So it was as well that her wolf danced away without warning, darkly conscious that the man she petted with such proprietary hands could overpower her in a heartbeat. How could she think of being naked in his arms when she couldn't guarantee her submission would be a conscious, voluntary response, rather than being born of primitive instinct?
"I'd look into your eyes the entire time."
What if all he saw was a submissive looking back at him, whimpering and quiescent, Grace's human personality overwhelmed into obedience?
Fear taking an icy hold on her heart, she stepped away. "Put on your T-shirt." So she could concentrate, could think.
Cooper growled.
Jumping, she lowered her head.
"Please."
"Damn it, Grace." He wrenched on the tee, impatient and angry. "I wasn't growling because you gave me an order.
I was growling because I wasn't done playing with you."
For some reason, that snarling response made her relax, chance a peek up. "Does sexual frustration always make you so bad tempered?"
Another growl that had her wolf clawing at her to shut up.
"Go on," he said in a low tone that was a dare. "Keep on poking the hungry wolf, see how naked it gets you." Heat burned her cheeks, but she wasn't going to allow him to do this to her again. "Cooper, I'm not an idiot. I know something was bothering you when you knocked on the door."
He made a sound of teeth-gritting aggravation. "I was angry you took off without telling me, okay? Didn't think you'd like it if I pointed it out." It made sense...yet what she'd glimpsed had been far more violent an emotion, somehow old. Akin to the hurt she'd seen in his eyes at the site of the slip. "You don't have to pretend around me," she said, uncomfortable with shoving at his defenses but frustrated enough by his refusal to even acknowledge he was in pain that she had to make the attempt.
"Grace, no male wants to further piss off an already pissed-off woman whom he has every intention of talking into bed as fast as possible." He ran his hands over his scalp. "Goddamnit, now I'm yelling."
"So? I don't want you to turn down the volume of your personality or your emotions," she said, dismayed at the idea. "That's not healthy on any level for you." It would drive him slowly insane.
"If that's what you're having to do when we're together" - the thought hurt, so much - "you know it won't work."
His growl raised every hair on her body. "It damn well will work." The statement of a man used to getting what he wanted.
Stubborn, infuriating male.
She went to open her mouth to argue, but she'd pushed her wolf's limits long enough. It clawed to the surface, wrenching the reins from her hands, and doing what it deemed necessary in order to pacify an angry dominant.
A submissive whimper left her throat.
Cooper froze.
Declaration of Courtship Chapter 8
GRACE COLLAPSED TO her knees as the door closed behind Cooper, tremors quaking her frame.
He'd cupped her cheek, rubbed his own against her temple with an affection that soothed some of her wolf's panic, before saying, "Good night, Grace," and leaving.
It had happened exactly as she'd feared, her nature unable to stand the sheer, unleashed force of Cooper's dominance. In her lupine form, she'd have tucked her tail between her legs, maybe even rolled over onto her back to expose the vulnerable flesh of her belly.
Sobs escaped her mouth, filled her chest until she could hardly breathe.
She was simply not built to handle the hot-blooded passions and brutal depth of emotion of a man of Cooper's strength. Nothing could change the very makeup of her being. What if the next time it happened, they were in bed?
What if Cooper was inside her?
Then he'll stop.
The answer came from the tiny part of her that wasn't a complete mess. And it was true. Cooper would always stop - as he'd done today. But that didn't mean she had any right to put him in that position, any right to demand he muzzle the raw beauty of his sexuality, his personality. What she'd said, it was an absolute, unavoidable truth - for him to strangle his instincts would be a horribly damaging act.
It would kill him and destroy her.
"I don't want to let him go."
The whispered confession was a slap.
If she couldn't bear to set him free, couldn't bear to imagine another woman's hands on his skin, another woman's lips on his own, then she had to find a way to deal. But how?
It was as she was washing her tear-ravaged face that she realized she had to talk to someone who'd been through this.
Except no one had. Yes, she knew - was friends with - any number of submissives who'd mated with or lived in permanent loving relationships with dominants.
Not one of those relationships, however, mirrored the extreme power gulf that separated her and Cooper.
"There must be someone." Determined to discover an answer, she was on her second cup of coffee when she remembered the woman who'd been her nursery school teacher while Grace lived in the Sierra Nevada den as a child. Twelve when her family shifted dens, she well remembered the lovely woman with the stunning indigo eyes who'd always had a hug and a word of praise for her long after she'd left the nursery.
Tarah was a submissive not much stronger than Grace. Her mate, Abel, by contrast, was a very strong dominant, a soldier who held a senior position in the pack. One of their daughters was a lieutenant, the other a submissive close to Grace in the hierarchy. If anyone would understand the forces tearing Grace apart, it was Tarah.
Not giving herself time to change her mind, she looked up Tarah's number in the internal pack directory and input the call, realizing too late that it was past ten at night.
Abel was the one who answered.
"Almost threw me," he said after a short pause, "but I never forget one of Tarah's kids. How are you, Grace darling?" The gentleness of the question told her he'd sensed her distress. "Good." She met the deep gray of his eyes for the barest second. "I know it's late. I'm sorry. I wanted to talk to Tarah and didn't think about the time."
"She's up. Hold on."
Tarah took a seat in front of the comm a second later, her eyes the same vivid hue Grace remembered from childhood, her voice brimming with joyful welcome. "It's so good to see you, Grace."
They chitchatted for a few minutes before Tarah turned those perceptive eyes off-screen. "Darling, give us a few minutes, will you? Girl talk."
Abel snorted. "If I know you, it'll be more like an hour." Coming into view, he tipped up Tarah's head to claim a kiss, then glanced at Grace.
"You make sure you drop by if you're ever in the area."
"Now," Tarah said once her mate was gone, her face holding a kindness that was innate, "what's the matter?" Grace forced herself to describe what had happened, found herself on the brink of tears again by the end. "How can I be with him if I can't trust my wolf not to regress to instinctive behavior?
As if I don't know him, don't have faith in him?" His lover's trust was integral to a dominant's sense of self. Steal that from Cooper and she might as well stab him in the heart.
Tarah's expression was sympathetic. "It'll take work, I won't lie about that. But it is doable, and when it works....Abel is my rock and my heartbeat."
The haunting depth of love in that statement made Grace yearn. "Is there anything you can tell me that might help?"
"Compromise is the magic word, just as it is in most relationships." A wry smile crept over her face. "Though I should warn you, a dominant's idea of compromise is sometimes very 'flexible.'"
Grace's laugh was a watery sound.
"I can imagine." Taking a shaky breath to settle herself, she said, "What worries me most is the level of control he has to keep over himself. It's constant. Does - " She halted, suddenly conscious of how intimate a question she was about to ask.
Tarah tapped the comm screen as if tapping the nose of a recalcitrant pup.
"Ask what you need to - and to answer that last question, Abel doesn't hold back. He doesn't need to, because my wolf knows he never expects submission from me, even when I'm at my most defenseless." A penetrating gaze. "You can't rush the development of that trust, because it's not a conscious choice. It comes from the animal within - for the wolf, learning to judge a predator is a survival mechanism."
Tarah's words made too much sense. "Thank you for being so honest."
"You're welcome, sweetheart." Her long-ago teacher gave her a mischievous smile. "Tease him, Grace, play with him, give him the chase he needs, and take the time you need.
There's something to be said for anticipation."
Later, considering everything Tarah had said, Grace stripped and shifted. It was agony and it was ecstasy, the shift separating her into a million particles of light and color before coalescing into the wolf that was her other half. She shook herself to settle her new skin, then hopped onto the bed and allowed the animal to rise to the surface of her mind, felt it sigh at the freedom, sigh, too, at the lingering scent of dark amber and wild earth.
Ours.
Yes, agreed the human part of her, he's ours.
COOPER decided he must hate himself as he walked into his bedroom at just past one a.m., after attempting to wear himself out in the gym. He knew Grace couldn't help her reaction - and that had been fine until the dreams. He'd had the strength to be patient, had actually been having an intoxicating kind of fun coaxing her to him kiss by kiss. Now, however, he had a hell of a time maintaining his hold on his more primitive emotions.
Showering under a cold spray in an effort to control his rebellious body, he shook himself off wolf fashion afterward and pulled on some sweatpants. Then he slumped on his back in bed. Sleep, of course, was a vain hope with his cock in a vise, and it wasn't as if he'd wake well rested.