Page 77 of Bad Wolf's Nanny

“I’mnot!” she shouted. “You think you’re terrifying, but you’re just…just amanwho doesn’t know how to deal with feelings, so he tries to control everything instead.”

He froze.

She was breathing hard. He could see the tears building again, but she refused to let them fall.

And he…didn’t know how to step back.

Didn’t know how to tell her that his fear wasn’t for himself. That he couldn’t breathe at the thought of something happening to her.

He stepped impossibly closer, pinning her to the wall, the warmth of her soft curves against his hard muscles reassuring that wild part of him that she washereandsafeandnothingcould touch her so long as her body was beneath his.

“I don’t want to control you,” he said roughly, “I just want you safe. I want to know I’ll come back from patrol and you’ll still be here. That no one’s taken you from me.”

She stared at him, stunned.

“That’s all,” he said, more quietly now, “that’sall. But I don’t know how to protect you without acting like this. Without…feelinglike this.”

And that was the truth. Ugly and raw.

He didn’t know how to be soft.

Not when it came to her.

Not when his entire soul was screamingmine.

Chapter 17 - Lola

Lola couldn’t breathe.

Dane had her pinned.

Not roughly. Not with force. But with a slow, consuming inevitability that pressed his body into hers, his hands braced against the wall on either side of her head, their chests crushed together. She could feel the heat rolling off him, the wild energy beneath his skin, caging her in like she was prey. Her spine pressed hard into the wall, her breath caught between panic, fury, and something much more dangerous.

Lust.

It burned low in her belly, treacherous. She hated that her pulse fluttered like this. Hated that the nearness of him, the sharp scent of pine and storm clinging to his skin, made her knees feel unsteady.

Dane swallowed, reason ebbing back away as wildness reclaimed his eyes. His teeth bared, and she felt the insistent pull of submission deep in her gut at the overwhelming scent of him.

“You’re not leaving this house,” Dane growled, voice dark velvet, threaded with steel, “not until I know it’s safe out there.”

Lola shoved at his chest. He didn’t move.

“Get off me.”

“Not until you hear me.”

She tilted her chin, glaring up at him. “Oh, I’m listening. To you, acting like a caveman.”

“A caveman who just caught a rogue alpha’s scent too close to our border. A caveman who knows how easy it would be for someone like that to find you.” His voice dropped even lower,almost a snarl, “And you think I’m going to just let you walk into that danger? When you’re carrying my child?”

There it was again.

That word. Thatclaim.

Her stomach twisted with a thousand emotions at once: fear, want, rage, need.

“I’m not a piece of glass, Dane,” she hissed, “I don’t need a damn curfew or bodyguards or a patrol of overbearing shifters sniffing around me every time I leave the apartment.”