Edgy about his inability to control his touch-hunger when it came to her, he’d done his best to stay the hell away. But now she stood in front of him, and though her presence was nothing simple, nothing easy, he found he couldn’t simply let her pass. “Are you helping with the preparations?” Lara and Walker’s mating ceremony wasn’t for another week, but everyone was already gearing up for it.

“Yes—my trainees volunteered to do the setup.” She twisted what looked like a piece of twine around her index finger, offered him a guarded smile. “Walker and Lara’s ceremony coming so soon after Hawke and Sienna’s is going to be great for the pack.”

She was, he realized, trying to make conversation—distant conversation. And he knew this proud, strong woman wanted to erase the fragile tie created between them by those heartrending moments by the waterfall. Reining back the dominance within him, a part of his nature that fought to crash against her cool facade until it cracked, he glanced around. “Looks like you need a hand with the tables.”

An intent look, the scent of her a lingering caress. “Are you volunteering?”

“I’m yours to command.” Even though it would’ve been far more sensible to walk away.

A hint of true warmth in the luminous blue-violet. “Come on then.” Picking up a hand-drawn plan, she said, “Lara wants the picnic tables set up on the edges of the dance area, except for this section where the band’s planning to set up.”

“Got it.” About to conscript three of the bigger boys from her crew, he wrenched himself back just before he would’ve spoken. These kids were Adria’s. As a lieutenant, he had to support, not undermine, her authority. “Who can I have?”

An inscrutable look before she put two fingers to her mouth and whistled. “Israel, Charlie, Vincent. You’re with Riaz.”

After he’d given the boys a quick tutorial, Riaz’s team began to snap and screw together the tables and benches. Since except for the occasional event, most wolves preferred to sit or sprawl on the ground, the pack put up and broke down their outdoor furniture as needed. It ensured the forest remained as uncluttered and as untouched as possible, and with the separate components taking up very little room when stacked, storage space wasn’t an issue.

From what he’d glimpsed of the plan, Walker and Lara—or if Riaz had to guess, Lara—had decided on a night picnic, followed by a jazz dance. Soft glowing lights in all the shades of the rainbow would ring the area, the festivities kicking off soon after sunset. The early start made sense, since Walker had a young daughter and was basically Toby’s dad as well.

“It’ll be beautiful,” Adria said to him as he wiped his forearm across his perspiration-damp forehead a couple of hours later. “Suit who Walker and Lara are as a couple.”

Riaz had sent the boys off a few minutes earlier, when Adria dismissed the rest of her crew, and was now completing the final table with her holding the boards in place. “The check marks on the plan,” he said, twisting a rivet into place. “I couldn’t figure out what they were.”

Adria’s sudden laugh was husky and uninhibited. “Giant butterflies—Marlee’s contribution to the decorations. Sienna and Brenna have been conscripted into the task force.”

Man and wolf both chuckled. “Walker Lauren is not exactly the butterfly type.” The lone wolf in Riaz had recognized the other man as dangerous from the first.

“He’s a good dad.” Adria consulted the plan, made him move the table a few feet to the left. “That’s it. Thanks.”

Glancing up at the orange glow of the early evening sky, he said, “I might jog down to the stream, take a dip.” He needed to chill the embers in his gut, a dark, hot flame.

Adria frowned. “I didn’t know there was one nearby.”

“It’s about a ten-minute jog.” He described the sector, but the lines between her eyebrows didn’t disappear. “Come with me,” he said, clenching his abdomen against the continuing impact of her presence. “It won’t take long.”

Her reawakened wariness betrayed itself in the finest flicker of tension across her lashes, but Adria was a SnowDancer soldier. She gave a small nod. “Let’s pack up everything here first.”

That done, Riaz led her into the trees and toward the secluded area where the hidden stream widened into a cold, clear pool half hidden by the gnarled roots of two ancient trees before snaking away and underground again. Though his wolf knew Adria wasn’t his mate and the craving confused it, it clawed at him, wanting to lick up the taste of her. As a result, his jaw was a painful line by the time they reached their destination.

“No wonder I missed it,” Adria said, stepping in front of him and to the water’s edge. “It’s literally tucked between…”

He didn’t hear the rest of what she said, his eyes locked on the bare skin of her nape, her braid having slid over her shoulder. His hand curved around that nape before he was aware of moving. She wrenched away, her eyes slamming into him, bright cobalt touched with purple. For an instant, he froze, but then his wolf roared to the surface and he knew he’d been fooling himself about his ability to resist her.

THE electric charge in those eyes gone a vivid wolf gold raised every hair on Adria’s body. “No.” Not even if the rough heat of contact had rocked a lightning bolt through her. “I told myself I’d never again invite you into my bed and I meant it.”

Riaz flinched. “I’m doing the inviting.”

Bruised pride made her want to repudiate him as he’d repudiated her, but if being with Martin had taught her one thing, it was that her pride could be a terrible weakness. “You’ll just hate me for it.” And she’d had enough of a man’s hatred.

Shuddering, Riaz stalked forward to cup her cheeks in his hands. Startled at the tender hold, she didn’t jerk away when he bent to press his forehead to her own. “No.” A hot breath on her lips, his hands warm and callused on her face. “It’s on me.” Raw, his soul stripped bare. “I can’t carry on as I have been doing.”

“So I’m the bitter pill?” Even as she said that, part of her resonated with the tumult of need and pain tearing him apart.

“Adria—”

“No.” A finger pressed to the firm curves of his lips. “You’re right. You need to make a clean break … and so do I.” She gave him that piece of herself so this wounded wolf would know he wasn’t the only one going into this with the most painful of motivations. It wasn’t simply about the sex any longer, wasn’t simply about assuaging the skin hunger that haunted them both. It was about saying good-bye to a dream that had never had a chance. “But,” she whispered, forcing herself to hold the potent dominance of a gaze that was pure wolf, “you have to be sure.”

“I am.” No hesitation, even if the words were jagged as broken stone. “There’s nothing for me in the past.”

Yes, she thought, the past was forever gone, for both of them. “All right.”

His eyes glowed wild and beautiful in her vision as he dipped his head, stole her breath. She let her lids flutter shut, knowing that regardless of what happened after this, whether they remained lovers or walked away, one thing she would never, ever be able to change—that she was the first woman to lead him into betrayal.

A dull ache, an accepted pain.

Then her wolf came to life inside her body, and the thought fractured under a chaos of sensation. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she met the fever of his kiss, her bones molten with passion. Yet … there was a hesitancy to them that hadn’t been present before, and Adria wondered if their time had passed. A twisting in her chest. A hurt that was deeper. More dangerous. But when she made as if to pull back, the growl that rumbled out of Riaz’s throat was a primal thing.

His hand closed over her breast, his mouth sucking on the pulse in her neck almost before she processed the fact he’d taken her to the grass, the earth still holding the sun’s warmth. Any thought of retreating fragmented, the hunger inside her a wild craving. Clawing at his T-shirt, she heard something tear. He snarled against her, thrusting one hand under her own tee to push up her bra and spread his fingers over the bare flesh of her breast, cupping and shaping.

“Oh God!” Arching into the firm, confident touch, she tore at his T-shirt until it was in pieces around them, his big, muscled body rising over her own, his mouth busy on her lips, her jaw, her neck.

His skin was a shade of burnished brown, warm and beautiful, her pleasure at touching him—at last—almost painful. When he shoved up her T-shirt and lowered his head to her breast, her womb clenched in anticipation. His breath on her skin … the hot suction of his mouth. Twisting wildly, she fisted her hand in his hair, attempting to pull him off. The pleasure, oh God, the vicious pleasure was too much, her body too sensitive.

He used his teeth.

Crying out, she was bewildered at the sudden cold on her damp flesh. “What—” An instant later, he was unzipping her jeans, pulling them off, along with her boots. She felt something rip, knew her panties were gone. When he unzipped and moved between her thighs, she spread them against the heavy intrusion, ready until her skin ached.

A single hard thrust and he was seated deep inside her, the thickness of him a pulsing brand.

She froze for a minute, her body stunned at the almost violent possession. Long unused muscles ached, but below all that was need. Such naked, raw need. Rising toward him, she met eyes glowing against the dusk. She wasn’t the least surprised by the warning growl, or by the hand he fisted in her hair to arch her neck. The bite along the sensitive slope where her neck flowed into her shoulder was hard enough to sting, hard enough to push her over.

Even as she came with a scream, he pounded into her with such wild fury, the feel of him reverberated through her very bones. A brutal word in a masculine voice so harsh, it was almost unrecognizable. Her internal muscles spasming in erotic response. His hand clenching on her breast. The primal heat of him spilling into her.