Hot and Cold
“Out,” Angelique ordered.
Jane looked around her at the concrete and glass towers, the busy city street, the tightly packed
pedestrian paths. “Where are we?”
“Oh, dopey Doris,” Angelique purred. “We are at the center of the universe. Get the f-k out the car and
come along.”
She grabbed Jane by the elbow and propelled her into one of the glossy buildings, past the reception
desk and into an elevator, and swiped a card before prodding the very top number on the long, long
columns of numbers.
When the elevator opened, Angelique pushed Jane out into a lobby where the floor was the sort of
slippery tile that every woman in high heel shoes viewed with dread, and past the receptionist who
muttered into her headset even as her eyes followed Angelique’s passage into the bowels of the
building.
They moved through a wide hallway flanked by meeting spaces and rooms where flustered looking
people stared at computer screens in consternation, through to a double door, which Angelique shoved
open with her hip before half throwing Jane into the chamber so that Jane staggered and fell.
Baron sat at a desk near a wall of windows and stood upon their entry, tugging his waistcoat down, his
eyebrows pulling together, and Jane realised that the glossy tower was his building from which he ran all
the various branches of his business: the center or the universe indeed.
“What the f-k Angelique?” He demanded, striding around his desk, and picking Jane up off the carpet.
“I took care of your little problem,” Angelique sneered. “The implant is gone, the b-tch will ovulate in the
next few days, and you can f-king f-k her to your heart’s desire, get her fat with your litter, so that we can
get the f-k on with what we‘re here to do.” She turned on her heel and clipped out of the room before he
could formulate a response.
Baron looked down at Jane and offered her his hand. She refused it, standing by herself. “Jane…” He
started.
She had hit him before she had even realised that the thought had occurred to her to do so, and saw the
outline of her hand appear on his cheek white and then red. The force of the slap turned his face, and he
seemed baffled for a moment, before turning back to her.
“I hate you,” she told him through her teeth. “I hate you, Baron Western. I hate you for making me believe
that this was a love match. I hate you for f-king raping me on our wedding night. I hate you for humiliating
me by keeping a mistress after you married me. I hate you for forcing yourself on me during my first heat.
I hate you for having your mistress drag me to the f-king doctor to have my implant removed against my
wishes. And I hate you for…”
He twirled her in his arms, catching her so that her back was against his chest and his hand closed over
her mouth. “I am tempted to let you continue,” he breathed into her ear. “But there is just so much to
unpack from what you have said that I expect that if I did, we might never end this conversation.
“So, let’s start from the beginning,” he released her mouth. “From how you thought that this was a love
match?”
She dragged in a breath, and felt her control disintegrate, until she sobbed her grief bitterly, her legs
giving beneath it, bringing them both down onto the luxurious carpet, so that he curled over her as she
cried her sorrows out into the silken fibers. He murmured and stroked her back.
“Jane,” he breathed into her ear. “Oh, my Jane.”
She did not know when his stroking turned into sex, but, before she knew it, he had dragged her jeans
down her legs and had thrusted into her, face down on the carpet of his office. She cried out, half in
protest and half desire, and he lifted her hips into him as he drove himself into her bringing her on to her
knees, the pace unforgiving, claiming, taking.
She came, her fingers clenched into the carpet, and felt him follow, his cry harsh, and then the sink of his
weight over her. “So,” he breathed into her ear. “Start from how I misled you into thinking this was a love
match.”
She was crying too hard to answer, the sobs shaking through her, ugly, snot filled tears as she pressed
her face into his carpet. She cried until she passed out under him, aware that he continued to f-k her
despite the fact that she had faded out beneath his body.
She woke in the bed in the gold and cream room, alone, with the night pressing in around her, her pulse
leaping in her head, the primal rhythm of its pounding driving her out of the covers and into her closet
She pulled on a dress, stroking its fabric down over her body, twisting and turning before the mirror.
Part of her knew that something was wrong, and that part of her was an insistent voice to stay home, to
lock herself into her room, but the other voice was louder, and she wanted to dance somewhere with a
dark beat, and other bodies pressed against hers, her pulse racing.
In the front hall, Heathridge took one look at her, and his expression shifted. “Madam,” he said, his voice
tight. “You need to return to your room immediately.”
She scented him, feeling him recoil even as his pupils dilated, instinct warring against sensibility. She
turned away from him and tossed her hair. “Call the car, or I will drive.”
A limousine pulled up within a minute of Heathridge’s signal, and even as she slid into the cab, she saw
that Heathridge was on the phone talking at full speed.
The car pulled up out front of Baron’s club, and she stepped out, pausing under the flash of the
photographer’s lights, bewildered by them, before walking in past the concierge. Baron and
Angelique were not there, she thought immediately. They were somewhere else, and she laughed as she
worked her way through the patrons onto the dance floor.
Her arrival seemed to scatter the werewolves, as if she had dived into a pond, sending ripples out.
And then, as the water swept back in, they were pulled towards her, their expressions reacting to her
scent, pupils dilating, nostrils flaring.
She threw her hair over her shoulder and swayed with the music, feeling it’s beat to her soul, writhing
beneath the waves of desire that rolled over her from the betas and alphas that gathered, salivating,
around her.
Fights broke out, brief tussles of dominance, victors edging closer whilst losers backed off, and all the
while, she danced, indifferent, giving herself to the music, and knowing that the males that reached her,
that sweated over her, fought for their position.
“F-king mine,” the growl dominated, and blood sprayed. Over the males between, her eyes met Baron’s.
His wolf dominated and he carved his way through her would-be suitors with tooth and claw his
expensive suit showing the tracks of competitor’s defenses, shredded beneath claws, skin peeking
through rents in the fabric, blood staining where claws had found purchase.
And yet, he reached her, his body between her and her suitors, his chest heaving with the effort, the blue
dominated by black and the back-glow of his wolf, as his hands closed over her shoulders and tugged
her up against him. “Jane,” he growled into her ear. “You are in f-king heat. In my f-king club. Again.”
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