Chapter Five

Maggie rang when Della was getting out of the shower the next morning. For the briefest of moments, she thought it might be Leo calling, though he had no reason to call her. They'd exchanged "home safe" messages the night before after she'd managed to walk in through her front door, legs still feeling slightly shaky from the strength of the orgasm he'd given her. Her cheeks still heated when she thought about it—mostly from the memory of the location where she'd allowed him to put his hands up her dress—but she somehow knew she could no more have kept his hands off her than she could have stopped herself from breathing. Maybe next time I can keep my head in the game enough to insist on being somewhere private, she thought with chagrin as she reached for the phone, blood already pounding in her veins at the promise of a next time.

A rush of disappointment flowed through her for just a moment when she saw Maggie's name on the screen, then a matching pulse of guilt at the response.

"Morning, early riser," she greeted her friend.

"Overnight shift," Mags explained, absurdly chipper for such an early hour, especially after a full "day" of work. "You're lucky I didn't ring during my break last night; I was so keen to hear how the date went. But I thought maybe you might still be busy." She emphasized the last word with a laugh at the double entendre. "So, don't hold out on me. How did it go?"

"It was… good," Della said, thinking of the hours they'd spent talking as she tried to ignore her body's response to nothing more than his presence, his voice, his shifting expressions. Sitting there with your wet little pussy soaking through your panties. Blood rushed to her face again.

"You are not trying to leave me with nothing more than 'it was good', Delphinia Greenbranch," Maggie protested. "I haven't been on a date in months. Della, please. Details."

Della tried and failed not to laugh. "Okay, so we went to dinner at Maison—"

"At Maison?" Mags interrupted. "You're kidding me. Your werewolf is one fancy guy. How'd he manage to pull a table there at such short notice?"

"One of the members of his pack is a chef there," Della explained.

"Perks of being the Beta of one of the biggest packs in Mystic City, I guess," Mags joked, and Della tried not to think about Leo's discomfort with having used his influence in such a way. Tried not to relive the ups and downs of their conversation, the way she'd been so absorbed in him that she hardly even noticed her food.

"Yeah, so we went to dinner. We talked a lot." She wrinkled her nose at the realization that they'd never even come close to discussing the youth programs, which were ostensibly the reason for their meeting in the first place.

"And?" Mags demanded.

"He's a really interesting guy. Very… dedicated to his pack."

"You're really not helping me here, Della," the human complained.

"We kind of talked about being… together," Della said hesitantly.

"What?" Maggie screeched. "Okay, that is worthy of discussion. How did it go?"

"It was kind of intense," Della admitted. "He… he wants to give it a try. Maybe as much as I do. That was pretty flattering." It felt kind of egotistical to even say the words—that someone like Leo Tyler was attracted enough to her that he accepted her packed schedule and specific ground rules without question.

"Ooh, saucy," Mags said. "And?"

"And I had a little… just a little bit of a freak out about it. He's a very intense guy, and for a minute there the whole thing just reminded me of Dane, you know?" It was almost painful to let his name pass her lips. Almost scary, as though by saying it she might somehow summon him.

"I can see why," Mags said sympathetically. "Big, bad dude, desperate to be with you, and everyone knows werewolves are possessive motherfuckers. What happened?"

"I ran away to the bathroom, spent a few minutes calming myself down, and decided I want to give it a shot. I won't let him control me anymore, even if it's just in memory. That part of my life is behind me now." Her voice was steady, but her hands were still shaking as she wandered into the kitchen and set about making coffee.

"Oh, Della." This time Maggie's voice was rich with understanding. "That's really brave. I'm proud of you."

"Thanks, hon," Della said.

"So, what did you two decide? You're going to give it a shot?"

"I guess so," Della said. "We're going to keep it casual, and you know what my schedule's like, so we probably won't see each other all that often. Every week or two when I have a night off, but that doesn't seem to have put him off, which is a good thing."

"Damn right it's a good thing!" Mags crowed. "What about after dinner? The way you sound when you're talking about this guy, Della, plus the way you said he talks to you… did you drag him into the backseat of your car or something?"

Della made herself laugh, but she wasn't sure it sounded convincing. "Nothing like that. He walked me to my car, we kissed, and I came home."

"Seriously?" Maggie sounded absurdly disappointed, as if she was the one who hadn't been permitted to get her painfully attractive date off when he'd clearly been in a state of extreme arousal. "Well, how was it?"

"The kiss?"

"No, the drive home. Obviously, the kiss, Della."

Della laughed again, this time for real. "I don't even have words, Mags. I have honestly never experienced a kiss like that before. The back seat thing was seriously looking like a viable option, but he pulled back and told me to text him when I got home safe. Said we could do better than a carpal to go further." She heard herself sigh in a way that, in someone else, she might have described as besotted.

"Damn," Mags said vehemently. "Can I have one? Can you organize that for me, now you have a connection in the pack?"

Della laughed again. "I'll do my best. I don't know if you'd call it a 'connection in the pack'. I asked him if we could keep the whole situation quiet, for now at least, if we're going to give this thing between us a shot."

"What? Why? If I were you, I'd be shouting it from the rooftops. 'I have a sexy werewolf lover. Be jealous.'"

Della took a sip of coffee. "Maybe it's silly, but I just couldn't stop myself remembering how everyone looked at me… you know, after. Like I was broken. Like I was a victim. And I don't want to jinx it, but when this thing with Leo ends—obviously it's a different situation, but I don't want people's pity all over again. I don't want to be the girl who lost her 'sexy werewolf lover'. So, I think it's better to keep it quiet."

"I guess that makes sense," Maggie said slowly, cautiously. "I mean if that's what you want. I'd still be taking out an ad in the Mystic City Times, though."

Della snorted. Knowing Mags, she honestly might.

They talked a little more as Mags finished her trip home and Della got ready for work, then signed off with a promise to catch up soon. Between their two competing work schedules, they often went weeks without seeing each other in the flesh, but rarely more than a few days passed without at least a phone conversation between them. It was almost time for Della to renew Mags' protection spells, too—which the little human insisted she didn't really need—so they'd need to catch up for that soon. She made a mental note to schedule it the next time the two of them spoke.

When she walked into work, she half expected people to look at her differently, as though she might have 'I was given an orgasm through my underwear in a public carpark' emblazoned on her forehead. No one looked at her any differently than normal, though, and she made it to her desk without incident. She unpacked her things and sent off the grant application for review before settling into the usual rhythm of her work. She might sometimes get frustrated with it, but Della honestly loved what she did. The way almost every part of her job was directed towards helping people, making the lives of all those living in Mystic City—not just her own coven or even other witches and warlocks—better. She considered stopping for lunch, but there was enough work rolling across her desk and into her inbox that taking the break seemed like a waste of valuable time.

She barely noticed when someone stopped next to her desk until Petra, one of her closest colleagues and one of the only werewolves in the department, tapped her shoulder. "Della. Reception asked me to tell you that your lunch arrived. It's downstairs."

"What?" Della asked dumbly, her brain still trying to detach from the paperwork she'd been filling out. "I didn't order lunch."

"Well, Nathan in reception asked me to pass on that it's arrived." Petra shrugged.

Della pushed back from her desk. "I guess I'd better go see what's going on." So much for getting more work done by skipping the lunch break, she thought ruefully, thrusting an arm in between the elevator doors to stop them closing. She slipped into the almost-empty space without checking who was in there and glanced at the buttons to check that the one for the ground floor was already illuminated. Then she looked up and almost bit through her tongue in surprise.

Karl Waterford was standing on the other side of the elevator, his brutal stare fixed directly on her, like he was trying to burn through her with his glare. Though they were in the same coven, as well as working in the same building, Della had kept a firm distance from Karl since the Dane Incident—the man across from her had been her ex-boyfriend's closest friend in the coven and still, it appeared, was holding a solid grudge against her for her role in his downfall. How anyone, let alone a warlock, could be on the side of someone who'd done the things that Dane had been demonstrably proven to have done was beyond Della, but clearly Karl was capable of it.

"Nice to see you again," she ventured, wondering if this was the kind of rift you could heal with words. "It's been a while."

"Not long enough," Karl all but spat, and then the doors opened on the ground floor lobby, and he was immediately striding through them, putting space between Della and himself with the kind of speed usually seen in a competitive athletic setting.

Doing her best to shake off the unexpected encounter, Della rolled her shoulders and proceeded to the building's front desk. Nathan, the receptionist, shot her an appreciative smile followed by a quick skim of his eyes over her body that was probably meant to be subtle enough to go unnoticed. "Della Greenbranch," he greeted her enthusiastically. "Lunch delivery for you."

"There must have been some kind of mistake," Della said, taking the parcel he held out to her for lack of an alternative option. The folded note stuck to its surface flipped open and she ran her eye over it, thinking it might reveal the parcel's true owner. Instead, she read, Della–

It sounded like you might not have time for a lunch break today, so I thought I'd save you the trouble. From a no-name burger joint, as requested.

–LT

Her breath caught in her throat. All right, this was… this was dangerously sweet. He'd even remembered her line about the burger joint. In a daze, she thanked Nathan and proceeded back to the elevator. Once upstairs, she took the parcel to the staff room, which was mercifully only sparsely occupied, and sat down to open it.

It was, of course, a burger, and an enormous one at that. It smelled so good that her stomach, which hadn't even been hungry a moment earlier, growled loudly.

She pulled her phone out of her pocket and pressed the number he'd texted her from last night.

He picked up with a cool, "Leo Tyler."

"It's Della," she said, then added, "Della Greenbranch," in case he knew more than one person with the name.

His tone immediately softened. "Della, after last night, do you really think you have to introduce yourself with your surname when you call me?" There was a hint of a laugh in his tone, and her cheeks colored.

"I just got your, um, burger delivery," she said, trying not to let her embarrassment color her tone. "I was just ringing to say thank you. You were right, I was too busy to go out and get lunch today."

"I was sort of relying on you not having brought something from home," Leo admitted. "Have you eaten it yet?"

"Not yet. I just got it."

"All right, don't thank me yet, then. Have a bite. It's from a little burger place I know a couple of blocks from the edge of pack territory." He said the words easily, as though everyone measured geography that way. "The chef was a friend of my dad's back in the day, so I ate there a lot as a kid. I don't think it's changed a bit since then. Which is a good thing because you can't improve upon perfection."

Della had unwrapped the burger as he spoke and now took a big bite. And he was right—it was spectacular. The perfect mix of simplicity and subtle hints of spice. Juice dripped down her chin, and she lurched forwards to avoid it getting on her clothes.

"What was that noise?" Leo asked with a laugh from the other end of the line.

She had to finish chewing before she could answer. "Your burger attacked me," she said, laughing in return.

"Oh, I should have warned you—they're juicy."

"So, I have just discovered. You were right, though, it's delicious. Definitely better than anything I might have bought for lunch."

"I'm glad you like it. I didn't," he paused, "I didn't like the idea of you going without food. And we didn't exactly get to focus on what we were eating last night, so I kind of owed you a meal."

"You didn't owe me anything," Della said. "But it was very sweet of you, either way."

"So, your day's been as busy as you thought it would be?" Leo asked. She had the sudden thought that he was trying to extend their phone call. Why didn't he want her to hang up? It couldn't be for the same reason she wanted the call to continue—that she liked hearing his voice so much.

"Busier," Della admitted. "You could print an encyclopedia on the amount of paper that's crossed my desk this morning. What about you?"

"I had to mediate an argument between two families that originated, I kid you not, over who had the better vegetable garden. Helped fix a fence. Delivered a few edicts from James. The usual."

She hesitated. Should she engage with the edicts-from-James thing or was that overstepping the boundaries of their fledgling whatever-this-was? She settled for asking, "So who did have the best vegetable garden?"

Leo snorted a laugh. "Honestly, they were both pretty terrible. The argument was dead before it began. It had to be settled, though, so I mediated their fight."

"Their fight?" Della repeated in shock.

"It's how werewolves settle things," Leo said casually, as though refereeing a sanctioned brawl were no big deal. "From challenges for Alpha all the way down. We're fighters. Teeth and claws only. It was over before there was a chance for anyone to do any damage—I made sure of that. No one got properly hurt, just a few scratches. But there's no longer any bad blood between the families. They've worked out their angst, and we can all go on with our lives."

Never before, had the differences between them been presented to Della so sharply. Questions buzzed through her mind like flitting fireflies, but what came out her mouth was, "Teeth and claws?"

"Ah," Leo said, sounding like he was gathering himself to respond. "Well, you know how we can shift into wolves?"

"I was aware of that part of the whole werewolf thing, yes," Della said, careful to keep her tone light.

"We can also partially transform," Leo explained. "I'm sure you've noticed I can't seem to keep my eyes from changing when I'm around you. They're usually green, you know. At least around everyone else."

Della felt a buzz of satisfaction run through her at the reminder that she affected him as much as he did her but said nothing beyond a hum of encouragement.

"In times when a wolf is feeling something… intense, I guess you'd say, we can also grow fangs and claws. And if it gets really full-on, sometimes the young ones find themselves getting a bit hairy. They don't usually have the control to arrest their shift halfway, though, so it's not something you see all that often."

"Wow," Della said, a laugh in her voice. "I'm starting to think I should have done some more background study on werewolves before getting involved with one."

"We're not so complicated," Leo said. "I, for example, right now just want to know you're eating your lunch."

Della laughed. "Maybe not so complicated to you, but you've grown up with it."

"That's fair enough," Leo said. "Well, what about coven culture? I'm sure there are some things about witches that I'll find equally mystifying."

"Well, there are definitely no sanctioned fistfights," Della said, then caught herself. "Sorry. That came out sharper than I meant it to. It's just an… unfamiliar practice to me. Fighting at all is frowned upon within witch covens. When you have magic in play, as well as emotions running high, it becomes infinitely more dangerous to let those instinctive responses rule you."

"It's fine," Leo said. "You'll have to try harder than that to offend me."

"I'll work on it," Della laughed.

"So how do you solve disagreements within the coven if there's no fighting?" Leo asked, sounding genuinely interested.

"I mean, there are still fights," Della admitted, "they're just not legal. The ones that use magic, at least. The ones without are just frowned upon. But if you don't feel like brawling it out, you can take your disagreement to the Council of Witches, and if they can't come to a decision, it gets brought before the Elders."

"Kind of like courts of law," Leo noted.

"The Elders are pretty busy, so it takes a lot to get something brought up to them," Della said. "The Council gets a lot of low-grade stuff, though, and we have to rule on a ton of dumb arguments."

"Hang on. We?" Leo asked. "You're on the Council of Witches?"

"Hadn't I mentioned that?" Della asked, trying to scan her memory over their conversation last night. It was hard to even remember a lot of what they'd discussed because she had so frequently been distracted by Leo before her, his big hands, the curve of his lips, his eyes so focused on her.

"You talked about Council things. But I thought you meant the Youth Council at work."

"Yeah, I guess that could be kind of confusing," Della admitted. "But, yes, I'm on the Council of Witches as well. It's part of why I'm so busy. It's a bit like having a second job some days."

"How the hell do you have time to sleep?" Leo asked.

It might have sounded like he was joking, but something in his tone made him sound almost indignant on her behalf.

"Are you upset because I'm on the Council?" Della asked hesitantly.

"What? No. Of course not." He hesitated. "I just don't like the idea of you having to go without, in order to solve other people's problems. Especially if it's sleep you're missing out on."

"Why does that matter to you?" she asked, honestly curious.

"Della, unless it's me keeping you up late, I just don't like the idea of you missing sleep. I can't explain it." Quietly, as if to himself, he added, "I can't explain any of this."

Della tamped down on the thing in her chest that immediately tried to draw parallels to the control Dane had exerted over her sleep patterns in the past and focused on the other part of his comment. "And why exactly would you be keeping me up late, Mr Tyler?" she asked, keeping her voice innocent.

"Oh, that's where you want to take this?" Leo asked with a smile in his voice.

"I can't imagine what you're talking about," Della teased.

"I can make you come like a freight train without even taking off your panties, sweetheart," he reminded her. "Imagine what I could do if we were somewhere I could strip you bare. And if you think I'd be satisfied with just once, you're kidding yourself. I'll be keeping you up late because you'll be too busy screaming yourself hoarse to remember that time is passing."

"W-what about you?" Della managed to ask through a mouth that suddenly somehow felt both numb and hypersensitive, like she was craving Leo's lips on her own again.

"Not happy that I stopped you last night, are you?" He sounded strangely satisfied by the thought. "Don't worry, sweetheart, I'll let you take care of me too. I'm fucking obsessed with that mouth of yours. Watching you bite and lick your lips all through dinner last night had me so hard… you have no idea. The damn second we have the opportunity, I'll be putting you on your knees and working out every single ounce of this need between your pretty lips. And that's not even touching on what I'm going to do to you when I finally get your body under mine."

Della's breath left her in a rush. She glanced around and was relieved to see that she was the only one in the staff room. "What are you going to do?" she asked, barely able to believe she was doing this.

A hum of approval came from Leo's end of the phone call. "The longer I have to wait, the harder you're going to get it," his voice rumbled down the line. "I'm going to pin you down and show you exactly how bad I've been wanting you, Della. Take you so hard you feel me between your legs for a full week. And then I'm going to flip you over and do the whole thing again, just so I get to watch your ass bounce when I'm pounding into you."

"Oh," Della managed in a gentle moan, her capacity to speak having apparently gone on hiatus. She swallowed through a suddenly dry throat. "That… I think I'd like that."

"You'd more than like it, Della," Leo assured her. "I'm going to have you begging me to put you on your back every time you have a free minute. And that's a promise, sweetheart."

Della heaved in a deep breath and desperately tried to work through her suddenly fever-hot body and the pulse of arousal she could feel thrumming between her legs to find some equilibrium. "That's some big talk you have there," she managed after a moment.

"Are you just trying to get me more and more worked up to prove it?" Leo asked, his voice so low it was almost a growl. "Because it's working, sweetheart."

There was a brief silence between them as Della tried to catch her breath.

"I don't know if I've mentioned it, but I really like that dirty mouth of yours," she said quietly after a moment.

"Oh, you will," he promised. "But in the meantime, I'd better let you go before I can't restrain the impulse to storm your building and use it on you."

Della almost managed a laugh, but the mental image of Leo bursting into her offices to satisfy her—with his mouth, no less—had once again stolen her breath. "I guess I should probably finish this and get back to work," she admitted. "The paperwork is probably piling up."

"I'll speak to you soon, sweetheart," Leo said, the sound of another promise in his voice. "Enjoy the burger, Della."

"Bye, Leo," she said, and then he was gone, and she was left trying to control her pulsing arousal in the empty staffroom.

She was just cleaning up the detritus from her burger when Petra and a couple of her other co-workers came in and headed immediately for the coffee machine.

"Are you all right, Della?" Petra asked. "You're kind of flushed."

"Just, um, ate some spicy food," Della lied. "I'm fine."

She put the wrappings from her lunch in the bin, trying not to think about the feeling that maybe something significant had changed in the course of that phone call.