling Tess everywhere would be to taste her now, from head to toe in all her sexy places, which was pretty much anywhere on that luscious body.

Standing this close and holding himself back from going to her tested his ability to maintain his distance, especially after she’d just walked out of the shower all fresh and ready.

Oh, yes, definitely ready. Her sweet arousal still swirled through the air.

His wolf had been growling until Cole entered this domain. Gray Wolf wanted Cole to claim her, to make her their mate forever.

In my dreams, Cole mused silently.

Mate. Now.

Not happening, wolf.

Gray Wolf snarled.

Cole hadn’t felt this much control in two weeks. He silently told his wolf, “Go to sleep and we’ll run later.”

Amazingly, after a few seconds, Gray Wolf receded.

“Okay,” Tess grumbled, waving that gun around again. “What else can you possibly say that’s going to make me any angrier?”

“There’s no firing pin in the gun. You might as well put it down.”

She looked at the weapon as if the thing had betrayed her, then cursed and slapped it down on the mattress. Watching her climb off the bed threatened to give Cole a heart attack.

He sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of her wearing nothing but a short top of thin, white material that failed to hide her dark nipples, and silky red boxers he’d like to tear off of her with his teeth.

She must have sensed something and looked up.

In that moment energy pulsed between them.

He felt it even if she didn’t recognize the mating bond trying to make a connection. That wouldn’t happen unless she opened her heart and body to his bond, which he’d made sure would never happen when he’d told her he was a shifter.

But that didn’t stop her electric blue gaze from sizzling with a familiar heat he’d seen the last time they’d been together.

The tips of her nipples promptly turned into hard beads, which that flimsy top failed to hide.

His jeans were doing no better job at shielding how much he wanted her.

She must have caught herself staring at that very place where his jeans strained, because she jerked her head up. She fumbled around to grab a kimono off the foot of her bed, mumbling in an irritated tone.

Didn’t like it that she still reacted to him?

He exhaled a little relief at that one sign that she didn’t hate him. In fact, her reacting to him as a woman made him downright happy.

She worked with shifters and had to know that he could hear her heart pounding and smell the tipoff of her arousal.

Tying the sash with a sharp jerk, she strode past him, slowing only to slash an evil look at the smile curving his lips.

She warned, “Don’t even think about it.”

“Too late,” he murmured behind her.

In the kitchen, she put on a pot of coffee and he could tell by the way she was shaking her head every so often that she was deep in a conversation with herself.

He’d missed that she talked to an empty room when she was sorting out her thoughts.

Missed so damn much about her.

She was probably listing all the reasons why just talking to him fell under the heading of insanity.

When she turned her back to the coffee maker and faced him, she drew up short.

Cole had moved to only four feet away.

Close enough to be suffering his own level of insanity for thinking he could come here and walk away without looking back. Had he really thought he could simply explain everything that had happened in the past to clear his conscience, expect her to get on board with his plan for the Black River pack, and then leave as he would on any other assignment?

Guess so, because here he was.

Gray Wolf wasn’t happy with Cole, but his wolf was definitely content being so close to Tess.

The woman who thought he’d walked away without looking back.

Cole had looked back so many times his head should be facing the other way.

She asked, “Are you healed?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Then more silence.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Cole blurted out, then cursed himself for just throwing it out there. Smooth, he was not.

“Choice in what?”

“In leaving you without a word. I was basically taken away that night. By the time I was able to contact you it was more than a year later and by then I ... figured you never wanted to hear from me again.”

He kept waiting for her to yell at him. That little bit of ranting earlier was nothing more than her being caught off guard. She’d had time to process some of what he’d told her by now.

All he could see in her face was hurt, and that cut him deeper than any claw had slashed him in shifter battles.

“You’re right and wrong,” she finally admitted. “Part of me wants to scream at you that you don’t matter to me and act as if I’m living just fine without you, but that would be unfair to the woman who mourned losing you. She’s still here and not sure what to think about you showing up again.”

Shit. He was dying listening to her and sensing just how deeply he’d damaged her even if it had been out of his control.

She came from a shifter-hating household. Once he’d finished training and learned about her mom’s death, all he could think was how much she’d despise him and he couldn’t face her disgust.

He’d taken the coward’s way out because he couldn’t tell her the truth, nor could he lie to her and say he left because he didn’t love her any more.

In retrospect, he now realized he should have done more, but he’d been shipped overseas with his team. He’d been young, confused, and angry at losing his life and his woman, and had spent most of the first two years just trying to keep his wolf from killing everyone in sight.

Eventually, his head finally acknowledged his new life and forced his heart to buck up and take it like a man.

The coffee beeped and she jumped, turning to pull down two mugs. She filled them and placed one for him three feet from hers.

She wanted boundaries.

He could respect that, but being in the same room with her and not touching her would haunt him when he left.

Sitting down, she took a sip. “You were telling me how you’re a different kind of shifter.”

He’d hoped to bypass that with the coffee interruption, but if a change of subject was better for her it was good by him.

“There are shifters, then there are apex predators, which are not part of a clan, pride or pack. An apex predator is at the top of the shifter food chain.”

She narrowed it down for him. “You’re more dangerous than a plain old shifter?”

There was no such thing as a plain old shifter, but he said, “Yes.”

She dragged a hand through her half-dry mane of black hair.

He longed to be her fingers.

Giving him a wary glance, she said, “You’re not giving me a reason to feel warm and fuzzy right now.”

No one should feel comfortable with an apex predator. All Gallize faced dealing with an unruly beast that required an unnaturally powerful force to control.

Cole’s beast was a step worse than the others.

It had been out of control from the minute he shifted the first time and freed Gray Wolf. The Guardian had claimed he’d never seen anything like it, which was hard to imagine coming from a man who had been around as long as he had.

Telling Tess that much about his wolf would not ease her tension, so he appealed to her logical brain. “There’s a flip side to how dangerous we are. We’re the ultimate enforcement when it comes to shifter law, which is much more severe than human laws for shifters.”

“I know their laws,” she spat at him.

“Point taken, but there are laws within the shifter society that you don’t know if you’re not part of a pack or a shifter yourself,” he said, trying to nicely let her know that if she’d gained her knowledge through academia, it was not the same as a hands-on education. “I was taken away and trained so that when I was ordered to deal with dangerous shifters who had become a threat to humans and to their own kind, I became a killing machine. Once I was deemed ready for the field, I was sent overseas with a special unit created to support US Special Forces. I’m on the right side of the law. I’m on your side.”

Sounding more interested than wary this time, she asked, “What’s the name of your group?”

“I can’t share that or anything about my group with you or anyone else. I’ve told you more than I’ve been authorized to say already, but I felt you deserved an explanation. We work behind the scenes, supporting human and shifter law enforcement. As I mentioned, the Black River pack knew my team was going to be at that building the other night.” He had sidestepped this before, but he had to give her all he could for any hope of gaining some trust. “In fact, it appeared that their pack was specifically tracking ... me, but I don’t want you to worry about me being here because no one knows I am. I would never lead danger to your door.” 

She clearly struggled with what he was telling her, but Tess was brilliant and reasonable. She’d figure out where to stand in all this. He only hoped she could see past all the hurt and realize he’d been thrown into a situation not of his own doing.

After staring at the floor while mulling over her thoughts, she raised her chin and declared, “You should be in a safe house somewhere right now.”

He hadn’t expected her to say that. His heart flipped over in his chest at the worry in her voice.

She still cared.

His team would always watch his back, but he’d forgotten how much he liked when she used to make him call her when he traveled just so she’d know he was safe.

“We protect those who go to safe houses. We don’t hide from anyone or anything,” he explained, trying not to give in and pull her into his arms. She’d probably freak at a shifter doing that, but damn he wanted to just hold her one more time.

Tess hugged herself. Her brow crinkled with confusion. She rubbed her arms, trembling. When her gaze shot to him, she accused, “What are you doing to me, Cole?”