That tone of velvet certainty.
Slowly, I stood, my hands curled into fists.
Edward stepped into my doorway, blocking my exit. He was shirtless with a skeleton crew bandanna at his throat, his dark hair mussed but still immaculate. The faintest smile curved his lips.
Neither cruel nor smug. I called that possessive.
I straightened. “This isn’t your playground.”
“No.” His gaze dropped, skimming down my body and back up again, trailing fire in its wake. “Good thing I’m not playing. I’m only here to win.”
I swallowed. “Win what, exactly?”
“You.”
The word had no right to be so devastating to my nervous system. Sex with him would blow my mind, and I acknowledgedthe thought that took over almost every part of me. The attraction blooming inside me rose to quivering, towering proportions.Must mate.Must…
“No.” My voice trembled.
“Then run again,” he said softly. A god bored with Olympus. “Give me the chase.”
His words released me from the spell I was under. I moved.
Fast.
Bursting past him, I sped back into the main corridor, my breath caught in my throat and my legs burning from the sprint. Confusion dogged me. The power of my attraction to the man hot on my heels nearly made me stay. Or turn to him and fall down with my damn legs open. But I couldn’t be trapped for thirty days with someone like that. It would be hell on earth, even if the sex would be wild.
Wait, maybe it would be worth it.
Another scream echoed, high and feverish, and I passed a completely naked woman draped against the metal stairs, fists clenched in a man’s hair as he buried his face between her thighs. Another man cradled her from behind, rocking into her and whispering something that made her laugh and cry out all at once. He was her claimer, I realised, and the man on his knees licked or sucked on them both.
Beyond them, the petite woman was spread out over an unconscious man, another opening her legs to make way for him. It was the younger guy. He’d knocked out the Viking. Damn.
Three down.
I didn’t want to be claimed now. Not yet. Not by a stranger.
Footsteps thundered behind me.
Shit.
Four men rounded the corner like a pack of wolves, one with blood on his knuckles, all of them shirtless, the last with a glintin his eye that iced my stomach. They saw me. And something snapped in their expressions.
The front runner grinned. “There.”
I turned, my heart battering my ribs. My heel caught on a crack in the concrete. I slipped, recovered, pushed harder. A hand snatched at my hair.
“Come on, sweetheart!” one of them shouted. “Make it fun.”
I skidded through into the open space at the centre of the basement, people all around and the lights bright above me. My heel twisted beneath me again so I stumbled sideways. The damn thing broke.
A hand caught my arm. Two.
The wolf pack trapped me in their midst, surrounding me, their bodies crowding mine, the skeleton masks intimidating.
A man with dark hair past his shoulders cupped my cheek. “Pretty thing, aren’t you?”
He tore at the button of his jeans. I whirled around and shoved at the guy behind me. He didn’t budge, trapping me where I stood.