Danae’s POV
I nodded, then busied myself with the clothes I could find.
Pulling them on gave me somewhere to look, something to do besides stand under his scrutiny.
The soreness between my thighs made me wince.
“Don’t look so pleased.
I just hadn’t done it before.”
Caspian came toward me, naked and entirely unconcerned about it.
My newly covered body remembered his touch with humiliating immediacy.
“You think that’s good news?”
Something dangerous had entered his voice.
I went tense and made myself keep my eyes up.
“What else would it be?”
He laughed without warmth.
“Naive.”
Reaching for his phone, he added, “Your bank details.
Give them to me.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“So I can transfer the money.” Impatience sharpened his words.
He wasn’t looking at me.
For a moment, the explanation refused to settle into meaning.
Then it did, and shame swept hot over my skin.
“You can’t be serious.
You think I want you to pay me?”
He pulled on his boxers with maddening calm.
“You provided a service.
I compensate you.
That’s a fair transaction.”
My stomach turned.
How could those words come from the man who had brushed hair off my forehead?
Last night’s tenderness made the insult worse, gave it somewhere softer to land.
“I’m not a prostitute.
Keep your money.”
His brow creased.
He actually seemed confused.
“Then what is it?
Status?
A position?
If you’re using me to get into the Ashmoon—”
“Nothing!
I don’t want anything from you.”
Angry tears stung my eyes.
“Last night was a stupid mistake.
I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”
The words hurt, partly because I needed them to be true and knew they weren’t entirely.
Gold flashed in his eyes.
He advanced until the heat of his body was close enough to feel.
“You knew who I was when you approached me.
You’re Bryneholm’s woman.
You expect me to believe that’s accidental?”
“His ex.” My chest rose sharply with every breath.
“Not everything is about you.
Sometimes a person wants one night when the hurt stops.”
“Then why choose me?”
He kept coming until the wall met my back.
“Out of everyone there, why the Ashmoon heir?”
His scent surrounded me, carrying memories my anger hadn’t managed to erase.
Clear thought became difficult in a way I resented.
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
“I looked into your eyes, and it felt like it had to be you.”
My hand settled against his chest before I could stop it.
His heart beat rapidly beneath my palm.
“Now let me leave.”
He studied me, nostrils flaring slightly.
“When we touched—what did you feel?”
I pulled away, dragging what remained of my pride with me.
“Regret.
Nothing else.”
The lie tasted bitter.
“Once I walk out, we never met.
Understand?”
I hurried from the suite, leaving him behind.
My body carried the memory of him with me, indifferent to every furious promise I had just made.
Caspian’s POV
After the door closed, I sat on the bed while my wolf clawed beneath my skin.
“A virgin.
Fuck.”
My fist struck the mattress.
Beneath it, the frame cracked.
The lounge came back with merciless clarity.
That first meeting of our eyes across the crowded room.
Honey and rain in her scent, and something distinctly hers that had hit me hard enough to nearly destroy my control in public.
My wolf had known immediately.
*Mine.*
I’d felt the ache in my gums as my fangs threatened to emerge, the sharpened vision, the demand to claim her.
When she came toward me with those gray-green eyes, holding myself in check took everything I had.
I had wanted her then, right there, with an urgency I couldn’t explain away.
Now I understood why the pull had seemed so strong.
She had been untouched, and my wolf had answered that knowledge with an instinctive certainty about mating.
I paced, swearing under my breath.
We’d had our mate in our bed.
I had let her leave.
Worse, I had offered her money, made a transaction of something my wolf understood as sacred.
I picked up the phone and called Garrick, forcing steadiness into my voice.
“I need you to look into a human woman.
She was at Moonlight Lounge last night.”
His question began, and I cut across it.
“No.
Not a new bedmate.”
My jaw tightened before I found the description I could make myself say aloud.
“Someone with a possible connection to Bryneholm.”
Even as I said it, I knew how little that explanation covered.
The way she had held me.
The change in her scent while we were together, growing sweeter and richer, carrying something of me despite the absence of a bite.
My wolf had already recognized what I was trying not to name.
She wasn’t a discarded amusement of Bryneholm’s.
She was my mate.
I ended the call and went to the shower.
Perhaps I could wash her scent away before I did something reckless, like follow it through the city and bring her back to my den.
But the water did nothing.
She seemed to be beneath my skin rather than on it.
I rested my forehead against the cool tile.
Memory supplied the gasp she’d made when I’d entered her, the resistance, the way she’d gradually yielded.
I should have understood.
I should have been gentler.
Another part of me wanted to drown that regret in possession.
“Should’ve had you saying my name louder, little doe,” I growled into the empty shower.
“Should’ve tasted you until you were begging for my knot.”
The memory brought back my arousal despite the anger: her uncertain responses becoming sure, the way she learned our rhythm, the slender fingers that had scored my back.
Those scratches still hadn’t healed.
Another sign I couldn’t dismiss.
I had reasons for suspicion.
Catastrophic ones.
Idris had seduced me, taken compromising photographs, and used them to blackmail me for months.
Merek had concealed her age and afterward threatened statutory rape charges; the settlement had cost me a million dollars.
Both had been inexperienced, both had wanted something from me—money, power, access to the Ashmoon.
I had let those memories decide what I saw this morning.
But this woman had refused the money.
She’d left.
The hurt in her eyes hadn’t looked calculated.
It had been immediate and unmistakable, and remembering it cut deeper than claws.
“Fuck.”
My hand closed beneath the spray.
Light caught the onyx ring as anger surged through me, tangled with everything I refused to sort out.
Gold flashed across my vision.
I drove my fist into the tile.
It cracked.
“I’ll find you, little doe.”
My voice had dropped into the wolf’s guttural register.
“Whatever you’re after, you’ll answer for provoking me.”