“Doctor?” One eye opened under the web of hair that covered her face. “Do you know what time it is?”

  “It’s time for you to get on your hands and knees.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I got up on my knees and grabbed her hips on either side, lifting them over the mattress. She flopped onto her hands, half twisted.

  I bent my body over hers, reaching around her waist and talking softly in her ear. “If ‘excuse me’ means no, then say no.”

  She swiped her hand around her head to get the hair off her face, looking back at me with an unfiltered gaze. “It doesn’t mean no, but…”

  I pushed my hard cock against her ass, and she didn’t finish the sentence. “Then you’re excused.”

  I grabbed her breast harder than I normally would. She was mine. I would not be undercut, and I would not compete. I pulled her nightgown up and yanked down her underwear. Our eyes met over her shoulder as I got my cock out.

  “I can’t lean on the wrist for long,” she said.

  “I’m aware.” Running the head of my dick along her seam, I spread her wetness onto myself, then I lodged myself in her. She gasped.

  Normally, I’d gently slide in, but not this time. Something more primal called, and I shoved another few inches inside.

  Yeah.

  Just like I thought.

  The Thing was horrified.

  “Let’s get pressure off that wrist.” I took her by the biceps and pulled her arms behind her, holding them together with one hand. “Better?”

  “Yes.” Her head dropped forward.

  “This is going to be different,” I said.

  “No shit.”

  I hesitated. My desire to show the Thing my dominance couldn’t be satisfied at her expense. I loosened my grip on her arms just a little.

  “Don’t…” She stopped, took a deep breath, and turned her head as much as she could. “Don’t stop. I’ll let you know.” Her hips pushed into me.

  Gently, I gathered her hair with my free hand and wrapped it around my fist, then I yanked her head back as I entered her with full force.

  She screamed through her teeth. “God! Caden!”

  Her cunt pulsed around me as I hesitated again.

  “Say no,” I growled.

  “Yes.”

  I fucked her so rough, I didn’t expect her to come so hard and so quickly. I kept fucking her, holding her arms behind her, pulling her hair as if it were a bridle. I unleashed deep inside her, bruising her arms with my grasp.

  Right there, a whirlwind spun around us as I pounded her, whipping me into a confusion of desire and need, surrender and dominance. Even as I thrust forward physically, mentally I was spun by the force of it. Flipped like a coin, revolving in the air, landing, settling on the mattress.

  The whirlwind fell away, and there was only Greyson under me.

  The kind, sweet Thing shrank back into the shadows, weeping.

  Take that, you fuck.

  Chapter Five

  Greyson

  In the weeks after he took me from behind in the middle of the night, we went back to normal. The episode seemed like a pleasurable blip in a pleasurable routine.

  We were meeting at the Mt. Sinai fundraiser. It was a cutting day. When he arrived at the fundraiser, he’d smell of rubbing alcohol and cologne if he’d put some on, fresh coffee grounds and cut grass if he hadn’t. He’d touch my shoulder. He’d run his finger along the edge of my strapless gown. At home, we’d barely make it in the door before he’d strip me naked and take me. Yes, it was predictable. Some things were worth predicting.

  I crawled into the back of the car where my younger brother, Colin, waited. He was an engineer who’d been inspired to go to college after I’d found a way to go to med school, and he’d moved to New York for a job just as I was settling in. The education had done nothing to tamp his roguish ways.

  “You look nice,” he said when I slid in next to him. He flicked one of my dangling earrings.

  “You do too.” I straightened his black bow tie as the limo coasted toward the museum.

  He shooed my hand away. “Thanks for the plus one.”

  “Try to keep off the ladies.”

  “What’s the fun in that when I have to watch your husband with his hands all over you?”

  “Stop it.”

  “You two are so in love it makes me sick.”

  I looked away, trying to hide my silent laughter. “What happened to you and that woman? The painter? She seemed nice.”

  “She wanted things.”

  “Things?”

  “Promises. Commitments. Me. I have things I’m doing. I can’t get sidetracked by a pretty face.” He tapped his knee for a second. “Or all the other things. Whatever. How’s the practice coming?”

  “Not bad,” I said. “Better.”

  “You like it?”

  “I love it. We’re here. Put your jacket on.”

  The event took place in a ballroom lined with Regency-era portraits and heavy drapery. I plucked a champagne flute from a server’s silver tray and Colin did the same.

  “This is lovely.” He scanned the room like a cheetah selecting the weakest in the herd.

  “Behave.”

  “Oh, your friend Jenn is here. I like her,” he purred.

  I elbowed him as Jenn saw us and headed over. She was awkward in heels and her fat black glasses always slid down her nose, but her smile was a beacon of light against her brown skin. We greeted each other, and she swapped her empty flute for a full one.

  “Easy there, tiger,” Colin said.

  Jenn took no shit, and she was a terrible flirt. “I’m grown, but thank you.”

  “He’s on the make,” I offered.

  “Good luck with that.” She tipped her glass to him, and he responded with a clink. “Ronin’s here,” she said to me.

  “Where is he?” I craned my neck. “He sent me some referrals. I owe him a drink.”

  I saw him before the last word was out of my mouth, but he already had a drink in his hand. He wedged his way through the crowd toward us.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked as he kissed my cheek.

  “Business.”

  “Obviously,” Jenn said. “No one’s here for the food.”

  “Thank you for the referrals,” I said. “I owe you a drink.”

  “Open bar doesn’t count.”

  We were talking about something unimportant when Ronin put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me to him, but we were laughing.

  “Blah blah,” Colin complained. “Caden’s here.”

  He crossed the room to my husband, whose eyes were on me. Caden wore a deep navy suit and a gold tie. His cufflinks sparkled, and his hair was combed off his face. The fact that he hadn’t shaved contrasted the crispness of the suit against the animal body inside it.

  We went quiet. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at Ronin.

  Ronin removed his arm from my shoulders.

  Colin interrupted the gaze by shaking my husband’s hand and making some sort of wisecrack he must have found hilarious.

  Caden, not as much. He’d turned his attention back to me.

  “Girl. He looks like he wants to eat you alive,” Jenn said into her glass.

  I turned to Ronin so I could blame him, but he was gone. Caden maneuvered to us.

  “My dad never looked at my mom like that,” Jenn continued.

  Before I could offer a snappy answer, Caden found us and kissed Jenn on the cheek. He kissed my cheek in the same platonic way, then looked behind him, but no one was there.

  “Where’s Colin?” I asked.

  “Bar.”

  When I turned to scan the bar for my brother, I leaned into Caden a little. We had a pattern. A rhythm to our interactions. The shape of the space between us, laid out over the time together, was as predictable as the phases of the moon, and his touch always came when expected.

  But when we looked at Colin as he tried to charm a young lady in a gold dress, Caden didn’t lean in when I did. He didn’t put his hand on my back. When Bob Abramson found me and said he wanted me to meet someone, my husband didn’t take my hand. When Wilhelmina, the head cardiac nurse, her hair braided into long, neat rows, gave me a kiss and asked how I was handling my husband’s hours, Caden didn’t come close to me and brush his thumb between my shoulder blades. When we all sat down for a presentation about the hospital’s goals, he kept his hands folded in his lap.

  When he released his hands and placed them on his knees, I put my left hand over his right. He patted it, smiled at me, and slipped it away before looking behind him again.

  I thought he was in a bad mood.

  What else could it be?

  Chapter Six

  Caden

  The war had been building for over a month. The ventilators were left to do their job, but the squeak of gurney wheels on linoleum, the tip-tap of computer keys, the murmurs of the hospital staff all held a thread of the Thing I thought I’d banished. I could have a conversation with Greyson, but only if I concentrated on not hearing the Thing in the boiling pasta water or the radio news. Every day, it got a little stronger. Every day I was a little more tense, a little more afraid, a little more uncomfortable. The Thing got harder to box away and cart off. Harder to hide behind a wall. Impossible to ignore. I was pressed in on all sides by a Thing I couldn’t even define.

  And what had become more and more clear was that it wanted my wife.

  “Caden!”

  I was in the changing room, getting my scrubs off, when Bob Abramson, the hospital director, came in. My senseless, gland-centric reaction was anger. He wanted her too, but for different reasons.

  “Bob.” I got my suit out of the locker.

  “Are you going to the fundraiser tonight?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Tina Molino from the psych hospital’s going. You should introduce yourself.”

  I slapped my locker door closed so hard it rattled. “I know her. She had a lot of questions about military trauma. I guess the Gibson wing’s going through then?”

  “Anything’s possible with funding.”

  “I know you’re eyeing my wife.” That came out wrong. Wrestling with this Thing and trying to have a conversation with my boss was crossing my wires.

  He overlooked my words in favor of my intentions. “She’s got the right history. She understands the military. Has done a ton of PTSD work. We could really use her.”

  “Really?” I slid the padlock in the loop but didn’t close it. I hadn’t finished with the locker, but had slammed it closed to make a point. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I was jealous. Not sexually jealous. I was jealous of her time and attention. “Well, you can talk to her about it, but don’t expect much. She’s busy.”

  “The best ones are.”

  Getting snippy with the hospital director wasn’t my best decision and it wasn’t something I had control over, though of course, in the moment, it felt like the purest form of control. That was the thing about impulsive behavior. It hid behind a mask of power.

  Greyson could handle herself. Everyone who wanted her for anything needed to be far away from me.

  “Look,” I said, “it’s been a long day.”

  “No need to explain. You’re barely out of your scrubs and I’m bugging you. It’s fine. Say hello to Dr. Molino anyway.”

  “Yeah. Sure. Of course.”

  He left with a spring in his step. Nothing wiped the smile off that guy’s face, but he was a shark. If he wanted Greyson for this psych unit, he’d have her. I knew it, and so did Abramson.

  Opening my locker again, I got a whiff of her perfume. I couldn’t resist taking it after I’d decided to starve the Thing out. Maybe that was why I’d failed to eradicate it.

  I got dressed and walked out with Greyson on the brain. When the door whooshed closed, the sound was a sigh of longing for the only woman I’d ever loved. I locked it away.

  I could put on a suit and knot a tie. I could put jeweled links into a starched cuff. I could shower, shave, comb my hair, but it was all a lie. It was all a costume, a mask. Under it, I was no more than a knot of bodily needs and overwhelming sexual urges. My mind was a set of neurons firing commands to my glands, and the glands sent emotions through my bloodstream.

  She was mine.

  Not his.

  The Thing was male, and its strength was its persistence.

  The neurons said I had to have her in my line of sight, but I’d bring the Thing right to her.

  The only way to keep it away from her was to keep my distance.

  But the animal said no. The animal I was knew that wouldn’t work because she was mine.

  Navigating between all these urges was exhausting. But as I entered the fundraiser, I took a breath. The exhaustion was under my suit. Behind my smile and polite words. No one could see.

  She was with her brother and Jenn. Her hair was piled on top of her head and her earrings dropped down the length of her neck. She wore nude lipstick, and under the satin bodice of her gown, her nipples were hard. She was the picture of grace and charm, with a smile that transformed everyone around her and eyes that comforted people into talking.

  The Thing saw her. In the bouncing acoustics of the room, it whispered its longing.

  “Hello.” Colin shook my hand.

  I hadn’t even seen him coming toward me. Just her. Only her.

  “Nice to see you.” I angled myself so I could see her over his shoulder.

  “I’m hitting the bar, can I get you something?”

  “I’m good, thanks.” I patted his shoulder and headed for her, crossing half a ballroom without acknowledging another soul.

  The Thing got more vocal, hiding in the voices of the guests and the strings of the musicians’ instruments.

  I could smell her from farther away than normal. Apples. No matter which perfume she wore, she smelled of the first bite of an apple, breaking taut skin with teeth, juice dripping down my chin. She was the satin skin and the crisp meat of the fruit. She was the hard seed and the tenacious stem.

  I found her.

  Ronin.

  Laughing.

  Arm around her shoulders.

  He’d touched her. He’d had her. He’d licked the apples off her skin and touched her body. He wanted her again. Of course he did. She was beautiful and sexy. Any man would want her. I was filled with an unreasonable fury. A foul grimace in my soul. A call to action lubricated by rage.

  I headed for them, bumping into a woman from pediatrics. I excused myself, and when I turned back, Ronin was gone.

  In the seven steps to my wife, I came to some sort of sense.

  Ronin was not a threat.

  On the flip side, I was losing my fucking mind.

  Kissing Jenn first was a delay tactic. I needed a moment to reduce my pulse rate. It didn’t work. When I kissed Greyson’s cheek and she slipped her hand in mine, the animal threatened to burst out of his suit.

  I always desired her. Every minute. But this?

  I wanted to drag her out by her hair, respecting the norms of privacy only because I wouldn’t be able to finish in the middle of the ballroom. I wanted to squeeze her flesh, mark her in bruises, leave streaks of semen on her. Make the Thing scream in horror and curl up in a ball far away.

  I couldn’t live like this anymore.

  But I was in a public place.

  The suit was who I needed to be.

  The suit was armor against the horrifying sight of the animal.

  I didn’t look at her. Didn’t touch her. I focused on the distance between us and the eyes of a hundred people. I listened to Bob Abramson talk about money and bullshit, concentrating hard enough to make a decent show of being civilized.

  In the dark, during the fundraising video, she leaned into me, taking my hand. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Caden.” My name was more than a statement. It was a comment on how well she knew the animal, and how well she loved it.

  If eyes could listen, hers did, gazing at me in the darkness. I couldn’t lie to her for much longer.

  The entire invite list was watching the video. The bar was empty. The hallway lights were dimmed. The kitchen staff moved constantly and quietly to set up the buffet.

  I laced my fingers in hers. She had a gold band we’d gotten out of expediency. No big sparkling rock. No sign I’d ever courted her properly before marrying her.

  My father always said a man didn’t skip steps if he wanted to do something once.

  I slid my cheek to hers and whispered in her ear, “I want to destroy you.”

  Her hand tightened in mine so tightly I could feel our bones. Her glands must have fired, because the apples and the perfume melded and became something so uniquely her my balls ached—but not for simple release. For something more. An agreement of ownership.

  Waiting wasn’t an option.

  Pulling her by the hand, I headed for the hallway.

  “Caden,” she said when we were away from the event, “slow down.”

  I didn’t. I couldn’t. I pulled her down the carpeted steps to the lower level, stepping over a velvet rope at the bottom. The lights were out in the hall. Three doors led to three empty event rooms.

  “What’s with you lately?” she asked.

  “Are you saying no?”

  “I’m asking a question.”

  I backed into one of the rooms and pulled her in. It was dark but for light coming from under the doorways on each side. The Thing cowered in the shadows, emitting fear like a pheromone. Good. I walked in deeper, eyes adjusting quickly enough to avoid the tables and stacks of chairs on wheeled dollies.

  “So am I.” I faced her. “Are you saying no?”

  “What are you hoping I’ll say yes to?”

  “I’m going to pull that dress up until I can get to these hard nipples.” I pinched them through the dress and she gasped. “Then I’ll bend you over one of these tables and fuck you so hard walking’s going to hurt. Are you saying no?”

  “I’m not. But I want to know what’s going on with you.”