Asa Crowne woke with a splitting headache. It was the sort to sprout at the back of her neck and twist sadistic, clawed fingers around to her temples. From there, her skull was an easy target, the agony applying a vise across her forehead and squeezing every sinus down her cheekbones. A groan whispered past her parted lips. Unexpected scents accosted her nose, causing delicate nostrils to flare. 

Sweat. Semen. Female arousal. Blood. Spit. Each odour lingering in the air triggered memories. Memories of experiences, emotions, and how each event changed her life. The recollections were not wholly unpleasant. Exhausted limbs twined around a lover’s legs or the sweet scent after love making. Some remembrances were less appealing. The horror of spending hours in emergency surgery, the patient on the table bleeding out from violations she could not heal. 

One patient became two, became a dozen, became a score; a slowly building avalanche of memories inflicted over a lifetime spanning centuries. The weight of the torrent threatened to drag her down and away from the here and now.

In a den deep inside her, far away from the agony in her head, her wolf was comfortable. Content. Lazy. Tingles of pleasure left her skin sensitive and flushed, but she had no memory of their cause. Her wolf’s satisfaction soothed the worries of her humanity, keeping her in repose. Comfort and serenity had never felt quite this wonderful, and an increasing temptation to explore her bare body blossomed.

Asa hadn’t yet opened her eyes. Her long and lean form lay tangled in the softest sheets she’d ever enjoyed. Cool fabric teased her fingertips, even bunched as it was around her narrow hips. The woman, a rising star in the cut-throat business world, began a mental inventory:

She lay in a bed not her own.

Her sex was sore, blissfully so, and wet.

A male wolf lay beside her, and she could hear his even pulse and every exhale. He moved, reaching for something unseen. The effort produced the slightest sound, captured at the back of his throat. It stirred her further, coercing her to finally start her day instead of letting the rising sun mature into a sunset without completing a bloody thing.

In slow and deliberate motion, she opened her eyes and turned her head. The brown of her gaze was darker than bold espresso, but when she explored the male’s musculature, the jade shards of her bitch exploded within the irises. Her pupils narrowed to slits, and a frown tugged her generous mouth downward. She studied the firmness of his shoulders, every muscle delicious in its own, well toned way. The bare skin was not without marks. How she wished to trace the hairline scars, find out how sensitive his flesh was beneath the fine lines. 

She knew him. Asa knew him. Yet, through the pounding agony warping her sense of reality, she also knew… she didn’t know him. A growl erupted and she shoved him from his side to his belly. Short nails sharpened as they dug into his shoulder blades. The man’s face was forced forward into the pillow as she clambered over his frame, and off the bed, taking the sheets with her. The sudden movement sent a stab of agony cascading down her right leg, making her cry out. She nearly missed his growl, a sound too full of fierce concern for her well being.

“What the bloody fuck is going on?” And why did her leg hurt?!!

She was in a room she didn’t recognise, waking in an unfamiliar bed. The man, on the other hand, was recognisable in a way only intimacy could create. Asa knew how it felt for him to capture her wrists and pin her down. She knew the way his beard felt between her legs and the perfect harmony of how his hips collided with hers. But she did not know his face.

Without the sheets, she could see his statuesque body. Skin touched with enough copper to not seem pale. A cut physique, from the definition in his calves all the way through to his hamstrings. If the back of his legs were this sculpted, she assumed his quadriceps were immaculate. He had a pert backside, and muscles rippled from low back to shoulders as the man's palm sank into the bed when he lifted from the pillow. He seemed to have a headache also, but was far more functional. The water he’d reached for remained on the bedside table.

Malcolm bloody Book stared at her, his eyes, a maelstrom of blue and green, intrusively direct. She didn’t remember seeing him with facial hair in the board meeting. Now, the shadow on his chin left him looking ruggedly dishevelled. Malcolm Book never looked dishevelled. Ever. His hair lay in all directions, and the scents she’d noted before…

“Oh. Oh. No. No.” Not again.

They were not her most articulate words. She tried to back away from him, but the sheets tangled around her feet and proved even someone with preternatural grace could fall over like a newborn pup. She fell on her elbow, barely avoiding a collision of her face into the floor. The pain jolting through the joint was nothing compared to the throb in her inner thigh. 

Rage boiled in a fount, and she unwound the sheet off her legs. Dried blood dappled the curve of her inner thigh, streaked from the barely-healed bite. Asa’s eyes widened, bottom lip quivering as she prodded the tender flesh around the wound. She could see each tooth mark in detail, flesh still raw from a bite of a werewolf’s jaw. 

She traced the injury in slow and morbid fascination. It hurt. Gods, it hurt. The more she prodded at it, the more her she-beast overlaid the brown in her gaze with jade ire. She didn’t realise he’d stood up until Malcolm’s shadow absconded with the light from above her head. Beneath his glorious loom—she could analyse why she thought it glorious later—Asa’s gaze lifted. It was the first time she’d seen his front side, and she devoured the sight from his flexed thighs, the cock hanging heavy between his legs, and rippling abdominals. She did not look further; his cock distracted her far too much.

He frowned down at her. Asa’s fingers had shifted from prodding the wound to sliding along her puffy slit, unabashedly displayed between splayed legs. She felt no doubt he enjoyed the lewd sight; he seemed a moment away from jerking himself off in front of her while she wet the floor with her cum. The erotic act was unlike her, but felt natural. Right to present such a part of herself to him.

Malcolm’s apparent displeasure visibly deepened. He wrapped his hand beneath her elbow to pull her from her graceless sprawl. Asa turned her head aside, and his hand fisted her hair, drawing her face back to him. Her eyebrows lifted high, lips parted with a faint tremble even as she wanted to spew insults about his loved ones.  Her right thigh quivered when she put weight on it. 

“Let me go,” she said, quiet words hiding a rumbling growl. 

He didn’t answer her, but kept her in place with stoic silence as he looked over her face, forcing her compliance with his hand in her hair. She didn’t know what he was looking for, and his casual disregard of her protests angered her further. She clawed at his chest until he forced their bodies close, pinning her arms between her modest breasts and his hard body. The hold in her hair slanted her face upward, and the two werewolves stared at each other, galaxies birthed in their endless eyes. 

“Be still. I need to make sure you did not hurt yourself further when you fell,” he said, his growl felt through her body.

The words slammed into her, Malcolm’s British accent similar to hers yet so very different. He continued to examine her, never with crassness and never with violence, but with a strength she was helpless to deny. Asa could not move. Could barely breathe. She had no choice but to quiet her struggles and allow him the freedom to manipulate her. Every time he touched her, she could not help but tremble slightly, and her body visibly flushed. Twice she nearly moaned, and she hoped he did not notice the subtle arch of her back.

His ability to control her was terrifying. Worse, the wound on her thigh began to ache again. This close, she could see where his skin healed over a bite she must have inflicted but could not recall. 

“What do you remember about last night, Asa?” he asked. The way he spoke her first name sent a flutter of butterflies through her stomach.

It was her turn to frown. 

She remembered the red carpet leading into the high-rise nightclub. Divinity was well-known for its neon glow aesthetic, and the amount of money organisations threw at this venue to host exclusive one-night-only events was enough to feed a small city. The main club floor, normally thronged with barely clad clubgoers, that night played host to a Black Tie affair; the guests were expected to show up in their most opulent attire. Open bar, endless food, beautiful people. 

Asa had been the violent one.

She’d been convinced the shrimp were not shrimp—they were prawns. Asa remembered the irate way she’d argued with Malcolm. One of the little sea bugs in hand, her angry gestures aimed the crustacean at him as if it would prove her point. He’d kissed her to end her shouting, and she moaned into the sudden ferocity of their lips colliding. Next came a tinge of blood on her tongue from his tooth, a common error when mouths had never touched before. All the while, the chef stood nearby, grinning in a wickedly inappropriate way. Asa had shoved him away, and had thrown her Champagne into his smarmy face, and stormed off for the lift.

“I remember the Dom tasting funny,” she said, the memory of the flute in her hand feeling too warm beneath her fingertips. 

Rumours spread ages ago about Divinity’s owner. Nothing had ever been authenticated, but those who entered the club often found their inhibitions stripped away and awkward mornings when they woke in the arms of strangers in a room not their own, smelling of sex and tingling with satisfaction. 

Someone knocked on the door. Malcolm released her and he stepped back, stealing the fallen sheet for modesty. He left her standing by the wall, the mirror on the opposite surface reflecting truths she did not enjoy accepting. Asa was all leg and litheness. The subtle hourglass of her hips seemed accentuated by the mirror, and she noted where her skin still showed signs of a man’s rough grip. Dried seed lined her toned belly, obviously not washed away well enough. The injury on her inner thigh should have already healed, and there were only certain circumstances where it would not. She couldn’t go down the path of acceptance yet. Only once he’d stepped more than a metre away could she force her posture to soften.

Asa could tell her sex was still swollen from hard use, and it was not the only place penetrated. She was dripping wet, her cunt weeping need despite the pulse-rising fear stemming from uncertainty. Her nipples tightened when she acknowledged her arousal, the new scent dallying with the overwhelming aroma of a couple enjoying themselves—repeatedly.

She glanced toward the door, barely catching the sight of a dapper man walking away, his gait giving the impression of someone victorious. Malcolm held a basket of breakfast foods with an unopened bottle of Champagne, a complete English breakfast, perfectly steeped tea, and a hand-written note. 

Malcolm turned around, reading the note aloud with a furrowed brow.

“Congratulations on forever. Don’t screw it up this time. We’re all counting on you.”