“I’m not saying I don’t think you can do your job,” she said quickly in case he became offended. “I’m just offering to help.”

“Even though it would mean that you’ll sometimes work long hours, too?”

“If you think it will be good for you, yeah.”

He honestly couldn’t believe this. Instead of giving him an ultimatum, she was offering to work alongside him. This female got to him in ways that he could never articulate. He brought his lips down hard on hers again, shooting his tongue into her mouth to dance with hers and kissing her hungrily, almost violently. An urgent need to be inside her hit him. A need to feel her cling to him, mark him, and come apart around him.

“Does that mean you like the idea of me helping? You could think of me as your secretary or something.”

An impish grin surfaced on his face. “You really shouldn’t have said that. It’s making me think some really dirty thoughts about f**king you on my office desk.” He lifted her leg, hooked it around his waist, and he dug his hips into hers, groaning.

She snorted. “As if I’d let you do that!” The breathlessness in her voice totally contradicted her words, but it was his fault for continuing to rock into her at a very seductive rhythm. She was still feeling needy from earlier, and this was making it worse. Jaime did love makeup sex.

“Oh you would,” he drawled, breathing hotly into her ear. “And you’d love it. Love it when I bent you over and tugged down your jeans so that I could see that gorgeous ass of yours.” Peeling up her dress to her waist, he snapped off her thong and slid his fingers between her slick folds. “I’d check to make sure you were nice and wet for me, just like you are now. Then I’d do this.” Jaime cried out when he plunged two fingers inside her. God, she’d needed that. Helplessly she moaned as he nibbled and sucked on her neck while slowly f**king her with his fingers. He kept his thrusts slow and shallow, enough to make her moan, but not enough to make her come. He was such an ass.

“I’d thrust them in and out and in and out until you couldn’t take any more.” With his free hand, he unbuttoned his fly and rubbed the head of his c**k between her folds. “And then…I’d f**k you like I own you. Because I do.” Dante removed his fingers and slowly and deliberately pushed his c**k inside her, wanting her to feel every inch of him sink deeper and deeper. Never had he felt a pu**y this amazing—so hot, wet, suctioning, and oh-so-tight around him. He was pretty sure that no one in the world had a pu**y this good. “Mine. All mine,” he said against her lips.

“Dante.”

“Shh. I’ll take care of it, baby.” Very, very slowly he withdrew, and then he slammed into her.

He’d hoped to go slow, but…“Fuck, I need this.” Then he was pounding into her with deep, branding thrusts. A territorial growl escaped him. This amazing female was his. This body that he constantly craved was his. He paused briefly to rise to his knees and hook her legs over his shoulders, allowing him to go even deeper with each violent thrust. He knew the cries that tore from her throat were a mix o f pleasure and pain. He knew exactly what line between the two that she rode, and he gave her exactly what she wanted.

Surprising a gasp from Jaime, he abruptly bit down on her nipple through her dress. He sucked it hard and plucked at it with his teeth over and over. “Dante, I’m going to come.” Good, because he wasn’t going to last much longer. Not when the panic he’d felt at losing her was still riding him. “Bite me, baby. Bite me hard.” Rearing up, she sank her teeth into his shoulder through his T-shirt. He growled. “Yeah, that’s it.”

Jaime sensed the desperation in his movements, because it was the same desperation she was feeling. Desperation to reconnect and be sure that they were there with each other and that everything was okay. Feeling his claws digging into her thighs, leaving marks of possession, she snarled in the back of her throat. It didn’t surprise her when a powerful fist knotted in her hair and pulled hard.

Objecting to a dominant male marking you when he thought you belonged to him was asking for trouble. But she liked trouble.

“Mine, Jaime. No one else will ever f**k this pu**y again. It belongs to me— you belong to me. Admit it.” When she didn’t, he tugged harder on her hair. “Admit it or I’ll stop right now and come all over you.”

“Do you have to be such a goddamn jerk?!”

“Admit it!”

“I’m yours,” she gritted out.

“That’s my good girl.” Then he bit down hard on her neck, and her pu**y constricted around him as she came, screaming and shuddering. With a loud, guttural groan, he exploded inside her, filling her with everything he had—marking her with his come just as he had with his claws and teeth.

And he knew right then that he was seriously close to loving this female, if he didn’t already.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Dante dedicated the following few weeks to ensuring that Jaime didn’t ever again think that she came second to his job. He did just as he’d promised her that he would: he delegated more to the enforcers (who were happy about it and sincerely loved Jaime for making him “see the light”), he scheduled uninterrupted quality time for them to spend together alone, and he always headed back to her at the same time each night.

That nagging feeling to keep busy taunted him from time to time, but all he had to do was remind himself how it had felt when Jaime tried to end things between them. Just like that, the nagging became background noise. He refused to go through it again, refused to lose her for real.

It probably would have been much harder to adapt if Jaime hadn’t kept her promise to help in the afternoons. At first it had been hard to let her help, because he wasn’t comfortable having another cook in the kitchen—particularly a messy one—but the difference her help had made was actually shocking. She had taken over having the private meetings with members of the pack who had grievances, and they had actually come to prefer speaking with her. He guessed it was most likely because of how she gave a person her full attention; it probably reassured them that their issue would be addressed.

In addition, she often answered and made important calls. Her husky sex-hotline voice made her a popular medium of communication, and he knew she was often asked if she was mated. That pissed him off, but she only laughed at his jealous grumblings.

One thing he didn’t allow her to help him with was the paperwork. He had a nicely organized system going, and he did not want her fiddling with it. Fortunately, she wasn’t a fan of paperwork, so she merely shrugged at his refusals to accept her assistance—just as she had done only five minutes ago. She knew she was messy, and she was unapologetic about it. It was surprisingly endearing even while it made him crazy.