Thorne’s POV
”Fuck‚” I growled through clenched teeth the second I stepped into my office‚ and slammed the door so hard the frame shook.
My chest was heaving.
My heart was pounding so violently I could feel it in my temples‚ in my throat‚ in the base of my skull.
My wolf was losing his mind.
He clawed at the inside of my ribs‚ howling and snarling and throwing himself against the walls of the cage I had built around him over ten years of brutal‚ agonizing discipline.
He wanted out.
He wanted her.
He wanted to rip that elevator open‚ drag her back inside‚ pin her against the wall‚ and mark her so thoroughly that every single man in this building would smell me on her skin from fifty feet away.
Mine.
She is mine.
Claim her.
Take her.
Make her understand that she belongs to us.
“Shut up‚” I muttered‚ slamming my fist against the door hard enough to split the skin across my knuckles.
“Shut the fuck up.”
He didn’t listen.
He never listened when it came to her.
I pushed off the door and stalked across the office‚ pacing back and forth in front of my desk like a caged animal because that’s exactly what I was.
My reflection caught in the floor-to-ceiling windows as I passed‚ and I barely recognized the man staring back at me.
Veins bulging in my neck.
Eyes flickering between blue and gold so rapidly that anyone walking in right now would know immediately that something was very wrong with Thorne Anderson.
I needed to calm down.
I needed to breathe.
I needed to sit behind my desk and open my laptop and pretend to be the composed‚ untouchable CEO that everyone in this building believed I was.
Instead‚ I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket and pulled out her panties.
The pale blue cotton was still warm from her body.
I brought them to my face and inhaled‚ and the sound that came out of me was something no human vocal cord should have been capable of producing.
It was deep and guttural and raw‚ ripped from somewhere so primal that it bypassed my brain entirely and went straight to the base of my spine.
Her scent flooded my senses like a drug injected directly into my bloodstream.
Sweet and warm and layered with the unmistakable musk of her arousal‚ faint but there‚ proving what I already knew.
That she had been wet in that elevator.
That her body had responded to my kiss and my hands and my voice even while her mouth was telling me to let go.
That beneath all her anger and defiance and stubborn‚ beautiful resistance‚ her body recognized its mate and ached for him just as desperately as he ached for her.
My cock throbbed so hard behind my zipper that I actually groaned out loud.
This was getting unbearable.
The kind that made rational men do irrational things.
I had spent ten years watching this woman from a distance.
Ten years of tracking her life through careful sources‚ memorizing every detail‚ cataloging every milestone‚ building the infrastructure that would eventually bring her to me. Find the original chapter at novelping.com.
Ten years of cold showers and clenched fists and the kind of self-denial that would have broken most men long before now.
And in the last three days‚ all of that control had crumbled like wet paper.
Because now I knew what she sounded like when she moaned.
Now I knew what she felt like clenching around my fingers‚ tight and hot and perfect.
Now I knew what she tasted like‚ sweet on my tongue and burned permanently into my memory.
And now I knew what her mouth felt like against mine‚ soft and desperate and fighting me and surrendering to me at the exact same time.
I didn’t just want her anymore.
Want was a word for people who could walk away from the thing they desired.
Want was a word for impulses that could be managed‚ controlled‚ redirected.
What I felt for Skye Moore had gone so far beyond want that the word was almost insulting.
I needed her.
I needed her the way my lungs needed oxygen.
The way my wolf needed the moon.
The way a drowning man needed the surface.
It was biological‚ cellular‚ written into every strand of my DNA by a force older and stronger than anything I could fight against.
And that need was destroying me from the inside out.
I leaned back against the edge of my desk and pressed her panties against my face one more time‚ dragging her scent deep into my lungs until my head spun and my cock strained so painfully against my pants that I couldn’t think straight.
My free hand moved on its own.