“I came for you.”

“How did you even know where I was?”

“It was easy enough to guess. You’ve gone here lots of times with your coworkers on Saturday nights. Now let’s go.”

She pulled her arm free. “I am not some teenager who sneaked out, and I don’t have to ask for your permission to leave pack territory.”

“Your wolf could have got freaked out over something and—”

“My wolf is what you might call fried. It’ll be a day or two before she even has half the strength to overpower me.”

“I don’t care. We’re going.” He reached out to grab her, but she dodged him. “Don’t pull away from me, Jaime. You can’t imagine how much it irritates my wolf when you do that.”

“Haven’t you figured out yet that you can’t control me?”

Yes, he’d figured it out a long time ago. Strangely, he liked it just as much as he hated it. Right this second, though, he wasn’t in the mood to be challenged by her. “You’re pushing me, Jaime, and you’re pushing me hard. Don’t do it, don’t make me more pissed than I already am.” She laughed a humorless laugh. “You’re pissed? Good, because I’m really, really pissed right now. You came after me when you have no need or right to, you chased away that guy as if he’d assaulted me or something, and now you’re trying to drag me back to pack territory like I’m some petulant kid. What is your problem?”

His problem was that he wanted her so damn bad he ached with it, so damn bad that he couldn’t ignore that ache anymore. If his attraction to her had been purely physical—hell, attraction was a mild word—maybe it would have been easy enough to ignore. But there was much more to it than that. He admired and respected her for everything she had gotten through, for how much fight she had inside that amazing body. He enjoyed her company, he enjoyed her smart-ass comments, and he valued that she didn’t fear him. No matter how thunderous his temper was or how firm his orders were, she never bowed down to him, never tried to placate him, never cowered.

Each time females shrank away from him in the past, it greatly offended both him and his wolf.

Dante would never harm a female, no matter the situation, and had those females looked past his build, had they looked deep enough, they would have known that about him. So far, Jaime was the only one who had looked deep enough. And that touched him in a way that he hadn’t expected.

Maybe he should have been distrustful of her, knowing that she’d lied to him, but he wasn’t at all. She’d held her secret to protect herself, and he could never judge her for that. Although she’d kept that secret, she wasn’t a fake. She didn’t hide her nature or personality—what you saw was what you got. Yet she was as complicated as she was straightforward. That amused, entertained, and drew him.

In short, she had somehow made herself important to him without even trying. She was like a f**king magnet to him. It was like Rhett had said, like called to like. And this person who knew just what it was like to need control called to him.

It could be said that they were bad for each other. The problem with them was that they mirrored each other’s hunger and fed on each other’s lust, making self-control incredibly difficult for both of them. While on an intellectual level he acknowledged that the best thing he could do was leave alone this female who ate at both his control and his wolf’s, it wasn’t going to stop him from having her. He wasn’t sure if anything could. Not just because he ached for her so badly, but because he had come to view her as his.

Maybe he should feel like an ass, considering that there was a female out there who was his true mate, waiting for him to claim her. But the truth was that he didn’t want to find her. He’d been kidding himself in thinking that he could ever give up his position as Beta; it would have made him feel as though he was abandoning his pack, selfishly letting them down by choosing his own happiness over their safety and well-being. He wasn’t the first person to forsake his true mate—a person he might never even find—and he wouldn’t be the last. There was no longer anything holding him back from taking Jaime. Even if there had been, he wasn’t sure he could have fought it any longer.

His wolf very much approved of his decision to finally act on his hunger for her. “Get out of the club, and get in the SUV.”

“You can go if you want, but I’m staying.” Then came the change in the emotional temperature around her—evidently, he was now more than pissed.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” His expression and tone dared her to repeat herself, but at the same time warned her not to.

“I’m. Staying. I came here to dance and have fun. You, being the workaholic that you are, wouldn’t know anything about that.” She thought he was going to have an aneurysm, she really did.

But then a crooked smile surfaced on his face—one that made her nervous.

“Fine. You want to dance, we’ll dance.” Once again he pulled her to him, ensuring that her body was meshed to his; one of his hands clasped her nape and the other clutched her ass in a very possessive grip. Rebelliously, she stiffened and glowered at him, but Dante simply held her tighter and bit her lower lip.

“Keep your teeth to yourself!”

“You’d better get used to me biting you, baby, because it’s going to happen a lot.”

“Oh I don’t think so, Popeye. I have more pride than to jump into the bed of some guy who spent the past few months dismissing me. It’s a little too late to come knocking on my door.” Dante fisted a hand in her hair—a shifter gesture of ownership that he saw infuriated her as much as it aroused her. He pinned her with a look. “You won’t be jumping into some guy’s bed , Jaime. You’ll be in mine. Oh yeah, deny it if you want, but we both know it’s going to happen. I’m getting inside that pu**y. You’re going to take every inch of me, and you’re going to love it.” She should not have liked the dominance in his tone or the determination in his gaze, yet, perversely, she did. She really shouldn’t have liked that there wasn’t a hint of compromise in his tone either, yet, odd as it was, she did like it. That didn’t mean she was going to give him what he wanted, though. Oh no. If he thought he could ignore her and that she’d jump when he finally decided to call, he was so wrong. “Not a chance, big guy. Besides, I’m not your type, remember? You don’t think of me that way. You like your females to be nice and slim.”