“You need to get back to work, rabbit. You have those depositions to get through.”

His face flushed red with the force of swallowing down his groan, the first spurt of white creaming against her clit, quickly followed by several more of varying volume. He would’ve been throwing ropes across her body had he been standing upright, but with his slit pressed to her folds, his ejaculation was a long, voluminous ooze of sticky white cream. When he kissed her gently, pulling her panties up and trapping his semen against her, she nearly fell off the desk.

“Go back to work. Don’t forget who this pussy belongs to.”

She should have gone directly to the bathroom and wiped herself clean, but instead, Vanessa found herself getting back in the elevator. When she stepped out on her floor, her cheeks were pink. She wondered if anyone would look at her and know that her panties were full, if they would be able to smell him on her. If they were a wolf, it was possible. She was afraid to sit down and ruin her dress, and she puttered around her desk, reading as much as she could while standing until the mess he’d created had cooled into an uncomfortable presence, forcing her to teeter into the restroom, wiping herself clean of him, at least for the moment.

* * *

“What will happen if someone finds out about us?”

They were in his bed, at his house in Cambric Creek, her favorite place to be.

She hadn’t expected to reacclimate to suburbia as well as she had. Cambric Creek was an intriguing little town. There were plenty of exclusive little boutiques and high-end bistros, all of which knew his dietary restrictions on sight. Three of them even stocked his favorite champagne. She’d had her hair done at the same chichi salon his mother and sister-in-law patronized, marveling at the volumizing treatment and the peach stone facial she’d received.

“I’ve offered to give you an all-natural facial numerous times,” he’d huffed as she continued to go on about it that evening, rubbing the back of his hand against her cheek to feel how smooth her skin was.

She loved laying out on one of the deck chairs in his resort-like backyard, removing her bikini top to sunbathe, feeling the weight of his eyes watching her from the upper deck. She would stretch like a cat, rising slowly once the sun was too hot on her skin, diving into the pool in one long glide and finding him waiting for her when she emerged, her bikini bottoms joining the top, abandoned on the deck.

She liked the quiet darkness of the big rooms, finding it easy to think and turn her mind off, putting work aside, at least in tiny increments. Nothing was more relaxing than sitting against the sofa in his big, empty living room, sipping from a mug of tea as the rain spattered against the wall of windows. She hadn’t grown up in a big house and scarcely knew what to do with so much space, but Vanessa would be hard-pressed to say that she didn’t like it.

The master bedroom was nearly as big as her entire apartment in Bridgeton, his bed a sumptuous oasis of high-thread-count Egyptian cotton and feather-stuffed pillows, and some mornings, waking up beside him after working off the edge of her muted pre-moon heat, she thought it would be nice to never have to leave again. That evening, however, her mind was not as relaxed.

She couldn’t get the incident with the elevator out of her head. She’d begun to feel paranoid in the following weeks, assuming she was being whispered about whatever her back was turned, and it had started to affect her performance with her team.

“If the partners know, that means everyone knows. The top office is always the last to find out about anything. That means people have been talking about us for months! Everyone probably already knows . . . What am I going to do?!”

He said nothing in response, and after several yawning moments of silence, Vanessa huffed, lifting her head from his chest to glare up at him.

“I’m not ignoring you. I’m really not sure what question I’m being asked. So people find out? Who the fuck cares? Has anything ever impacted our work? No. They’re always going to look for something to whisper about. What’s going to happen? Nothing.”

She frowned at his answer but wasn’t sure what she had been expecting. His eyes closed, satisfied that the issue was closed, and after a few minutes, the steady rise and fall of his chest told her he was hovering just on the edge of sleep, and she should have kept her thoughts to herself.

“I don’t know if that’s true.”

His eyes fluttered open, his eyes narrowing in her direction.

“What do you think would happen, rabbit? What would happen realistically? Neither of us is married. I’m not even your direct supervisor, not technically. I’ll be reprimanded by Vormir for not disclosing, and that would be it.”

Her stomach twisted, knowing he wasn’t thinking things through thoroughly and wasn’t seeing things from her end. She didn’t want her career hamstrung because of their relationship, not when he would walk away without repercussion, by his own admission. Her reputation would be irreparably tarnished. Sleeping with the boss, sleeping her way to the top, special treatment that she didn’t deserve, special positioning on cases, about as useful as a first-year law student.

“Nothing will happen to you, Gray.”

He was quiet again, and she thought he had probably decided to ignore her and her silly fears and go to sleep. He had nothing to worry about, for his name was over the door, and there would be no legacy of whispers that would trail after him, from courtroom to courtroom for the rest of his legal career.

“We can file a declaration with HR on Monday, Vanessa. Would that make you feel better? I really don’t know what else you want me to do. And you understand the filing with HR is basically filing to me, right? We’re making a declaration to the company, agreeing not to sue the company. You’re essentially agreeing that you will not sue me over me, and the rest of the partners will be made aware. That’s about the only official recourse there is, but if that’s what you want to do, that’s what we’ll do.”

She didn’t know why she’d asked the question, didn’t know what answer she had gone poking for, but that hadn’t been it. Filing a declaration with HR would make things official, official in the eyes of their coworkers, official together. And then what? The insidious little voice in her head asked. Caught. You’re not going to smell like prey very long, rabbit, not unless you keep running. He’s going to get bored. He’s going to find someone new to chase, something more exciting than what he has waiting at home.

They spent every moon together, the smell of him sending her heat into overdrive until he calmed the fire in her blood. She joined his family for brunch, had met Owen’s equally reserved girlfriend and Trapp’s human schoolteacher, had laughed with his mother, and parlayed with his father.

When she’d told him that night about her cousin's upcoming wedding, a cousin with whom she'd always been competitive, she was shocked when he’d agreed before she fully had the question out.

"Of course," he'd said seriously, leaning forward across the table, his dark brows drawn together, "family is important." He’d somehow managed to convince her family that she was the most brilliant legal mind in the city, had impressed her relatives and made her mother blush like a teenager, made her sparkle at his side until her mother had asked where she’d been hiding him and why on earth hadn’t she sealed the deal yet.

She attempted to take care of him, as much as he would let her when an aura hit without warning, and there was no place safer in the world than curled to his chest, wrapped in his arms.

She wasn’t quite sure how they’d gotten there, but it very nearly felt like a real, stable relationship, a notion that worried her as much as it thrilled. She loved having Grayson Hemming chase her, didn’t ever want him to stop chasing her, and she didn’t want him to start thinking of their time together as an entrapment. She tilted her head up, pressing a kiss to the base of his neck.