The Alpha's Fine Print novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Full Moon

The moon came up over the larches, and thirty-one wolves ran under it.

I watched from the upstairs window.

I had been told not to follow, and I had no wish to.

Wolves poured down the north pasture, gray and tan and black and one small silver streak that could only be Bess.

At the head of them ran a long chestnut wolf, bigger than the rest, with gold eyes.

He ran.

At two in the morning, the bedroom door opened, and he came in human.

He was naked and filthy with dust, and his chest heaved.

His skin burned.

I could feel the heat of him from across the room.

"I'm sorry," he said hoarsely. "It's worse on the full. I couldn't stay out there. I could only think about you."

"Come here."

He crossed the floor in two strides and stopped in front of me.

His hands shook at his sides.

His pupils were huge in the gold, and the cords in his neck stood out.

"Tell me no," he said. "Tell me no, Tilda, or I'll take everything. I can feel it. I don't trust myself."

"I trust you."

"You shouldn't."

"I trust you to stop when I say," I said. "That's all I need."

I picked up the red silk scarf from the dresser.

It was long and soft, a gift from Hobart at my law school graduation, and I had worn it every day of the interview season.

"Hold out your hands," I said. "Please."

He stared at the scarf.

Then, slowly, he put his wrists together in front of him.

I wound the silk around them, twice, and knotted it, and led him by the knot to the old iron bed.

"Lie down. Arms over your head."

He lay back on the white sheets, the muscles of his stomach jumping.

I looped the scarf around an iron rail.

His arms stretched over his head, taut, and the long line of his body arched toward me.

"This isn't a leash," I said. "You can break it if you want."

"I know."

"Do you want to?"

"God, yes."

"Don't."

He drew a shuddering breath.

"No," I said, to the whole of him. "You don't move. You don't come. Not until I say."

The word fell into his body like a dropped stone.

I watched it land.

His hips pressed into the mattress, and his hands closed into fists on the scarf, and every inch of him went rigid and quivered.

His cock stood hard and dark against his stomach, flushed to the tip.

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