“I’m not so sure about that. The burnout rate is high for PDs, and it’s not much better for ADAs. I thought about moving into the prosecutor’s office, plenty of folks retiring from that job, but it felt too much like switching teams. The laws always favor humans, and I liked being able to do my part to defend those who wouldn’t have had advocacy otherwise. But I also didn’t want to have a nervous breakdown before I was thirty-five, so here I am. As worthless as a first-year law student.”

His dimple made an appearance, and her cheeks flushed.

“I disagree. You would’ve done well in the DA’s office. You’re very passionate, extremely talented. The judges like you, and juries want to like you. I have no doubt you would’ve had a fine career there. Of course, private practice is far more lucrative. You’re taking up space under our roof now, but at least you’re not still covered in grime from county.”

She gasped in offense, pressing her thighs together as he laughed, like a spill of dark chocolate, raising her glass to clink against his, earning another of those glinting smiles.

“What about you?” she huffed. “What made you go into law?”

“I’ve always been exceptionally good at arguing with people,” he grinned. “Parlaying that into a career seemed obvious.”

“Were you one of those debate team douchebags?”

“Oh, team captain,” he agreed with a laugh, eyes sparkling. “Obviously. Pretty sure I hit the douchebag trifecta, actually.” He proceeded to count off on his fingers. “Debate team. Lacrosse and I pledged Alpha Sigma Lupe.”

Vanessa leaned over the table, giving him her best wolf-like smile.

“Oh, you were one of those douchebags. I pledged Delta Delta Lupe. We used to party with the Alpha Lu guys on campus.”

He leaned forward on his forearms, shifting in a way that made her foot bump his shin.

“Ahh, that tells me everything I need to know. Everyone knows what Delta Lu girls are like. If we had been at school at the same time, I would’ve had you on the front lawn of the house.” Beneath the table, he caught her foot, his thumb pushing into her arch in a way that made her gasp. She knew the hands and feet were supposed to be conduits to the rest of the body, and as he caressed her skin lightly, she was sure he was hitting the pulse point that had a direct line between her thighs.

“I would be so confident about that, Mr. Hemming. I was hot shit in school.”

“Still are,” Grayson said simply, dropping her foot to rest on the bulge at the front of his pants. “I have no doubt you would’ve made me work for it. But I still would have had you.”

Vanessa let her smile stretch, twinkling at him as her toes curled, caressing the shape of his erection.

“You would have had to catch me first.”

Another bottle of champagne was ordered for the room, and her head spun at the excess.

“You have the prettiest tits I’ve ever seen,” he’d breathed against her sternum, his tongue following a sticky trail of champagne between her breasts, sucking her nipples until they were puffy and swollen, and she’d held onto his hair as he kissed his way down her body, shouldering open her legs, mouth delving once more between her thighs.

When she’d lain wheezing under him a short while later, on knees and elbows with his arms braced around her, his chest flush to her back and his teeth at her shoulder, gasping as his cock thumped into her solidly, she didn’t believe that they could simply go back to the way things were on Tuesday.

He’d sucked five hundred dollar champagne off her nipples, and she had sucked his cock, squeezing his knot to increase his pleasure, feeling him pulse against her lips when he filled her mouth in an endless ejaculation and had listened to the percussion of his heartbeat, pressed against his chest as she drifted to sleep. After she had ridden his face the following morning, after sleeping in his arms, she was positive they could not go backward. But all through the weekend, time rarely spent outside of the room as he sated the fire in her blood and she drained his balls dry, he never knotted her, refusing to do so.

“I think . . . that’s something we’ll both regret, baby. Too soon. And I don’t do that with new partners. I’m sorry, rabbit. I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t know how much you can take. You’re already so tight.”

They couldn’t go back, she knew when he kissed her, just before they left the room for the final time, his hand already on the doorknob. She thought his lips had quirked into a small, soft smile as he pulled away, and the bubble of warmth she’d felt had carried her all the way down to the lobby . . .

Where he put her into the rideshare he’d already ordered, sending her off to face the full moon alone.

When she walked into the office two days later, it had been business as usual.

“I want to see every reference to this specific test in their case files; let’s go back at least three years. In blue. No – in green.”

There hadn’t been anything in his voice that would have betrayed what they’d done, no softening in his expression as he continued to bark orders, and she realized he had meant what he’d said. No matter how she chose, it wouldn’t affect anything when they returned to the office, and so it hadn’t.

Vanessa reminded herself she ought to be glad. This was her career, and her career was worth more than five hundred dollar champagne and the deeply sexy way he smelled fresh out of the shower.

She’d made the mistake of letting him catch her, and now that she’d been caught, she wondered if he was done chasing.

He said it wouldn’t matter, and she decided to follow his example. If it didn’t have something to do with a case or client, she put it out of her mind, focusing on nothing but work in the following weeks, shifting the angle of her desk just enough that the inhabitant of the darkened, glass-walled office was out of her peripheral view. It didn’t matter, and she didn’t need to let it matter.

* * *

Chapter Five

W hen the full moon approached again, she took several moon days, something she’d not done since university. She didn’t want to be there in the office, smelling him, twisting in her seat, writhing under the weight of his gaze, and letting him smell how needy he made her. Instead, she took herself out of the equation.

The man with whom she spent two of her sick days was someone she had hooked up with before, someone she’d met in a club frequented by shifters. He was well-built and good-looking, and he satisfied the ache in her blood well enough that she could function, and in another lifetime, she would’ve been attracted to him. Now though, the scent of him hit her nose wrong, and the shape of his body against hers felt as though they were from two different puzzles with roughly complementary edges; good enough, but not a perfect fit.

The day after the moon, she snuggled under a quilt on her sofa, warming her hands with an oversized mug of tea, and logged in to work for the first time since she’d left the office before lunch four days earlier. He had sent her a schedule tap the last morning she’d been in and an email with a blank subject line.

Do you have anything on your calendar this week?

It was innocuous and inoffensive and could have absolutely been about work, which was the point.

Plausible deniability. The only thing on the calendar was the full moon, which he knew very well, and there was only one reason he would have been asking. She chewed on the end of her ponytail, staring at his message until the light in the room had shifted. Her tea had gone cold, and she set the mug aside.

Sorry I missed this. I wasn’t feeling well last week and took a few days. He already had her

number, of course, for it was the one she’d registered with HR, but he wasn’t going to cross that boundary without her permission, clearly. She bit her lip, hesitating for less than a heartbeat.