She smiled at that. He didn't.
"And if I am?"
"There you go," she said, and nodded sagely. Light, airy. Enchanted, despite herself. "I can't possibly go off into the night with you now, can I?"
But it was terrifying how much she wanted to go off with him, wherever he'd take her, and instead of reacting to that as she should, she couldn't stop smiling at him. As if she already knew him, this strange man dressed all in black, his blue eyes the only spot of color on the cold pavement as he stared at her as if she'd stunned him somehow.
"My name is Nikolai," he said, and she had the oddest impression he hadn't meant to speak at all. He shifted, then reached over and traced her lips with his thumb, his expression so fierce, so intent, it made her feel hollowed out inside, everything scraped away except that wild, wondrous heat he stirred in her. "Text someone my name and address. Have them ring every fifteen minutes if you like. Send the police. Whatever you want."
"All those safeguards are very thoughtful," she pointed out, but her eyes felt too wide and her voice sounded insubstantial. Wispy. "Though not exactly wolfish, it has to be said."
His mouth moved into his understated version of a smile
"I want you." His eyes were on fire. Every inch of him that wolf. "What will it take?"
She swayed back into him as if they were magnets and she'd simply succumbed to the pull. And then she had no choice but to put her hand to his abdomen, to feel all that blasting heat right there beneath her palm.
Even that didn't scare her the way it should.
"What big teeth you have," she whispered, too on edge to laugh, too filled with that pulsing ache inside of her to smile.
"The biting part comes later." His eyes gleamed again, with the kind of sheer male confidence that made it difficult to breathe. Alicia stopped trying. "If you ask nicely."
He picked up her hand and lifted it to his mouth, tracing a dark heat over the back of it. He didn't look away.
"If you're sure," she said piously, trying desperately to pretend she wasn't shaking, and that he couldn't feel it. That he didn't know exactly what he was doing to her when she could see full well that he did. "I was promised a wolf, not a dog."
"I eat dogs for breakfast."
She laughed then. "That's not particularly comforting."
"I can't be what I'm not, solnyshka." He turned her hand over, then kissed her palm in a way that made her hiss in a sharp breath. His eyes were smiling again, so bright and blue. "But I'm very good at what I am."
And she'd been lost since she'd set eyes on him, hadn't she? What use was there in pretending otherwise? She wasn't drunk. It wasn't like that terrible night, because she knew what she was doing. Didn't she?
"Note to self," Alicia managed to say, breathless and dizzy and unable to remember why she'd tried to stop this in the first place, when surrendering to it-to him-felt so much like triumph. Like fate. "Never eat breakfast with a wolf. The sausages are likely the family dog."
He shrugged. "Not your family dog," he said with that fierce mouth of his, though she was sure his blue eyes laughed. "If that helps."
And this time, when she smiled at him, the negotiation was over.
The address he gave her in his clipped, direct way was in an extraordinarily posh part of town Alicia could hardly afford to visit, much less live in. She dutifully texted it to Rosie, hoping that her friend was far too busy to check it until morning. And then she tucked her phone away and forgot about Rosie altogether.
Because he still moved like magic, tucking her against him again as if there was a crowd he needed to part when there was only the late-night street and what surged between them like heat lightning. As if he liked the way she fitted there as much as she did. And her heart began to pound all over again, excitement and anticipation and a certain astonishment at her own behavior pouring through her with every hard thump.
At the corner, he lifted his free hand almost languidly toward the empty street, and for a second Alicia truly believed that he was so powerful that taxis simply materialized before him at his whim-until a nearby engine turned over and a powerful black SUV slid out of the shadows and pulled to a stop right there before them.
More magic, when she was enchanted already.
Nikolai, she whispered to herself as she climbed inside the SUV, as if the name was a song. Or a spell. His name is Nikolai.
He swung in behind her on the soft leather backseat, exchanged a few words in curt Russian with the driver and then pressed a button that raised a privacy shield, secluding them. Then he settled back against the seat, near her but not touching her, stretching out his long, lean body and making the spacious vehicle seem tight. Close.
And then he simply looked at her.
As if he was trying to puzzle her out. Or giving her one last chance to bolt.
But Alicia knew she wasn't going to do that.
"More talk of dogs?" he asked mildly, yet all she heard was the hunger beneath. She could see it in his eyes, his face. She could feel the echo of it in her, new and huge and almost more than she could bear. "More clever little character assessments couched as potential objections?"
"I got in your car," she pointed out, hardly recognizing her own voice. The thick heat in it. "I think I'm done."
He smiled. She was sure of it, though his mouth didn't move. But she could see the stamp of satisfaction on his hard face, the flare of a deep male approval.
"Not yet, solnyshka," he murmured, his voice a low rasp. "Not quite yet."
And she melted. It was a shivery thing, hot and desperate, like she couldn't quite catch her breath against the heat of it.
"Come here," he said.
They were cocooned in the darkness, light spilling here and there as the car sped through the city, and still his blue gaze was brilliant. Compelling. And so knowing-so certain of himself, of her, of what was about to happen-it made her blood run hot in her veins.
Alicia didn't move fast enough and he made a low noise. A growl-like the wolf he so resembled. The rough sound made her shake apart and then melt down into nothing but need, alive with that crazy heat she couldn't seem to control any longer.
He simply picked her up and pulled her into his lap, his mouth finding hers and claiming her all over again with an impatience that delighted her. She met him with the same urgency. His hands marveled down the length of her back, explored the shape of her hips, and Alicia's mind blanked out into a red-hot burst of that consuming, impossible fire. Into pure and simple need.
It had been so long. So long, and yet her body knew exactly what to do, thrilling to the taste of him, the feel of his hard, capable hands first over and then underneath her bright red shirt. His hands on her stomach, her waist, her breasts. So perfect she wanted to die. And not nearly enough.
He leaned back to peel off his jacket and the tight black T-shirt beneath, and her eyes glazed over at the sight of all of that raw male beauty. She pressed herself against the hard planes of his perfect chest, tracing the large, colorful tattoos that stretched over his skin with trembling fingers, with her lips and her tongue, tasting art etched across art.
Intense. Hot. Intoxicating.
And that scent of his-of the darkest winter, smoke and ice-surrounded her. Licked into her. Claimed her as surely as he did.
One moment she was fully clothed, the next her shirt and the bra beneath it were swept away, while his hard mouth took hers again and again until she thought she might die if he stopped. Then he did stop, and she moaned out her distress, her desperation. That needy ache so deep in the core of her. But he only laughed softly, before he fastened his hot mouth to the tight peak of one breast and sucked on it, not quite gently, until she thought she really had died.