Chapter Nine

Petra was slightly later than she'd meant to be arriving at the library, since she'd taken longer than anticipated to finish her work, thanks to the constant wrist-stroking recollections. One part of her brain had urged her to go home first and take care of the simmering low-level arousal that she hadn't been able to quell the entire afternoon, but that would have made her even later, so she shoved it to the back of her mind and drove straight to the library.

She was almost there when her phone rang. It was Francesca, and as usual, her energy level was high.

"How's your quest to break your mate bond with Emmett O'Neill going?"

"Poorly," Petra admitted. "There's tons of information about the bond and how great it is, but I've barely found anything that even mentions breaking it. We're doing some more research tonight, though, so maybe we'll find something." She wasn't sure why she wasn't telling Frankie that she'd slept with Emmett. Maybe because it would confirm everything her sister thought about not only the bond, but also Emmett himself, and she found herself wanting to protect him even though his reputation was well beyond her control.

"So now," Francesca said with extra emphasis, "you're spending extended periods of time in an enclosed space with your mate whose scent makes you want to bang him into next week, and you think you're going to be able to hold back?"

"I'm just trying not to think about it," Petra said truthfully. "Self-restraint is the name of the game, right?" There, she hadn't lied at all—she was going to have to be incredibly self-restrained to spend time with Emmett in the same space where he'd all but catapulted her to heaven last night.

"There is no way this is going to go well," Francesca said. "I feel like I should hold a funeral for your virtue in advance."

"I think we're well past my virtue needing a funeral," Petra laughed, "but thank you for the thought. How are things on your end?"

Francesca launched into a discussion of her latest social justice cause, the provision of free books to young kids in low-income families. Petra half-listened as she focused on driving, replying at appropriate times. She was barely a block away from the library when she noticed the black car behind her. With her limited knowledge of cars and ability to recognise them, she wasn't sure it was the same one she'd noticed a few days ago, the one that had been outside her house that time. But it was black and roughly the same size and shape, with tinted windows that prevented her from seeing who was inside. Rather than going the way she'd intended, she took a quick left and waited to see whether the black car followed. It did. She circled the block once, then twice, and each time she looked in her rear-view mirror, it was within a couple of cars of her. That decided it—it was definitely following her. She pulled into a parking space near the library and watched intently as the black car went past, hoping to see who was driving. The side windows were tinted, though, dark enough that all she could see were two shapes in the driver and passenger's seats, before it drove away into the slowly falling dusk like a big, dark fish swimming past her.

What the hell?

Who on earth would want to follow her around? She wasn't even the Beta of her pack—she was nobody, just a government employee who knitted blankets for a women's shelter in her spare time and did odd jobs for her Alpha on occasion. Was it possible that she'd upset someone with the work she did for Simon? Maybe by getting the witches involved in the fight with Blue Crescent—after all, it had been Petra who called Della in the first place—she'd upset someone enough that they were looking into her?

If that were the case, she really had nothing to worry about. If they were doing any kind of research on her, they'd find out quickly that she was no one to be concerned about, just a female who had done something unconventional to protect her pack. Truly, there was very little else in her life that could possibly raise concern that she was going to be a threat to any other packs' safety.

That was probably it, she decided. Someone—another pack, or perhaps a witch coven—had heard what she'd done and was looking into her to make sure she wasn't going to try to get different supernaturals involved in each other's business repeatedly in the future. Well, as long as no one else decided to try to invade her pack's territory, they had nothing to worry about—and, as a result, neither did she. They could look into her as much as they liked, but they weren't going to find anything concerning. She might as well just ignore the black car. If she saw them again, she thought, she might even wave to them.

Emmett was already in the study room. His scent hit her like a tidal wave, awakening the hunger for his touch that it seemed had only grown more extreme after having been sated. He'd found another chair and had cleared himself a space to work on the other side of the desk where she'd sat the night before. She tried not to look at the desk and think about the way he'd laid her back on it and torn her sensible panties to pieces to get to her flesh beneath. He looked up when she opened the door, and she shot him a bright smile despite the arousal roiling beneath her skin, feeling slightly more relaxed now she'd worked out what the black car thing was likely to be about. The creature inside her that was constantly starving for his touch watched as his irises went from partly to completely silver when he saw her, satisfaction at the visible evidence of his attraction to her settling in her stomach. Of course, her own irises were probably permanently silver these days, since she couldn't seem to control their change whenever she thought of him, which was pretty much all the damn time at the moment.

"How are you doing? Any luck?" she asked, settling into her seat.

"A few mentions, but nothing about breaking it," he said.

"Sorry I'm late. Work took longer than expected." She pulled the next book from the pile toward her.

"It's no trouble. I've been here for a while anyway. I'd finished everything I needed to do at home this afternoon and it seemed foolish to have the time and not use it productively. Oh, I dropped in and saw Leo and Della."

"How are they doing?"

"You were right—Leo wants Della to wait at least until the week after next to go back to work. His argument is that it would be easier than starting at the end of the week. Della insists that she will have taken off the amount of time the doctors recommended, and it shouldn't matter that the time period ends at the end of a week, she should be able to go back to work. She does seem pretty much back to normal. She insists that if she has to stay home any longer, she's going to lose her mind."

"I don't know, having a few weeks off sounds like a nice break to me at this point," Petra said with a laugh.

"Maybe that's because you're trying to do two people's jobs at once, and do the work you do for your pack, as well as all this research," Emmett said, not unkindly.

She shrugged in agreement with a small smile. "It's possible that you have a point."

"Maybe once Della's back, you can take a couple of days off. Give yourself a bit of a break."

"Then someone else would have to take over my work," Petra said. "And it'd start some kind of holiday spiral where someone is always covering for someone else. No, once Della is back and my workload goes back to normal, I'm sure I'll be fine." She looked back down to the book as a method of ending that part of the conversation, skimming the text in search of some mention of the mate bond. Once she was a few chapters in, this book more than just made mention of it, giving significant detail about how intense the attraction between mates was and how much more profound and intense their joining was when they gave in to the temptation. Well, she could have done with that warning before she succumbed the night before—not that it would have made any difference to how intense their union was, but it might have been nice to know to expect something with so much more raw power to it than her previous experiences.

And there she went, thinking about sleeping with Emmett again, the way his hands had felt on her body, how she'd explored his. Her eyes were almost definitely pure silver now. She shook her head to try to force herself back to focusing on the book before her, but wound up just continuing reading about how highly this author thought of sex between bonded mates. Hell, if she'd written the book, it probably would have read pretty similarly, she thought, and tried to push the memories away as she worked through the rest of the chapter.

As much as the book dwelled on consummation of the mate bond, it had little enough of the information she was actually looking for. She closed the back cover and pushed it aside, looking up to find Emmett staring at her with a look on his face that looked oddly close to… hunger? She smiled, the expression feeling slightly nervous, and looked away, her wolf growing restless beneath her skin. Hunger. Yes, that's what she was feeling. That and only that. She needed dinner, and that was it.

She stood up abruptly. "Do you want to go get something to eat? Or if you want something specific, I can get it and bring it back for you. I'm not sure we're allowed to eat in here, though, given that it's a library. Maybe we should just go and grab something fast. Maybe takeaway, and we can eat it on the way back, and then get back to work." She was babbling, she knew, but she couldn't seem to stop.

"Sure, I'll come with you," Emmett said. He marked where he was up to in his book and stood, reminding her of how much taller than her he was. She had to consciously quash the memories of the size of his body aligned with hers as he pressed her to her bed… as they curled up against each other… as he moved her body around like she was a toy provided exclusively for his enjoyment. How they'd fit so perfectly, it was like they were specifically designed to align with each other, his body against hers, pressing everywhere she'd never known she needed to be touched.

Petra forced herself to refocus on real life. "Is there anywhere around here that does good, fairly quick food, so we don't lose too much time?" she asked. "I don't know the area well." And the library wasn't open late tonight, so they couldn't afford to spend as much time as they had last night over dinner, talking, and learning about each other. Hell, she couldn't afford to get to know Emmett much better than she already did, because every single thing she learnt was just making her like him more and more. Was making it more difficult to push down her attraction to him, and she really didn't need any reminders that that was becoming harder and harder.

"There's a good sushi place that I think does takeaway just a couple of blocks away," Emmett said. "Do you like sushi?"

"I love sushi," Petra said, forcing herself not to ramble any more beyond that sentence.

"I think they're open until eight-thirty," Emmett said. "We'll still have a while to keep working after."

"Still, it would be good to get some more done," Petra asserted and walked out the door of their study room. She was at the library's front door before it registered that she didn't know how to get to this sushi restaurant, so she tried to make standing aside and letting Emmett take the lead look like an act that she had planned. He didn't comment, just steered her down the block with an arm around her shoulders. She felt it as sensually as she had when he'd been dragging his fingertips over her skin and had to concentrate on continuing to breathe as he guided her across a busy street and down an alleyway.

"Are you sure there's a restaurant down here?" Petra asked, looking at the trash-strewn back street. "It looks like a place where people get murdered."

"Positive," Emmett told her with the kind of conviction in his voice that made her want to believe him. "I've been here a few times. Half the fun is finding the place."

Sure enough, after a few minutes they came across a restaurant that was so brightly lit, it would have looked more at home on the Las Vegas Strip. Petra stopped in her tracks, Emmett's arm still around her shoulder.

"Emmett," she said, her voice showing the smile she couldn't keep from spreading across her face, "Have you brought me to a restaurant called 'No More Mr. Rice Guy'?"

"Should I… not have?" Emmett withdrew his arm, but rather than pulling away, he turned her to face him, searching her expression.

"No, I love bad puns," she said truthfully. "This is great. I'll have to bring my sister here."

"In that case, I'm glad I did. Let's go get some food, shall we?"

He led her inside and a tall, model-beautiful woman met them at the door. "A table for two this time, Emmett?" she asked, her eyes skimming over Petra to focus exclusively on the man beside her. "For you and your… friend?" The way she was standing… Petra had done that, back before she decided she was never again going to fight for a man's attention, the popped-hip, chest-out posture that dragged the eye along the line of a woman's curves. Dammit, she was already so beautiful, she could be on the cover of a magazine. Did she really need to try any harder to get a man's attention? Emmett was looking at the woman as if shocked, and the bottom dropped right out of Petra's stomach until he looked down at her, met her eyes, and gave her the same smile that had spread across his face when the two of them had been tangled up in bed together.

"I think we were hoping to get takeaway," he told the beautiful waitress, not bothering to look away to meet the other woman's eyes. "Right, Petra?"

"Yes," she said quietly, unable to stop herself from shrinking slightly, receding into herself in the presence of this beautiful woman. She was shocked when Emmett's arm wrapped around her and held her to his side. Wasn't he aware that this was making a statement? That it was going to kill his chances with the gorgeous hostess?

"Well, I guess that's fine too," the hostess said, her voice sinking into a more businesslike tone now that Emmett had made it clear that he wasn't open to her advances. Did he know he'd done that? Had it been on purpose? Had he done it because he wanted to or to make her feel better? Her head spun with potential reasonings, and she tried to push the ideas to the back of her brain so she would be at least mostly coherent if he asked her another question.

The waitress handed them two menus and then, with a pointed look, asked them to step aside so she could seat the people behind them. As Petra watched, she transformed back into the flirty, cleavage-accentuating-posture version of herself and shot the male of the pair a seductive smile. Was she being paid to break up as many of the couples that came here as possible?

Emmett nudged her with his elbow. "Have you decided what you want?"

"Honestly, I was too distracted by that woman to look at the menu," Petra admitted. "Have you?"

"I get the same thing every time I come here. They do a mixture plate where you get lots of different types of sushi. I like to try a bit of everything." He released her to point to it on her menu and she realized she'd been tucked into his side with his arm around her the entire time they'd been speaking.

"Did you do that on purpose?" she asked without thinking. "The arm-wrap thing."

"I'd be hard pressed to wrap my arm around someone by accident," Emmett joked.

"She was totally hitting on you, though," Petra said, abandoning the pretense of examining the menu in her hand.

"I'd be hard pressed not to have noticed that, too," Emmett said with a slightly uncomfortable-looking shrug. She waited, but he didn't continue.

"So, why did you put your arm around me?" she asked after a moment. "If you'd acted like we were just friends, she probably would have given you her number."

"I don't want her to think we're just friends," Emmett said. His jaw was clenched, she could see, as though this conversation was painful or angering him. He took a deep breath. "Look, Petra, you have to know I feel differently about this bond than you do. I know you want to break it. I know I'm not the man you want to be with. But that's not how I feel about it, or about you. I know I don't get to have you long-term, and you made it very clear that last night was a one-time thing. But I'd really appreciate it if you'd let me act the way that feels like it's in alignment with how I feel at the moment, just until we find a way to sever the bond and it stops making me feel like this. Let me take care of you and pretend that I get to keep you, and make it clear to every other woman in the vicinity that I'm unavailable, just for a little while. Because doing anything else right now is going to tear me apart."

For a long moment, she just stared at him, her brain completely blank. "Emmett—"

"You don't have to say anything," he said, his voice gentle. His hand came up to cup her cheek, and she thought she could feel it shaking slightly. "I know that was a lot. Just let me be the kind of man I want to be for you, just for now. Please?"

She nodded, because how could she do anything else? How could she deny this man anything when he explained it like that?

Somehow, it hadn't occurred to her to consider the way the bond made Emmett feel about her and how he felt about that. That he wouldn't mind staying bonded to her for the long-term—or at least, that was what he thought now, when he hadn't yet had time to get bored with her—was sort of just something that had run beneath the surface of all the things she had taken the time to consider. He'd been so willing to go along with the idea when she suggested finding a way to break the bond, she'd presumed he felt similarly. He had never explicitly stated that he wouldn't mind being with her—or even that he would be happy about it. She would never have expected the comment to cause such a welling of warmth in her chest, or the happiness rising in her like flames licking up a shred of paper. She forced her suddenly frozen lungs to take in a breath, then another, and suddenly realized that another waiter—not the flirty hostess—had approached them and both he and Emmett were waiting for her to place her order.

"I'll have the same as him," she managed to say.

"You're really thrown by what I just said, aren't you?" Emmett asked after a long silence where Petra was mostly just trying to work out what the hell she was feeling.

"Um… yes," she managed.

"Was it really that unexpected?"

"Maybe not to you," Petra said, more sharply than she'd intended. She took a deep breath. "I guess I've been pretty selfish about this whole thing, mostly just thinking about how I felt about it and how it was affecting me. I guess I didn't really… I didn't really stop to think about how you were feeling."

He shrugged, a hint of that heartbreaking smile hovering around his lips. "I thought I'd made it pretty clear, Petra, that I don't feel the same way about this bond that you do."

"Maybe I just wasn't paying attention," she said softly. "Like I said, I've been selfish. Too focused on myself and how I was feeling."

"Well, now you know," he said with another shrug, as though her understanding his feelings meant very little to him. She might even have believed that if not for the look in his eyes. He looked… vulnerable. Like he'd exposed a part of himself and was waiting to see whether she would accept or reject some important piece of who he was.

She was shocked by the sudden urge to wrap her arms around him and kiss him like there was no tomorrow. To show him that this part of himself he'd shown her—hell, all of the pieces of him that she'd been lucky enough to see—were beautiful and worthy of real love, not the one-night-only kind he had been settling for. That if she was the kind of person who fitted him, someone better and more exciting and less… less Petra, she would have accepted him in a heartbeat and been thrilled beyond words that the universe had selected such a man to be her mate. She didn't know how to explain to him that it wasn't he who was wrong, it was she—that he was wonderful, it was just that she wasn't the right fit for him, and she couldn't have her heart broken by someone needing more than she could give him all over again.

They didn't talk much as they collected their meals and walked back toward the library, eating as they went.

Emmett insisted on paying, and after what he'd just said, she let him. She wondered what her face looked like right now, whether the complete where-on-Earth-do-I-go-from-here refrain that kept playing in her head, complicated by the glow of happiness in her chest, was obvious in her expression. She didn't want to hurt him—the last thing she wanted was to hurt him—but Petra knew herself and her own mind. She knew what she was able to provide to someone flashy and interesting like Emmett O'Neill, the kind of man people looked to for entertainment the moment he walked into the room. Not like Petra Dalman, who was perfectly happy sitting in the corner watching that entertainment play out from a distance. Maybe she was being selfish, as she'd been selfish all along, but really, she was protecting both of them. Breaking this bond was going to benefit him in the long term just as much as it did her. It was going to free him to find someone who could be enough for him forever.

If only the bond wasn't trying to drag her toward him quite so intensely. If only having him open up to her wasn't enough to have kick-started the arousal that was never fully switched off around him to begin with. Her body was once again crying out for his touch, her hands all but itching to bury themselves in his hair and kiss him until he stopped feeling like he was being rejected because of who he was. Until she could convince him that who he was, was more than good enough, and he should be proud of it. Proud enough not to go back to seeking the relationship he was looking for in one-night-only interactions.

They lingered outside the library for a few minutes, finishing their sushi—which was excellent; she really was going to have to take Francesca to that brilliantly named restaurant—and tossing the containers in the nearby rubbish bin. When he took her hand to lead her back into the library, she didn't protest. It felt too nice, his hand enveloping hers, the warmth of his skin. Giving in to the feeling roiling in her chest, Petra let herself pretend, just for a few moments, that this could be real. That this could be forever.

* * *

Emmett couldn't remember how long it had been since he held someone's hand like this—not just to walk them inside from the car, or to make a statement that both of them were taken for the night. Just for the joy of the closeness. He could feel the touch of Petra's skin throughout his entire body, and it was kicking whatever engine was responsible for his need for her into overdrive. Already, his body was preparing to take her again, as though there was even the vaguest possibility of that happening. Part of him was worried that now he'd had a taste of her, he'd be feeling the hunger for the rest of his days. Just walking back from the restaurant with her, both eating their sushi, occasionally exchanging words, had something in him buzzing with excitement, as though it was thrilled that he was taking her on something that they'd both made very clear was not a date. Spilling his guts like that, all over the entrance of No More Mr. Rice Guy, should probably have felt more like a massive embarrassment than a huge relief, but there was something deeply liberating in having said exactly what had been on his mind, without fearing that it would overwhelm her.

It appeared to have somewhat had that effect, judging by how quiet she'd been since, but she was still looking at him with light in her eyes and letting him hold her hand, and for now, that was enough. For tonight, that was enough.

They separated when they got back into the study room he was coming to think of as "theirs", though he had to talk himself into releasing her hand. They reclaimed their own chairs, and he sternly told himself that it would be inappropriate to run his hands through her hair and push it out of the way so he could press kisses to the skin of her throat. He grabbed the book he'd been going through, so he'd have something else to focus on. This one was more of the same as far as he could tell; it discussed how wonderful the mate bond was, how powerful, and how it could draw together werewolves from completely different social strata who would probably barely have even met otherwise (it was an old book). When it got to the point of discussing the social placement of the offspring of such unions, he started skimming.

To his slight embarrassment, the moment the book started talking about how bonded mates were more likely to have lots of children because they had such ground-breaking sex, he tuned back in. According to the book, the mate bond made any physical intimacy even better than it would have been anyway. Apparently, no non-mated intercourse could ever compare to the power and intimacy of being so intimately connected with one's mate. When it started going into details, he flipped a few pages ahead and found that the book had completely changed topic; clearly, the wondrousness of sex between mates was the final topic on the subject the author deemed important enough to write about.

He glanced up and saw Petra looking at him. She immediately looked away, down at the book she was reading and then, after a moment, back up again. Did he have something on his face?

"This book just seems particularly fixated on how good sex is between bonded mates," Emmett offered, feeling like he should say something into the suddenly gaping silence between them as she once more seemed to try to subtly look up at him. He immediately regretted his choice of conversation topic. Did it sound like he was trying to make her admit that he was good in bed? That the experience they'd shared had shaken her world as much as it had his own?

She put a finger in her book to mark her place and finally looked up him properly. "This one too." Her gaze on him was somehow both hot and sharp. The creature beneath his skin began to claw at its restraints, begging him to leap over the desk and grab her, to explore the body he had all but memories last night, to bite her hard enough to leave his mark on her skin, so that anyone who looked at her would know she was claimed. "A lot of authors seem to think this is something they need to write about."

"I guess not many people get to experience it," Emmett said. "So, they're trying to explain something they'll never know themselves."

"Maybe we should consider ourselves lucky, then," Petra said, looking down at the book in her hands. "That we got to experience it once."

Before he knew what he was doing, Emmett had pressed his hand down on the book that she was holding up. Her hand was caught in it because she was marking her place with her finger, and she leaned forward as her arm was dragged down. Emmett wrapped his hands in her hair, all that beautiful hair, and dragged her head forward so he could seal his mouth to hers across the desk. As though he'd broken some kind of seal on her passion, she all but erupted. She kissed him like they were about to die and this was the last moment she would have with him. She kissed him like she was once more feeling the moments when their bodies had come together and formed something bigger than just the two of them. In that moment, Petra kissed him like a woman possessed, her hands tangling in his hair and grasping his shirt collar, reaching out to grip his shoulders, dragging him closer like there was even a chance he might pull away.

Eventually, they had to separate to breathe, and Petra was looking at him like he was about to tell her that her pet had been hit by a car, so worried that the word hardly seemed big enough to describe it.

"I've already licked your pussy on this desk," Emmett heard himself say, almost without permission from his brain. "Do you think it would be much worse if I fucked you on it?"

"It's a library!" Petra protested. "We can't! Not here."

"Not here?" he asked. "Then come home with me, pretty girl. I want your scent on my sheets. I want to fuck you in my bed."

"Emmett," she said, her eyebrows pulled together, "we said just one night."

"What difference does it make?" Emmett asked. "Petra, we've already been together like that. What difference does it make if we keep doing it until we find out how to break the bond? I want you. I want to be with you. I want to make you feel good. That's all. It doesn't have to change anything."

"Will it," she hesitated, "will it be okay for you? It won't… hurt you more?"

"Let me have you again, beautiful," he said, instead of giving her an answer neither of them wanted to hear, his entire heart in the words. "Let me make you feel good. That's all I want."

For a long moment, she was silent, and they stared at each other across the desk between them. A thousand thoughts passed through Emmett's brain, ten thousand, so fast he couldn't make heads or tails of them individually—only the overarching theme, which was that he wanted her so badly, it was almost physically painful, that the bond between them seemed to be stronger, tighter, more intense than it had ever been before.

"Yes," Petra said. "Please."

Before he had a chance to think about what he was doing, he had skirted the desk and pulled her into his arms, pressing his lips to hers with the same ferocity with which she had kissed him only moments previously. He backed her up against the table and heard books falling to the floor, and he didn't care. For once, he didn't care about the mess or the fact that they could be damaging valuable books; the only thing in his head was the fact that Petra had agreed to be with him, had said yes and please when he had bet everything he had on the equivalent on a single hand of cards and somehow come out of it a winner. Please, as though she wanted it but wasn't sure he was as willing as she was, and she might need to ask nicely to convince him. That was the thought he was putting every ounce of need in his body into this kiss to disprove. He felt like he was barely in control of his hands, the way they roamed over the curves of her body, traced the sweet swell of her breasts, cupped the back of her neck to hold her as close to him as possible. His own body was all but begging him to just spin her around and take her on this desk, but the same thought he'd had last time gave him pause in that particular desire—he couldn't lock the door to this room, and he'd be damned if he was going to risk someone else seeing Petra exposed the way he wanted her to be to him.

They parted, and Emmett felt like he could have lived for a week just on the look Petra gave him. Surprise, arousal, need, all in one, as though she'd expected the way they connected physically to be less intense the second time around. As though she hadn't believed they'd still make each other feel this way, from nothing more than a kiss. He desperately wanted to peel her panties down her legs and check whether she was having the same intensity of physical response that he was, his cock throbbing like it was trying to get her attention. Make a tradition of licking her to orgasm on this library desk, forcing her to quiet the sounds she'd so freely made when he pleasured her in the privacy of her home.

"Come home with me," he said, and the words felt like they should have some kind of physical weight, for how much they meant to him.

"I'll need clothes," she said. "For work tomorrow. I can't go in wearing the same clothes two days in a row."

"I'll meet you there," Emmett said. She wanted to stay the night. "You can stop in at your house on the way, collect your toothbrush and everything you might need that you don't already have in that bag of yours. And then come to my place, and we'll make up for the lost time." Maybe the way he phrased it sounded like he meant the time they'd lose to her collecting her bits and pieces, but his wolf was trying to tell him that he actually meant all the years he'd spent without her in his life. Trying desperately to find that one relationship in night after night of meaningless sex, when all he'd had to do was lay eyes on Petra Dalman and he would have known she was exactly what he was looking for.

Her eyes were bright silver, transformed the same way he was sure his did every time he was around her. She was staring at him with a hunger in her expression that he would have given just about anything to bottle and keep forever. "Yes," she said quietly, like she had weighed the agreement and this meant… something to her. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on his part. "All right. Just give me your address, and I-I'll meet you there."

He took her hands in his. "Petra. I said it last time, and I'll say it again. Not if you're questioning it. Not unless you're certain."

"I want this," she said, and the wolf beneath his skin wanted to howl in celebration. "I want you."

He took her mouth again, pressing his aroused body up against hers so she could feel every inch of what she'd done to him, but this time he wasn't exploring her body with his hands. He was just kissing her, reveling in having the freedom to just kiss this woman, to make out with her in the back of the library like a teenager with his first girlfriend. Partly because he wanted her to feel comfortable, to know that he wasn't going to push things just because they'd done this before, and partly because he knew that not doing exactly that was going to be a lot harder once he had her in his home.

"Do you want me to write down the address?" he asked, once they finally broke apart, both breathing hard.

"Just text it to me," she said. "That way I'll have it saved."

The implication that she would need it again—that she would be coming to his house again in the future—sent another bolt of arousal through him. He pulled his phone out and typed it with shaking fingers, hearing her own phone buzz with the message.

"So, I guess we're finished here for the night," Petra said after a moment. A smile broke over her face. "This is going to take longer than I expected if we keep interrupting our study sessions for… this."

He gave her his best, wickedest smile. "Personally, I don't have any issue with interrupting the study sessions for this."

Her smile felt like it lit up his whole chest. "Me either."

As they were walking out of the library, Petra kept sneaking glances at him, and eventually he caught her hand in his and pulled her close to his side. He could have sworn the whole world looked sharper, brighter than it had earlier. He walked her to her car and kissed her again before she drove away, then he drove home with only half his mind on the road, the other half on all the things he wanted to do to Petra in the privacy of his home. Having her body bared to his once more, being able to tangle the two of them together again. Tasting her, touching her, making her scream. Gods, he was longing to make her scream.

He'd been sitting in front of his house for several minutes before he realized he'd even stopped the car—he must have driven the last few minutes on complete autopilot. Not super safe, but then, it wasn't like he didn't have a good excuse to be distracted.

* * *

Petra left the library without a doubt that what they were doing was a good idea, and by the time she'd arrived at her own house, she was thinking the complete opposite. What the hell were they thinking? Sure, this was satisfying a desperate desire inside her and making her wolf want to howl in celebration. Sure, Emmett said he wanted it, maybe even as much as she did. But if she did this, surely, she was risking coming to rely on having this need so adeptly, regularly fulfilled. Surely, she was risking becoming addicted to his presence in her life, to his touch on her body, to the way he made her feel… when she was about to lose him.

Lose him? Since when had she thought of it like that? This was her choice, her decision; she was the one driving their search for a method of breaking the bond. She was freeing him, freeing herself, letting both of them find people they were better suited to. So why was the thought of letting him go hurting so much?

In this moment of confusion, Petra did what she usually did when she had something she needed to talk out, she pulled up Francesca's phone number. Listening to it ring, she tried to work out how the hell she was going to explain what was going on between her and Emmett—and why it had to stop.

"Petra," Francesca said in greeting. "What's up?"

"There's something I need to talk to you about," Petra said, climbing out of the car. "It's Emmett."

"Ooh, turning off the TV now," Francesca said in encouragement.

"It's just, I was with him earlier, and okay, I didn't tell you this before because—" And then she was interrupted by something striking the back of her head, hard. For a moment she only registered the force, and then the pain, and then… nothing.

As she fell, she caught the briefest glimpse of the black car, parked across the road once again.