Dropping his hands from her face, Nick stepped back. “I need you to go inside now, Shay.”

Her eyes flared with defiance and anger. “No.”

Nick sighed. “Baby, please—”

“No.”

He arched a brow at her. “Don’t make me put you unconscious again, Shay. If that’s what it takes, I’ll do it. You know I never make a threat I don’t intend to follow through on.”

That was true. And fighting him off wouldn’t be easy; he was bigger and far stronger, and Shaya knew from past experience just how capable he was of taking her on. But she’d made her decision, and she’d stick to it. All she had to do was get close to him. Of course that was a little difficult right now while he was on guard, braced for her to fight him. Still, there was more than one way to skin a cat—or a wolf, in this case.

Just as she had that first night he came when he’d cuffed her wrists, she played the miserable victim accepting of her fate. “Can I at least get a hug before you leave me again?”

Guilt pierced his chest. “Come here.”

Worked like a charm. Fixing a desolate look on her face, she stepped into his open arms, which curled tight around her. She buried her face into his neck, being sure to sniffle.

Another arrow of guilt shot through Nick. “It’s for the best, baby. Really. I know you don’t think that right now, but it—” He flinched as her teeth sank down hard into the juncture of his neck and shoulder. “Fuck.” As she sucked hard on the mark she was leaving, Nick quickly realized she wasn’t marking him one last time. Shaya was trying to claim him.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Shay…Shay, you have to stop.” She really, really did, because the sensations crawling through him and over him were threatening Nick’s self-control. His wolf, his body, his soul—they all rejoiced in what she was doing, and they wanted one thing, and one thing only: to claim her right back. So did Nick, but he knew better, knew he couldn’t keep—

He groaned as she sank her teeth deeper. “Shay…” Then the tricky bitch was tearing open his fly and fishing out his cock. He sucked in a breath at the feel of her soft hand wrapped around him. He was hard and hot and aching, and she was fisting him with a possessive grip that was making him forget why he wanted to fight this.

Tangling a hand in her hair, he tugged hard in an attempt to dislodge her. She was having none of that. She simply bit down harder until she drew blood, growling. And God, that f**king possessive growl made the whole thing worse. His wolf approved of her strength, of her defiance. Nick yanked harder on her hair this time, but it was like she’d locked her jaw because he couldn’t make her release him. Then she was pumping him faster, stealing more and more of his control with each stroke, and sucking on the bite in time with her strokes. If he didn’t stop her, if he didn’t make her release him, there wasn’t a hope in hell that she’d leave this vehicle unclaimed. “Shay, stop,” he ordered.

The depth of authority in his tone almost made Shaya falter. Almost. This was her mate. He was hers. And he wasn’t going anywhere. When he tugged again on her hair, she responded by increasing the pace of her strokes, and smiled inwardly at the sound of his sharp intake of breath. She could sense his resolve weakening, could sense his temptation to claim her slithering all over him, and could sense just how little self-control he had left. It thrilled her wolf to know she could do this to him, to have this power over him. Submissive, my ass.

When the hand she’d knotted in his T-shirt released him, Nick peered down and watched as she opened the snap of her jeans and slid her hand inside her panties. Christ. Then she made that moaning sound that drove him f**king crazy. “Shay…” It wasn’t a sound of complaint or censure anymore. It was a plea for mercy. He was drowning in the sensations she was causing and the primal urge to take, to own, to claim. “Baby, you have to—” His sentence was cut off as the hand she’d jammed down her pants rose and inserted one wet finger into his mouth. Her taste exploded on his tongue. Fuck.

In seconds, Nick had shredded her jeans with his claws, lifted her in his arms, slammed her against the wall, and thrust deep inside her. She released his neck with a shocked gasp, raising determined eyes to his. He held himself still, searching for the control to withdraw, because if he f**ked her right now, he’d claim her. No question.

Anger…he needed anger—it was a fuel that had always worked for him in the past. He didn’t have to dig for it, not while both he and his wolf were already raging at fate. His hard gaze drilled into hers. If he had to make her detest him so that she’d leave, then that was what he’d do. “Why would you want this, baby? Because you feel sorry for me? Because your conscience is telling you that it’s what you should do? I don’t want your f**king pity. I don’t want you.”

Did he really think she wouldn’t know what he was doing? Pfft. Shaya was well aware that he wanted to piss her off, to drive her away, to make her hate him enough to run out of this motor home and never look back. What an idiot. “I want this because I care about you, dumbass.”

“Care about me?” He didn’t have to force the snort—that was something he truly didn’t believe. “Nothing I’ve done since I got here has meant anything to you. Nothing. The only reason you gave me a chance was because you felt bad about going on a date—a date you never would have gone on if you cared—so don’t give me that shit.”

She ran her fingers through his hair. “It won’t work, Nick. You won’t push me away.”

It pissed him off that she’d seen right through him. That didn’t mean he’d give in. “I already have pushed you away. I did it the second I found you by ignoring you instead of claiming you. It put up a barrier between us, and that barrier will always be there, no matter what.”

She shook her head. “Not true.” That barrier had come down weeks ago, she now realized. She’d just been too bowled over by her insecurities to take this final step. Faced with the idea of him leaving, she realized that being without him would actually hurt more than if she took a chance and it didn’t pay off.

“It is, and you know it.” When she writhed and her pu**y tightened around his cock, Nick grasped her hips hard to still her. “We never had a chance of making this work—you knew that from the beginning, I just didn’t want to accept it. But you were right; I get that now, and I’ll leave you to live your life just like you wanted.”