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I don’t get to answer. Not before his fingers brush under the material between my legs.

And they come away slick.

He hisses—like he’s in pain.

“You’re soaked for me,” he growls. “Fuck.”

I want it. Want him.

But just as I arch into the pressure, just as I start to give myself over to the sensations—he stops.

A full inhale draws him back from the edge like someone pouring cold water on the moment.

Then he whispers, “No.”

It’s not rejection; it vibrates more like rage. Like he’s fighting himself.

“I’m not doing this here,” he says, breath ragged.

“But—”

“Not in a damn office.” His fangs brush my jaw, fever-drenched. “Not like this is just some secret, quick fuck.”

I blink, confused in the fog. “Is this because I was technically a virgin? I’ve never expected rose petals and candles.”

“I know.” His breath is trying to calm. It’s failing. The fight’s all over his body. “But I’m not touching you again unless it’s the way you deserve.”

The words are so tender I ache from the inside out.

“You deserve those rose petals and candles,” he breathes. “You deserve everything soft. Everything slow. Not just a hungry man behind a locked door.”

I laugh—because what do you say to something like that?

Malachi takes my face between his hands and for the first time since the curtain dropped on tonight’s show, I feel steady. Until he lowers his forehead to mine, whispering.

“I want you.”

He brushes his lips just beneath my ear.

“I need you.”

Lower. The prick of his fangs down my throat.

“It’s in my fangs when I speak. In the cracks of my control. I haven’t thought of anything else since the night you first kissed me.”

His voice turns quieter, fiercer, wrapped in something terrifyingly honest.

“Not just your body. All of you. Your laugh. Your hands. Your goddamn will. I think about you when I’m handling business. When I’m hunting in the dark. I think about what it would take to kiss you awake every morning and fall asleep with your scent on my sheets. I think about every man who looks at you too long, the wolf who thought to claim you, and how easy it would be to kill them.”

He returns his forehead to mine, inhaling slowly.

“So tell me now,” he says, barely audible. “Tell me if it’s only this. That it was just heat and adrenaline and rescue and lust. That you don’t want me the way I want you—and I’ll walk away.”

Silence.

My body burns, head to toe, but not with lust. With clarity.

I reach up, touch his jaw. It’s tight as steel—but trembling.