Caleb's POV
"Alpha," she murmured against the frantic pulse beating at the base of my throat, her slurred, intoxicating voice vibrations driving directly into my bloodstream. "Your pheromones... they smell so remarkably good."
The silver handgun slipped from my paralyzing grip, sliding harmlessly back into my shoulder holster with a muted click.
Every single rational thought in my brain was instantly incinerated. The agonizingly sweet, suffocating scent of vanilla, blood, and potent wolf-bane liquor completely hijacked my respiratory system. The searing heat spreading from the soft, velvet-clad body pressed flush against my chest was melting through my tailored overcoat, branding my skin permanently beneath it.
My inner Lycan let out a deafening, feral roar of pure, unadulterated possessiveness that rattled the very cage of my ribs.
*Mate.* The primal instinct screamed at me to slam her against the filthy brick wall of this alley. To tear away the flimsy crimson silk, sink my fangs into her fragile neck, and mark her so deeply that every Alpha in this wretched city would smell my claim on her soul.
But as my massive hands instinctively clamped around her narrow waist to pull her closer, a violent, chilling image flashed behind my glowing irises.
*The three silver hairs in the secure dossier on my desk.*
The genetic proof. The undeniable reality that somewhere out there in this godforsaken city, a woman had birthed three royal offspring carrying my brutal bloodline. *My* pups. *My* responsibility.
My jaw locked so tight my molars audibly ground together.
*I am a father.* I had an agonizing, unbreakable duty to find the woman I had wronged six years ago. I could not desecrate whatever fractured honor I had left by giving into a drunken, pheromone-fueled tryst in a dirty alleyway, no matter how profoundly this specific scent was driving my wolf into a psychotic frenzy.
"Boss?" A terrified, heavily armed Syndicate operative rounded the corner, freezing instantly at the sight of me holding the crimson-clad woman.
"Get the SUV," I growled, the sound ripping from my throat like broken glass. "Now."
I didn't give her a chance to stumble. I hooked my arm under her knees and scooped her easily against my chest. She was impossibly light, practically melting into my neck as I carried her out of the alley shadows and shoved her into the secure, lavishly leather-scented back seat of the armored Blackwood SUV.
I climbed in beside her, slamming the heavy reinforced door shut.
"Drive," I barked at my driver, hitting the privacy partition button to seal off the front cabin. "Just... drive out of this sector."
The engine roared to life, but the enclosed, soundproof sanctuary of the back cabin instantly became a suffocating torture chamber.
Her scent rebounded off the bulletproof glass, intensifying tenfold. And the alcohol completely obliterated whatever survival instinct she normally possessed.
"Cold," Elara whined softly.
Before I could even command her to stay seated, she crawled directly across the spacious back seat. The slit in her red velvet dress parted dangerously high as she brazenly threw her leg over my thigh, straddling my lap completely.
My breath brutally hitched. My hands shot up, hovering over her hips, completely terrified to touch her because I knew if I did, I would never stop.
"What are you doing?" I ground out, my vocal cords strained to the absolute tearing point. "Sit down. You're completely intoxicated."
"You're warm," she protested, completely ignoring my lethal authority. Her delicate hands dragged greedily up my chest, her fingers clumsy but devastatingly effective as they caught the edge of my silk tie, violently yanking me forward.
Her lips crashed against the harsh line of my jaw.
A violent shudder ripped through my broad shoulders. The soft, paralyzing heat of her mouth skimming my skin was a lethal dose of venom. She trailed open-mouthed kisses down to the rigid column of my neck, her small teeth catching the edge of my tailored collar and tugging.
"Stop," I gasped out, my hands trembling as I grabbed her slender forearms to pull her away. She whimpered in protest, immediately twisting her wrists to fight my grip. Her hips ground unconsciously down against the heavy, agonizingly painful erection straining against the zipper of my slacks.
A low, guttural snarl broke past my lips. My vision literally fragmented into visceral shades of predatory red.
"Give it to me," she demanded, her glazed eyes half-open as her fingers aggressively unbuttoned the top two buttons of my expensive dress shirt, exposing the thick, corded muscles of my chest. She pressed her nose directly into my sternum, inhaling my sovereign pine-and-ozone scent so deeply her entire body shuddered in absolute bliss.
She was treating me like a walking, breathing oxygen tank, and every desperate inhalation she took was stripping away another layer of my agonizingly thin self-control.
*I have to find my pups.* I chanted the words in my head like a desperate litany against madness. *I have a mate out there. I cannot betray them.*
But my inner Lycan was thrashing violently against my skull, screaming that the woman doing the betraying was the one in my lap—yet contradicting itself by threatening to rip my own heart out if I dared push her away.
She whimpered again, her nails lightly scratching down the center of my chest. It felt like absolute heaven. It felt like the darkest hell.
I couldn't endure another second of holding her arms. The urge to flip her beneath me into the leather seats was becoming unbearable.
With a ragged, furious breath, I forcefully pulled my hands away from her. I reached up and violently ripped my expensive silk tie from my collar.
In one swift, jerky motion, I looped the heavy silk around my right wrist, throwing the other end over the heavy steel handle of the SUV's door, and pulled it taut with a terrifyingly tight knot. I repeated the desperate process with my left hand and the opposite grip.
I physically chained myself to the interior of my own vehicle.
Elara didn't seem to notice or care that I had just incapacitated my own lethal hands. With my arms out of the way, she happily collapsed the rest of her weight against me.
She curled into a tight, impossible ball on my lap, her cheek resting directly over the erratic, catastrophic pounding of my heart. Within three minutes, the heavy, even rhythm of her breathing signaled that the potent wolf-bane liquor had finally pulled her into a deep, inescapable unconsciousness.
I sat there, crucified by my own doing.
The SUV hit a pothole. Her soft thigh brushed against my straining groin.
I threw my head back against the headrest, my chest heaving like I had just run a marathon across a battlefield. My chained hands balled into absolute fists, the veins standing out furiously against my olive skin as the silk tie bit painfully into my wrists.
I stared down at the flushed, impossibly peaceful face of the woman using the most lethal, ruthless Alpha king in the world as a heated mattress.
My golden irises burned with the heat of an unyielding, scarlet hellfire. The agony in my lower abdomen was excruciating, a physical punishment for my loyalty to a phantom woman I hadn't seen in six years.
*You are lucky I am an honorable man, you little witch,* I thought, my fangs extending completely over my bottom lip in extreme deprivation.
I clenched my jaw, closing my eyes against the sweet scent of her hair, and prepared to burn alive until the sun came up.