“Hey, wait a second!”

Renny had bitten her tongue through the entire phone conversation, but now she wanted answers. How was it possible that she had collapsed onto the property of a man who knew her stalker? Talk about “of all the gin joints.” The world couldn’t possibly be that small, could it?

Mick ignored her, and she frowned. She scrambled from the SUV, reached out, and grabbed his arm before he could walk away. “Mick, wait—”

She didn’t get out another word.

The moment her hand touched his skin, he went off like a nuclear warhead. At least, she felt as if she’d been hit by one. The wolf reversed their grips, seizing her by the wrist she’d held out to him and jerking her toward him. She crashed into his body and felt the impact like his muscles had turned to concrete. He was hard all over.

All over.

His mouth slammed down on hers, all heat and hunger and barely controlled fury. She wasn’t entirely sure what he was mad at, whether it was she or Geoffrey who had earned his wrath, but when the taste of him sank into her, she no longer cared.

Coffee and pine and thick, powerful musk combined on her tongue. The flavor was so rich, it made her head spin. Seriously. If he hadn’t had her wrapped up against him by then, she would have toppled over. Her legs went weak and threatened to buckle, and still he kissed her like he wanted to devour her whole.

For the first few seconds, shock kept her frozen. She couldn’t do anything but let him kiss her. Not that she suffered from it, of course. In the back of her mind, her wolf had thrown back its head, howled for joy, and promptly thrown itself over to wriggle around on its back like a golden retriever begging for belly rubs. Their mate was kissing them!

Then the initial surprise wore off, and Renny did the only thing she possibly could. She grabbed on and kissed him back with every ounce of passion in her soul. If this turned out to be a momentary aberration, and he went back to trying to ignore her existence the way he had the night before, she intended to enjoy every single toe-curling second of it while it lasted.

Judging by the way her belly clenched, her insides melted, and her pussy dampened, her body was totally on board. As far as it was concerned, she could just lie down on the asphalt and let her mate have her. Road rash and passing vehicles be damned. This was the kiss she’d been waiting for all her life.

If any last thread of doubt had existed in her about whether Mick was really her mate, the kiss burned it up like the fuse on a stick of dynamite. He feasted on her mouth, his tongue mating with hers like he wanted to taste every inch of her from the inside out. The feeling was mutual. She felt herself drowning in the essence of him, and her body began to ache with the need to feel him inside her, above her, behind her, touching her everywhere, in every way, all at once.

Fuck reality. She would defy the laws of physics if she had to, but Renny needed him. Now.

And then he yanked himself away from her as violently as he’d pulled her to him. One minute, she was drowning in pleasure, and the next she was just drowning. Or at least, that’s what it felt like, because at some point during that kiss, she had forgotten how to breathe.

She stood there, mouth open, lungs straining, and Mick just clenched his jaw and turned away. “Let’s go.”

Go?

A voice inside Renny’s head laughed a little. No, scratch that. It giggled a bit hysterically. She couldn’t feel her arms or legs, couldn’t get oxygen to her brain, and he wanted her to master the art of independent locomotion? Was he high?

He was not, she realized, as sanity slowly began to leak back into her body. Her lungs expanded in a gasp, and she staggered for a second before she could catch herself. She’d been the one who’d gotten high, and it turned out that the alpha wolf was her drug of choice.