Anna's lungs seized mid-breath as Ryan moved toward his office, each deliberate stride pulling the fabric of his charcoal slacks taut against the hard muscle beneath. Her fingernails carved crescents into her palm—a small, secret pain to distract from the ache spreading lower. She commanded her eyes downward, counted to three, failed. When she looked up again, he'd turned slightly, his profile backlit by the window, jawline sharp enough to draw blood. A flush crawled up her neck like fever, her skin too tight, too hot. The wedding band on her finger caught the fluorescent light—a cold, accusing glint. Wrong, whispered the voice of reason. Necessary, answered the thundering pulse between her thighs.

Ryan halted. Just—stopped—and the very air between them seemed to tremble. He pivoted on one heel, neither hesitantly nor apologetically, and the full weight of his presence pressed into Anna’s chest like a deliberate hand. The cheap office carpet dug into the soles of her feet, pinning her in place. His eyes—usually dark pools of inscrutability—cut through her with crystalline precision, as sharp and unflinching as a surgeon’s blade. Embarrassment flickered through her at being caught so raw—disheveled, heat-flushed, unmoored—but beneath it lay something fiercer, a hungry edge in his stare that left her nerves laid bare.

A sound slipped from Anna’s throat—no word, just the brittle snap of a rubber band stretched to its breaking point. Ryan’s mouth opened a fraction, and he raised his hand almost imperceptibly, not quite beckoning but unmistakably summoning. Her heart thundered, each beat hammering against her ribs as if begging for release. She wanted him—wanted him so badly it felt like trespass. Miraculously, her legs carried her inside.

They passed through the frosted glass door, which clicked shut with a finality that echoed in the hush and hum of his office. Close up, Ryan seemed to tower even higher—angles and planes of lean muscle framed by the soft roll of his shirt sleeves. The desk before him gleamed darkly, its polished wood reflecting the city lights beyond the windows. Dust motes drifted in the slanted beam of late afternoon sun, and somewhere within that glow she caught the faint scent of clove mingled with the clean tang of ozone.

He spoke her name—low, each syllable sliding over her skin like velvet—and it felt both invitation and ultimatum. Anna’s knees threatened to give way. She set her bag on the guest chair and her fingers fluttered against its leather strap, searching for a script that had vanished. Her throat went desert-dry.

“Is something wrong?” His voice was soft but charged, as if he were asking not for reassurance but for her choice: flee or stay.

She steadied herself against the edge of the desk. The two of them occupied a current of tension so vivid it buzzed beneath her skin. Anna’s gaze flicked to the silver band on her finger—the neat circle of her marriage, a promise of predictability, a world at odds with the charged atmosphere pressing them together. Every rule she had followed felt as fragile as the sheerness of her stockings.

Ryan shifted closer, the cotton of his shirt whispering over muscle. He searched her face with an intensity that felt like a caress, as though he were tracing the fine lines of her hesitation. Outside, the city pulsed on—traffic droning, fluorescent lights flickering—but inside this room, time held its breath.

She opened her mouth to speak—“I—”—but the words crumbled under the gravity of his attention.

Slowly, he reached toward her, stopping just shy of contact. The heat of his hand was a promise, radiating warmth that made her skin tingle. Her own breath hitched. When he began to loosen his blue silk tie—its knot loosened by habit, the silk thread unraveling like a secret rite—it felt obscene, ceremonious. He never took his eyes off hers. Behind him, the metropolis shimmered in the glass: a thousand lives she would never know.

Ryan leaned in, close enough that his breath warmed the shell of her ear, sending a forbidden shiver down her spine that pooled like liquid heat between her thighs. The scent of him—sandalwood and something uniquely male—filled her lungs until she felt dizzy with it. "You can tell me," he murmured, his voice a rough caress that made her skin prickle with goosebumps even as guilt clawed at her throat. His eyes, dark with unmistakable desire, held hers captive, and Anna's heart thrashed wildly against her ribs—half desperate to confess everything, half terrified she would. Her wedding ring seemed to burn against her finger, yet she couldn't bring herself to step away.

Anna's husband's face flashed before her—that soft, trusting smile he'd given her just this morning over coffee, his fingertips brushing hers as he passed her mug. Bile rose in her throat, acidic self-loathing that burned even as heat pooled lower, a molten need that made her thighs tremble. Her wedding ring caught the light, a golden accusation. She despised herself for this weakness, this hunger that clawed beneath her skin, even as she leaned infinitesimally closer to Ryan, close enough to feel the heat radiating from his body, to catch the intoxicating scent of his skin. Her breath came in shallow gasps, her body betraying her mind's desperate protests.

Ryan's eyes—those deep wells of indigo that had haunted her dreams—darkened to midnight as his nostrils flared. She watched his pupils dilate, swallowing the blue until only a thin ring remained, like the last gasp of daylight before total eclipse. His chest rose with a slow, deliberate breath that seemed to pull something essential from her core. Heat bloomed across her skin as she realized: he was drinking her in, cataloging the scent of her desire like a predator scenting prey. Shame and arousal warred within her, neither winning, both feeding the tremor in her thighs.

“You are too damned intoxicating, Anna," he growled, the words vibrating from deep in his chest. His voice scraped against her senses like rough velvet, sending electric currents cascading down her spine and pooling between her thighs. Her body clenched, a sudden, involuntary spasm that left her gasping, teetering on the precipice of pleasure even as shame burned hot across her skin. Her wedding ring felt impossibly heavy now, an anchor she both resented and desperately needed to keep from drowning in the dark hunger of his gaze.

“What do you want?” Anna whispered.

His throat worked, Adam's apple sliding beneath tanned skin as he swallowed hard. "All of you," he breathed, the words escaping like a confession torn from somewhere primal. His fingers trembled as they hovered near—not touching—her collarbone, close enough that she felt the heat radiating from his skin. His eyes flickered to her wedding band, then back to her face, raw hunger warring with something that looked almost like pain.

"God help me, I want to taste every inch of you," he whispered, voice breaking as he took a half-step back, fists clenching at his sides. "But I can't be the man who ruins you."

Anna's fingers found her wedding band, twisting it once around her finger—a final hesitation—before she slid it off. It fell with a damning, crystalline ping against the hardwood, rolling away like absolution. Her breath caught as she stepped forward, the sound of her own heartbeat drowning out reason. When her body met his, the contact burned through the thin barrier of her blouse—chest to chest, hip to hip. A gasp tore from her throat, half-pleasure, half-grief. Heat flooded between her thighs, a molten ache that made her knees weak even as tears pricked behind her eyelids. She was falling, burning, breaking—wanting him with the same ferocity with which she hated herself.

His mouth claims hers with savage tenderness, their lips colliding in a desperate fusion of need and regret. Anna's wedding finger feels naked, exposed, as her hands clutch at his shoulders, nails digging crescents through cotton. She tastes salt—her own tears or his, she can't tell—mingling with the dark spice of his tongue as it sweeps into her mouth. Each stroke ignites a conflagration that races down her spine, pooling molten between her thighs even as her heart splinters. Ryan groans against her lips, the sound vibrating through her bones, and she answers with a broken whimper that carries both surrender and self-loathing. They breathe each other's air, drowning together, salvation and damnation in the same ravenous kiss.

His palms find her waist, guiding her backward until the edge of his desk presses against her. The cool mahogany bites into her thighs as his fingers trail down to the hem of her skirt, hesitating for one thunderous heartbeat before gathering the fabric. The silk whispers against her stockings as he inches it upward, his breath catching audibly when his knuckles graze the bare skin above her garters. Anna's mind fractures—part of her screaming to stop this madness, part of her arching subtly into his touch, silently begging for more. The wedding-ring indentation on her finger throbs like a phantom limb as his eyes, dark with reverence and hunger, lock onto hers.

“Last chance to stop me, my mate,” Ryan says, kissing her softly.

Anna's body betrayed her with a violent shudder, her hips pressing forward of their own volition as her mind fractured between desire and devastation. "I—" The word caught in her throat as his fingers traced fire along her inner thigh. Her wedding finger felt naked, exposed, the phantom weight of her discarded ring both liberating and damning. Tears burned behind her eyes even as liquid heat pooled between her legs, twin rivers of want and regret converging into something primal and unstoppable.

"Please," she breathed against his mouth, the word half-prayer, half-curse as her fingers clutched desperately at his shoulders, nails digging crescents into cotton and flesh. “Take me.”

He cupped her jaw with one hand, thumb stroking deliberately along the hinge—measuring her trembling, maybe, or branding her with a gentleness that felt indecent paired with the hungry set of his mouth. The other hand—God—slid down the length of her spine with a slow, devastating certainty, mapping the rise and fall of each vertebra, the small indentation just above her hips, the place where nerves and want tangled in a knot of pure electricity. The world outside the glass—a river of red taillights and flickering streetlamps, the indifferent exhalation of the city—blurred to a smear of color. All that mattered was the sharp edge of Ryan’s teeth grazing her lower lip, the press of his body, the dizzying paradox of being both caged in his arms and set loose in some vast, new territory.

He kissed her like he was drowning, and she was the oxygen his body had long been denied. His lips traced the line of her jaw, then lower, along the tendon that jumped in her neck. Anna felt herself dissolve into sensation, neurons firing wild with every drag of his breath, every scrape of stubble. His tongue, insistent and terrifyingly tender, found her pulse point and lingered there until she thought she might faint from the onslaught of need. All the while, his hand dipped lower, spanning the arch of her lower back, fingers splaying wide as if to memorize her shape.

She should have stopped him—should have, should have—but when he bent her backward over the desk, her arms flailed for purchase and landed on the smooth, cold surface, palms skidding against the glassy veneer. She heard the clatter of pens, the scattering of documents, the muted thump of a water glass toppling behind her. She imagined the chaos they’d wrought would be catalogued in some silent, invisible record, proof of her complicity. Her skirt rode up indecently, trapped at the top of her thighs. The air was frigid against her exposed skin, but his hands—those hands—were fire.

With a patience that bordered on cruelty, Ryan smoothed his palm along her outer thigh, kneading the muscle as if coaxing her to relax, to open. She wanted to resist, to shove him away and scream, but her body betrayed her with a slow, desperate arcing, a wordless plea for more. The silk of her stockings abraded deliciously against his knuckles as he traced the garter’s edge. He paused with his fingertips just beneath the line of lace, and something in the way he looked at her—hungry, reverent, almost awe-struck—made her want to weep.

His fingers found the garter clasp, toyed with it, then slipped beneath. The pads of his fingers glided along the seam, close enough to set her nerves ablaze but not quite touching the center of her need. Anna’s breath fractured. She clung to the edge of the desk, her nails leaving white crescents in the polished wood. Still, he waited—studying her, savoring her unraveling—until she was certain she would be destroyed by the anticipation alone.

Finally, his fingers hooked beneath the delicate lace, drawing it aside with agonizing deliberation. In the space of a single heartbeat, she felt every sensation at once—the chill of the air, the drag of silk, the molten throb deep in her core. Their eyes locked, and in his gaze she saw the reflection of her own ruin: reverent, ravenous, and utterly without remorse. He pressed forward.

Her body yielded instantly, slick with want, every barrier fallen away. His fingers slid into her, and Anna’s entire frame convulsed. She bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming, but a strangled cry still broke free, animal and wounded, the sound ricocheting off the glass and steel. She could feel the pulse in her neck, her wrists, between her legs—a relentless, traitorous rhythm. Her wedding finger throbbed with phantom weight, a hollow ache that seemed to amplify the sensation of being filled and possessed.

He moved slowly—one finger, then two, coaxing her open, scoring her with pleasure until she trembled from the effort of standing. With each deliberate thrust, Anna felt herself splinter. She flashed on her husband’s gentle hands, the safe monotony of their evenings, the way he always set her mug just so on the table, careful not to splash. The memory was a knife: she was betraying something sacred, desecrating a promise, and yet she couldn’t—wouldn’t—stop. The shame was a living thing, coiling tighter with every slick sound, every hungry curl of Ryan’s palm.

“Anna,” he whispered, his voice gone hoarse with need. “Look at me.” She forced her gaze upward, vision blurred by tears she refused to let fall. Every nerve ending was a live wire, her body caught in a feedback loop of pleasure and devastation. She wanted to hate him for this, but the only thing she truly hated was how easily, how completely, she belonged to his touch.

Ryan’s thumb found the sensitive bundle of nerves at her apex, and her world exploded. She bucked, her hips thrusting helplessly, her mouth open in a silent scream. The force of her climax ripped through her, wave after relentless wave, until she sagged forward, boneless and undone. Tears spilled silently down her cheeks as the aftershocks wracked her body, each one a cruel reminder of what she’d just surrendered.

As she slumped against the desk, her heart hammering in her chest, she saw her wedding ring lying on the floor—a small, golden dot in the sea of hardwood. It mocked her, shone like an accusation, but in the narrowing tunnel of her vision, she could only see Ryan. He caught her, pulled her upright, pressed her head to his chest. His heartbeat thundered against her ear. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. They just breathed each other in—guilty, greedy, gasping.

Ryan’s hands wound through her hair, holding her in place, while he rested his chin atop her head. The city swelled behind them, indifferent and eternal, while Anna wept quietly into his shirt, mourning the woman she’d just destroyed.

She clung to him, face wet and raw, trembling not with sorrow now but with an animal hunger that was almost anger. “I’m not done,” Anna whimpered, voice shredded into something unrecognizable, her entire body surging with desperation. Before she could lose her nerve, her hands flew to the buttons of her blouse, fumbling, frantic, popping them open one by one with a wild, trembling need. The fabric sagged under its own weight and slipped from her shoulders, exposing pale skin already flushed with want, bearing the scattered red impressions of his mouth and hands. She felt grotesquely vulnerable—stripped not just of her clothing but of every last pretense of duty or dignity.

Beneath her blouse, her bra was delicate, white, a present from Robert that she’d never intended for another man's eyes. The irony stung her as Ryan’s gaze swept hungrily over the lace, reverent, almost worshipful. He was trembling too, breath ragged, his own restraint burned away by her shattering. As Anna shrugged her blouse to the floor, he reached out, unable to stop himself, and traced a trembling finger along the edge of the bra, catching it at the center with his thumb. She inhaled sharply, her ribs expanding against the tight cage of fabric. He pulled her close, burying his face in her neck, tasting the tears and salt on her skin, kissing the frantic beat of her pulse. His hands mapped the curve of her waist, the dimpling at her hips, the angle of her ribs.

They were both shaking now, a storm of hands and mouths, frantic to consume what little time or innocence remained. Anna’s fingers scrabbled at his shirt, finding the buttons and ripping them open with little regard for consequence. The sound of each popping fastener, the ripping of cotton, sent bolts of adrenaline through her. She was not herself—she was something wilder, greedy, burning. She pressed her bare chest to him, skin to skin, the heat between them obliterating the last vestiges of caution.

He kissed her again—desperate, punishing, a collision of teeth and tongue that tasted of blood and regret. She moaned into his mouth, her hands tangled in his hair, the two of them staggering backward until her spine hit the office wall. Somewhere in the background, the city bled through the glass: distant cars, indifferent stars, the whole world tilting on its axis.

She arched against him, frantic for friction, and felt his hands slide up her thighs, beneath her skirt, gripping her as if he could fuse their bodies by force of will alone. He pressed his forehead to hers, panting, and she realized she was crying again—not from shame this time, but from the exquisite ache of wanting him so badly it hurt.

“I’m not done, yet,” Anna said again, her words a trembling bridge between demand and surrender, a promise as much as a threat. She was unrecognizable to herself: raw, stripped of the careful layers she’d spent her entire adult life constructing. Ryan’s reply was not a word but a noise, a growl that vibrated through his chest and into hers, a deep, answering hunger that seemed to say, neither am I. He caught her mouth in his, and this time the kiss was not careful or sweet or even urgent in that frantic, trembling way she remembered from earlier. It was total. Full annihilation. He kissed her until her lungs burned, until the only way she could breathe was through him, by the grace of his parted lips and the heat of his tongue; he kissed her as though every atom in his body had been waiting for this, and now, given the chance, meant to consume it whole.

There was no pretense left. No negotiation, no boundaries, not even the ghost of self-restraint. Anna clawed at his back, dragged her nails down the ridges of his spine until she could feel him shudder. She let her legs give out—let herself slide down the wall, bringing him with her, never letting their mouths disconnect. He followed, sprawling over her, one hand braced on the floor, the other tangled in her hair. She felt the length of him, hard and desperate, pressed against her thigh, and she rocked her hips up, needing friction, needing more, needing everything. He groaned into her mouth, the sound almost pained, and for a dizzy instant she realized he was holding himself back, barely, fighting not to lose control entirely.

The realization was the most powerful aphrodisiac Anna had ever known. That this man, this coiled, dangerous thing, was restraining himself for her—was on the edge of unraveling and trusted her not to recoil from his need—was almost too much to bear. She wanted to see him break. She wanted to be the cause of his undoing.

She reached between them, palms unsteady, and fumbled at the buttons of his pants. She expected him to stop her, to take her wrists and pin them (his signature move, his favorite), but instead he let her, watched her with an expression so open, so nakedly hopeful, that she nearly sobbed. She popped the button free, dragged the zipper down with a trembling, determined hand, felt him throb beneath her fingers through the thin cotton of his briefs. He closed his eyes, brow knotted as if the sensation was almost too much.

She freed him, marveling at the heat and weight of him in her palm, and the wordless sound he made when she stroked him was something she’d carry in her bones for the rest of her life. He pulled back, just enough to look her in the eye, and there was nothing left of the boss or the wolf or even the man—just a wild, grateful boy, teetering on the edge of something he might not survive. Anna thumbed the head of his cock, spreading the smear of pre-come along the shaft, and he shuddered so violently that she feared he might actually come undone right there.

But he wanted her, not just the pleasure, the release. He wanted her body and her voice, her complicity in what they were about to destroy. Ryan kissed her again, softer this time, then trailed his lips down her neck, collarbone, between her breasts. He mouthed at the thin lace of her bra, teeth grazing the swell of her breast, and Anna arched up, shameless, pleading. He fumbled with the clasp, impatient, and when it gave way, he pulled the cups aside with a reverence so at odds with his roughness that Anna laughed, breathless and wild. He took her nipple into his mouth, sucked hard, and she nearly screamed. She dug her heels into the small of his back, urging him closer, closer still.

Anna wanted to be ruined—she wanted to be so thoroughly fucked that the memory of this would eclipse every other moment of her life. She wanted to be annihilated and then rebuilt in his hands.

She hooked a leg around his hips, guiding him between her thighs, and felt the blunt, hot press of his cock at her entrance. She was so wet, so ready, that when he pushed forward her body took him in with a desperate, greedy ease. The stretch was exquisite, a sweet violence she’d only ever dreamed about, and she clung to his shoulders, breathing his name, over and over, like it was the only word she’d ever known.

“Look at me,” Ryan said, and she forced herself to, even as her vision blurred at the edges with the pleasure and the impossibility of all of it. He held her gaze as he rocked into her, slow but relentless, every thrust a proof, an answer, an erasure of every day that had come before. Anna was gone—Anna was his, completely, forever, for as long as this lasted.

She felt herself rising, saw the same wildness mirrored in his eyes, and when she broke apart around him, she did not cry out but laughed, bright and shattering, the sound filling the room and washing them both clean.

He followed her down, folding as if his bones had turned to vapor, and crashed onto her with a strangled gasp that was half agony, half release. They lay there, tangled and ruined atop the office carpet, the city’s indifferent pulse a smear of neon and headlights behind the window’s cold glass. The air reeked of desperation and salt, torn fabrics and sweat, the perfume of annihilation. For a long, trembling moment they simply clung to each other, gasping, their bodies locked together as if some invisible force welded them joint to joint.

Then the hunger returned, not as a slow-burning ache but a tidal surge, obliterating thought and language and everything that had come before. Ryan rutted into her, at first slow and deliberate—each thrust a deliberate act of reclamation, a silent plea for forgiveness or understanding he could never voice aloud. But that gentleness lasted only a moment. The dam broke; all that remained was violence and need. His jaw brushed against her ear, nipping, grazing, his hands digging into her hips hard enough to leave bruises as he drove into her with a force that bordered on savage.

Anna’s own need answered his, her body arching to meet every thrust, her hands skating up his back and clutching at his shoulder blades as if she might tear through flesh to anchor herself inside him. She bucked beneath him, every nerve ending flayed raw, pleasure and pain so tightly braided she could no longer distinguish between the two. They were animal, primal, the sweat and blood and wet sounds of their collision utterly obscene in the hush of the office after hours.

Ryan’s mouth found hers again, bruising, desperate, not so much a kiss as a plundering. He bit her lower lip, hard enough to draw a bead of blood, then licked it away with a sound that was more growl than apology. She tasted herself in his mouth, tasted everything—the ruin of guilt, the iron tang of surrender. Each time he slammed into her, Anna felt the edges of her vision flicker and pulse, a starburst of color and sensation behind her eyelids. Her legs wrapped around his waist, ankles locking at the small of his back, holding him to her as if he were the last oxygen left in the room.

As his rhythm grew erratic, wild, she felt the pace of his need climb from urgent to feral. He was barely human now, just a beast driving for oblivion, his shoulders corded with strain, his brow knotted with the effort of not destroying her with the full force of himself. Anna could feel the trembling in his arms, the way his hands shook as they gripped her ribs, the little animal noises he tried and failed to stifle. He buried his face in her neck, teeth grazing skin, and for a moment she thought he might bite her—claim her in some irrevocable wild way. Her body thrilled at the idea, a pulse of terror and want so pure she nearly sobbed.

She wanted to taunt him, to beg, to say “break me open,” but she couldn’t form words; only wild, wordless noises escaped her throat, each one urging him on. He responded in kind, the sharp snap of his hips punishing, relentless, a violence she craved even as it threatened to split her in two. Anna clawed at his back, her nails raking fresh lines down his spine, and he responded with a sound that was pure animal, the ragged moan of something unchained at last.

It was not love, not even lust anymore—just need, elemental and absolute, a mutual annihilation of boundaries. Anna felt herself coming apart again, the pleasure so intense it bordered on agony, and this time she screamed, nails digging bloody crescent moons into his skin. Ryan’s answer was a shout, hoarse and guttural, and then he was spilling inside her, his whole body shuddering in a cataclysmic release.

Ryan’s mouth found the soft juncture at the base of her neck, just above the rise of her collarbone. He hovered there for a suspended instant, his breath stuttering hot and shallow as animal need and something older—darkly ceremonial—warred for supremacy behind his eyes. Anna felt his tongue, warm and rasped, wetting the spot with a reverence that bordered on worship. Then his jaw snapped shut, canines sharp and impossible, slicing into her skin with a pain so exquisite it was indistinguishable from pleasure.

She did not scream, not at first. The shock of sensation split her consciousness in two: one part of her was keenly aware of the violence—his teeth breaking skin, the metallic bloom of blood, a hot pulse spreading like wildfire under her flesh. But the other part was nothing but rapture, a wild and total submission that detonated every nerve ending she owned. The bite was not gentle, and it was not meant to be; it was a branding, a claim, a feral declaration that she was his mate and no power on heaven or earth could unravel the bond from this moment forward.

The world collapsed. Her orgasm hit like an explosion, so massive and shattering it blotted out sight and sound. Anna felt herself convulse, spine bowing off the floor, nails raking bloody crescents into Ryan’s back as the storm tore through her. She was vaguely aware of his growl, a sound so deep it vibrated through her bones, and then she was falling—no, flying—through a kaleidoscope of sensation, her body wracked by wave after wave, a current so relentless she wondered if she’d ever touch ground again.

He did not relent. Ryan’s mouth hovered at the wound, drinking her, his tongue laving over the bite with a gentleness entirely at odds with the violence of the act. Anna felt herself being remade under his hands, stripped of every old certainty, rebuilt molecule by trembling molecule with the memory of this moment scored hard into her soul. There was no more Anna; there was only the white-hot tether that bound her to him, to his want, to the future he’d just written under her skin.

She came again, a savage aftershock that left her raw and gasping, and this time she did cry out—a hoarse, animal noise that echoed off the ceiling tiles and made him shudder against her. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, his whole frame shaking as if he, too, was unspooling from the inside out. She tasted blood and salt and the promise of forever, and in that moment, Anna understood the ancient, terrible necessity of surrender.

When it was over, when her body had given up the last of its resistance and his had emptied itself into her with a final, cataclysmic thrust, they collapsed together on the cooling carpet. Ryan held her pinned, one arm wrapped possessive across her waist, the other bracing her head as if he dared not let her slip away into the ether. Anna could not move, would not have moved even if the building had caught fire around them. She floated on the edge of consciousness, every muscle slack, skin humming with the residual voltage of what they had just done.

He pressed his lips to her temple, a silent benediction, and for a long time neither of them spoke. They simply breathed in tandem, the city’s midnight howl muffled now by the walls and their own proximity, all the chaos of the world reduced to this quiet aftermath—a girl and her wolf, welded together in the ruins of an office tryst neither could ever undo.

Ryan never let go. Not when her tremors faded, not even when she started to weep—tiny, silent sobs that wracked her ribcage and made his arms clamp tighter, as if he could will the world to be bearable through force alone.

He bent his mouth to her ear and rumbled, “I love you, Anna, my mate.” The words were a snarl, not a confession but a branding, a hot iron pressed to the most secret part of her. Anna’s whole body jolted, her vision shattered into pinpricks of blue-black. The word “mate,” said aloud, was both a curse and a lifeline, a promise of annihilation and forever in the same breath. His arms caged her, his presence pressed into every fissure in her, and she felt all the worlds she’d tried to build between herself and this moment shatter.

He was still inside her, motionless now, holding her impaled on the truth; she felt it in every inch of her, the raw power of his claim, the ache and the ecstasy and the terror of being seen, chosen, owned. For a heartbeat, Anna struggled against it, the old, stubborn rational self thrashing its final protest. Then his hand slipped up, palm cradling the side of her face, and the gentleness there—the contradiction, the wolf’s teeth paired with the trembling human need—undid her utterly.

Anna’s own hands found his jaw, drawing his forehead down to hers, and it struck her that neither of them were really breathing. They hung there, fused, every muscle locked, every possibility collapsing into the singularity of now. She opened her eyes and saw herself mirrored in his: wild, haunted, hunger and awe braided together, the ruins of two separate lives burning to ash.

“I love you, too,” she whispered, voice shredded but whole, and the words tasted like freedom and doom at once.

He looked down at her, his face shattered by a gentleness so raw Anna almost had to look away. There was no mockery in his smile, no arrogance—just a stunned awe, as if he could not believe this had happened, that she had let him touch her, claim her, ruin her so completely. He cupped her cheek with a hand too big, too battered from a lifetime of fighting, and smoothed her sweat-drenched hair from her temple. Then he bent and kissed her, softly at first—just the warm press of lips, the slow dance of breath and heartbeat. The taste of blood lingered between them, sweet and bitter and intimate; he kissed her as if he could draw the wound into himself and heal it through reverence alone.

His body, so recently all violence and muscle, now moved with heartbreaking care as he shifted above her. Every gesture was apology and worship, his thumb stroking the hollow under her eye, his mouth finding the place he’d bitten and pressing slow, gentle kisses there as if to atone. She felt the tremor in his hands, the way his whole self threatened to shake apart, but he held her with infinite patience. When he entered her again, it was nothing like before. No frantic pounding, no desperate rutting—just the slow, deliberate joining of two bodies made fragile by how much they wanted, how much they feared losing.

Anna let herself sink into it, let herself be loved—not claimed, not conquered, but cherished, every inch of her mapped and remembered. She wrapped her arms around Ryan’s shoulders and pulled him closer, smothering the sharp stabbing in her chest with the warmth of his skin against hers. Each movement was a litany of forgiveness: for all the lies, the betrayals, the years wasted on pretending she didn’t need this, didn’t want him. She felt him shudder above her, heard the catch in his breath as he tried—really tried—to hold it together, to show her this side of himself he’d hidden from everyone, even her.

He kissed her eyelids, her forehead, the tip of her nose, and she caught herself smiling, so full of aching joy she thought she might splinter from it. The second time was slower, sweeter, the violence replaced by something like awe. They moved together as if choreographed by ancient memory, every touch transmitting a vocabulary of longing neither had dared speak aloud. When she came, it was a softer thing, a wave of heat and light that left her drenched in gratitude, her fingers trembling with the need to keep, to hold, to never let go.

Anna felt him spill into her again, but this time he didn’t collapse or run, didn’t hide his face in shame or fear; he just held her, anchored her in a world that had shrunk to the space between their bodies. She buried her nose in the crook of his neck and breathed, letting the air fill her all the way to the wounds she’d carried for years.

The animal fury of their first collision receded, replaced by a hush so profound Anna thought she could hear the city’s heartbeat through the windows—a world both familiar and utterly changed.

He traced the curve of her throat with his thumb, eyes burning gold in the half-light. "Tell me," he whispered, the words rough-edged with need. "Tell me what I am to you."

Anna's pulse hammered against his fingertips. Part of her—the woman who had lived alone, fought alone—wanted to pull away, preserve the last shred of herself. But her body betrayed her, arching into his touch like a flower starved for sun. "You're my Alpha," she breathed, the admission tearing from somewhere deeper than pride.

“Good, because I am going to show you all eternity what that would mean,” he promised.