Chapter 8

Charles

She was going to be the death of me. I was going to burn up with want of her, and she didn’t even seem to know it. I could still see her sitting across from me trying to recover a bit of her price, a bit of her sense of control. I wanted to rip it from her hands.

It seemed that I would be romancing her into bed rather than the other way around. The thrill of a challenge, business and personal, felt like a rush of adrenaline. It wasn’t the deal I wanted, but it was the challenge I needed.

I slid into the back seat of the car.

“How’d it go?” George asked as he pulled the car away from the curve.

“Not the deal I wanted, but not unworkable.”

I looked out the window. I would get what I wanted. The clouds started to rumble and threaten rain. The windows fogged up as we came to a stop, and I saw Grace sitting under the thin covering of the train station.

“Pull over.” George did so. I grabbed my umbrella and hustled across the street to her. I opened it as she looked up at me, still clutching the package like a lifeline.

“Let me give you a ride,” I said.

“I—”

A stroke of thunder blotted out what she was going to say. She winced and sighed before nodding as the frigid rain began to fall. I had forgotten how cold it was in the northern areas of the continent.

She stood, shivering a bit and let me escort her back to my car. I opened the door and made sure she was inside before getting in on the other side. Immediately, my gut clenched and my cock stirred with interest. Her scent, a musky sweet scent, had already began to fill the space. This was going to be hell, but worth it.

“Where to, Alpha Wolfe?” George asked.

“Wolfe Medical,” she said and looked at me. “I don’t suppose… we could sign that deal officially today?”

“Of course.” I didn’t need to check my calendar. I had nothing else to do. I’d made sure of it in the slim chance that I could entice her to pick up where we’d left off. “Will you want the goodwill funds transferred to you directly or to the company account?”

“To me.”

I nodded and began to type a message to the lawyer of the Inter-Species Federal Bank and pretending not to want to gather her hair in my hand and drag her closer to taste her mouth again. When we reached the building, she looked up at the face of the building. I got out of the car and opened the umbrella for her as she exited. We walked into the building. She turned from the elevator and led me up the stairs. Halfway up the stairs, she paused, leaning on the stairwell. I stooped beside her, scenting the dip in her blood sugar.

“We should have eaten at Apex,” I said, steadying her as she swooned.

“I—Whoa!”

I lifted her from her feet, cradling her against me before I stepped onto the rail of the stairs. She threw her arms around me.

“W-What are you doing?”

I smirked. “Indulging in the advantages of being an alpha lycan. Where is your office?”

“The top floor.”

“Going up.” I leaped and she squealed as we rocketed up the last few floors.

She shuddered as I landed gracefully on the rail of the top floor. A young woman stared at me, her sandwich halfway to her mouth.

“Your floor?” I stepped down and lowered her to the ground, but she was still clinging to me, shivering and shuddering.

Her heart was racing a mile a minute. I pulled her closer and hushed her gently.

“Forgive me,” I whispered into her hair. “I didn’t realize you had a fear of heights.”

She said nothing as I rubbed her back and drew her closer, letting my warmth envelope her. I felt her tension start to ease until she sagged against me.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She went still and pulled back, clearing her throat. She was still pale as she turned away from.

“I-I think you know quite enough about me for the time being. Shall we?”

I opened the door for her and allowed her to walk ahead of me. When we reached her office, I pulled the plush, knitted blanket and wrapped it around her before she sat at her desk. I pulled out my laptop and scanned the office for some way to get her something warm to drink, but there wasn’t even a simple coffee pot in the office. As my laptop started up, I leaned out the door to where the young woman who had been eating in the stairwell was coming back.

“Is there a breakroom on this floor? Somewhere I could get something hot to drink?”

She blinked, seemingly surprised. “Uh, yeah. Down the hall.”

“Thank you.”

I headed in the direction she pointed. Being at a distance from Grace made it easier to focus on anything but how much I wanted her. I made us cups of coffee and headed back, placing a few packets of sugar and cream in my pocket. She looked just as shocky as she had before, but now, she was staring at the package I had given her. I set the cup in front of her, along with sugar and cream, before starting to doctor my own cup.

She shuddered. “I’m... I’ll be okay.”

“Of course,” I said. “Of that, I have no doubt. Should I send you the document now?”

She nodded and rattled off a phone number. I smiled.

“Perhaps by email? You could sign it electronically.”

She blinked and flushed as she started to make her coffee. Then, she gave me her email. I sent her the document and scanned her desk. The pages of financial reports were everywhere. They didn’t seem to be in any sort of order. There were past due notices and signs that she had been working to try and get through it all. There were written notes on almost every page.

Then, I saw the heavily bookmarked copy of Business Financial Basics textbook that was used in freshman-level business courses.

Why would she be reading that? Brushing up on it or something worse? She murmured to herself, reading the contract with narrowed eyes.

“You could forward it to your legal team for review if that would make it easier?”

She smiled weakly and nodded. “Actually, yes. Sorry, it’s… been a day.”

“There is no need to apologize. I’m a patient man.”

And simply watching her was proving to be eye-opening in all the ways I needed it to be. The timidity I had seen in her at White Claw was there again. Uncertain. Nervous. She had no idea what she was doing.

Why would her father leave the pack, let alone the company, to her and not her brother, Eason, who was reportedly running his own PR company very successfully and separate from the pack’s business?

“While we are waiting, is there a chance we could speak about the products that Wolfe Medical has on the market?”

“Sure,” she said, her eyes still on the document, scanning it. “What sort of questions do you have?”

“When’s the last time the formulations were updated for the Silver Flu vaccine?”

She hummed. “Six years ago.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Six years ago? I was under the impression that vaccines were updated every year.”

“Maybe for things like flus that are transmitted through bodily fluid. Those flus evolve every time it’s passed on, so you have to update the vaccine with new samples of the flu. Something like the Crescent Flu becomes practically a brand-new disease every time it is passed, but the Silver Flu is a magical disease. It doesn’t evolve at the same pace or at all, honestly. You catch it, and you don’t gain any resistance to future infection, but if you are immunized yearly, then you’re protected.”

I licked my lips as she went on, speaking about other similar diseases. She worked through most of my questions about the formulations that Wolfe Medical already had on the market.

“A lot of those immunizations came about as precursors to the idea of the longevity drug.” Her lips twitched. “Living longer because we don’t die from communicable diseases isn’t the same as simply enhancing our bodies and immune systems to withstand the stress of just regular living.”

She reached over as the printer started to spit out pages. She frowned as she pulled them off the printer.

“…Eventually, the longevity drug will have the other basic vaccinations in it and will basically be delivered as a booster shot… At least, that’s the theory if we can get it through clinical trials…”

She murmured to herself and went back to her desk, taking notes on the pages before her laptop chimed. She smiled and turned back before typing something. My laptop chimed, stating that she’d signed the document. I signed it then I looked at her.

“How much do you actually know about business procedures?”

She went still and pale. Then, her desk phone rang.