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Dakota shut the door behind him and came over to look across my desk at the open manilla folder with the first sheet of the contract still on top. I hadn’t even delved into it.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Uh huh.” I shut the folder, less because I didn’t want him seeing it than that I needed something to do with my hands other than, well, everything I wanted to do to him.

Even still, I caught his grimace from the corner of my eye. “The kicked puppy thing?—”

“I’m not.”

Dakota’s lips twisted, the left corner lifting wryly. He went on, completely ignoring my feeble protest. “Is that why you’re hiding out in here?”

I sighed, slumping in the world’s most ergonomic office chair enough that the lumbar support dug into the middle of my back. “I’m nothiding.”

He raised his eyebrows high.

“Okay, I’m kind of hiding.” I sighed, pushing my chair away from my desk so I could look up at him easier. “I just don’t know what to do. I don’t want to force myself on you.”

“So your solution is to avoid me forever?”

“No!” I sat up again, couldn’t stay still. “You don’t have to keep your distance, but I don’t want to get in your way while you’re figuring this all out. And you, ah, mightwantto keep your distance. You should have that option.”

“I don’t want to keep my distance.” He came around my desk, and I turned my chair to face him. Then, his knee was sliding up the leather beside me, and I didn’t stop him. I was too weak to, when he was there and warm and looking at me like that.

“You don’t know that.” There was so much he didn’t know yet.

Still, Dakota rolled his eyes, and his other leg slipped up. He lowered himself until he was sitting in my lap, and my hands fell instinctively to his hips. I tugged him closer, and he rolled his body, and this—this was dangerous.

“I do,” he said, dragging his hand through my hair before he made a fist. He tugged my head back and kissed me clumsily. Even when he pulled away, I left my eyes shut and just enjoyed the scent of him, the feel of having him so close again.

This was a mess. I wasn’t this quick to fall for anyone, but something about him drew me in, made it impossible to push him back.

“I do,” he repeated, nuzzling the bridge of his nose along my jawline in a move that was way too close to scent marking for my wolfish brain to handle. “Prudence said it might help if I—well, sex, in the aftermath of Awakening, can, uh, stabilize things a little. And I thought you might want to help me.”

My jaw flexed as I swallowed. “You want me to help you?”

I opened my eyes—needed to gauge the truth of his words for myself.

There was nothing but sweetness in his smile. “Yeah. That okay?”

The wolf in my head was practically howling. Dakota wanted me. Not only that, but he’d asked me to help him. Pride swelled in my chest and before I knew what I was doing, I grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him in.

I claimed his lips, parting them with my tongue, and his moan sounded in his chest and resonated in mine and my head swam with need for him and?—

Fuck.

“Proposition,” I rasped against his lips.

“What?”

“Come home with me. I want to fuck you again, feel you from the inside. Make it good.”

He bit his lip, already nodding.

“I’ll buy you pizza,” I promised.

Dakota snorted. “You don’t have to bribe me.”

I shook my head. “No, but let me provide. Alphas like that kind of thing, and Prudence said you’d need to keep your energy up while you adjust to your new magic.”