Paradise wheeled for the door, but stopped. “I don’t … I mean, it’s not like I know him.”

“Do any of us? And I’m pretty damn sure you’re the one he wants to talk to.”

“Why’s that?”

“Just a hunch.”

“Ah … okay, thanks.”

Heading for the exit, she glanced at the Brother Tohrment. “May I please be excused to go to the ladies’ room?”

“You got it, Paradise.”

Slipping out into the corridor, she looked left and right, expecting to find Craeg pacing or sitting on the floor. Nope. Everything was empty.

Her body cooled efficiently as she went farther down to the males’ locker room. Breathing in, she caught his scent, knew he was inside—and, sensing no hint of anyone else, she went to the metal door and knocked.

“Craeg?”

When there was no answer, she pulled the door open a little and saw nothing but a concrete wall. Heading in, she went around until she was in the large open area with all the lockers. Wow. Ten times the size of the females’ one, but without the couches and the nice place to sit down to do your hair and makeup. Assuming you needed to.

Man, she was so jumpy, she was talking gibberish to herself.

New level.

“Craeg?” she said more loudly.

There was the sound of running water—a sink, not a shower—and she cleared her throat. “Craeg!”

“What the fuck!”

And then there was more cursing until he marched out of a different section of the facility. Water was dripping from his face and his hands, and his T-shirt was damp around the neck.

“What are you doing in here?” he demanded, passing a palm over his wet hair, shoving the stuff back.

God, his eyes were amazing, so deeply set and such a pale blue. And his shoulders were so big. And his chest was— “Novo said you need help.”

“Novo said what?”

“She told me you—”

“No, no.” He whipped a hand through the air like he was erasing his question. “Why would she—” Craeg stopped. Then muttered something like, “I’m going to kick her ass.”

“Why?” Paradise frowned. “Are you okay? Do you need to feed some more—”

“No.” He jabbed a finger in her face. “And never again with you. Ever.”

Paradise recoiled. “I beg your pardon.”

“You heard me.” Shaking his head and pacing around in a tight circle, he focused on the tile floor. “Now will you get the hell out of here—”

“I have as much right as you do to—”

He glared at her. “You’re in the males’ locker room. So unless you sprouted a boom stick overnight, in fact, you do not have as much right as I do.”

She opened her mouth. Closed it.

And she was about to leave when he made the turn and came back toward her.

That was when she saw exactly what his “problem” was.

Instantly, her body responded—and as he tripped to a halt and looked at her, it was very, very clear that he had caught her arousal.

A curious defeat, one that seemed totally counter to his personality, suffused his face and dropped his shoulders.

They stared at each other for the longest time.

“You don’t have to say it,” she whispered. “I know you don’t want this. I know the timing is bad. I know … that the last thing either of us needs right now is a complication. But I spent all day thinking about you, and what’s the worst that can happen? Our bodies want … what they want.”

This time, when he pushed his hair back, his hand was shaking.

On her side, the trembling was in her legs, her arms, her torso. The full stem to stern bifta, as they said.

Craeg came at her slowly, as if he were giving her time to change her mind, back away, leave. Not going to happen. She stayed exactly where she was, tilting her head up so she could meet him in the eye.

“If I kiss you,” he growled, “there’s no going back. I might not fuck you right here, right now, but I’ll have you on your back the instant I get the goddamn chance.”

She had the sense he was talking crudely to get her to reconsider, and for a split second, she did—but not because he’d used the f-word. That just turned her on even more. No, her glymera-trained conscience sat up and hollered, all those morals and expectations and rules rushing into the forefront of her brain and dulling the lust. If she lost her virginity to anyone it would be a problem—giving it to a commoner? She’d be stained for life. Unmateable. A source of shame upon her father, her bloodline, her class.

On the other hand, aside from somebody like Peyton, she was pretty sure that no “proper” male would want her after she had been through the training center’s program, anyway. Even if she didn’t fight in the war, this kind of learning did not fit into the parlor-games sort of education females were supposed to have.

The solution, she supposed, was to never get hitched.

As the thought hit her, an intoxicating relief went through her entire body, the buoyancy so powerful, she had the urge to jump—and that was when she heard Novo’s voice in her head:

Why are you any different?

Locking onto Craeg’s hot eyes, she marveled at how the easiest solution was in some ways the hardest. But if she never got mated, then she was free to make choices in a way she’d never dreamed.

And it was on that basis of strength that she made up her mind.

Paradise was going to back down.

Looming over the female, Craeg could feel it in his bones. In spite of her arousal, she was going to come to her senses and save them both a world of headaches. She was going to size him up, with his huge body and his raging erection, and realize that she didn’t want the complications or the stress—

With an elegance of movement that terrified him, she lifted her hands and placed them on his shoulders—no, it was his pecs, because she wasn’t quite tall enough. Tilting her head even further back, he was momentarily stunned by how perfectly the ugly fluorescent light from the ceiling fixtures hit her fine features and the feathers of blond hair that had escaped her tie and lines of her collarbone.

“So kiss me,” she said.

In the back of his mind, he heard the sound of two Chevy trucks crashing into each other grill-to-grill.

Fuck. No backing down.

With a curse, he closed his eyes. Swayed. Realized that this was, in fact, going to happen.

Then he popped his lids back open and reached forward to touch her. Abruptly, he had a moment of awkwardness, as if he didn’t know where to put his hands—her shoulders? The sides of her throat? Her face?

The sex he’d had had always been rough and quick, the kind of shit you did with human women or vampire females who didn’t care who they spread for. Paradise was the opposite of all that—and that was the problem. As much as he wanted her, he wanted to do right by her.

Well, wasn’t he a fucking gentlemale all of a sudden.

With shaking hands, he ended up tracing her jaw with his fingertips, and as her lips parted, he eased his head to one side and closed the distance between their mouths.

Almost.

With a mere millimeter of anticipation separating them, he whispered, “Last chance.”

“I’m waiting.”

So he kissed her.

The groan he let out was a combination of starvation and submission, and in the back of his mind, he became dimly aware that there was a new scent in the air, something that was part and parcel of the heat between them, but a revelation as well.

Whatever, she was soft and sweet and hesitant and strong. Everything he’d imagined her to be.

Brushing his mouth over hers, he extended his tongue and licked his way into her. And that was when the whole restraint thing went out the window—with a surge, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in tight to his body, letting her feel him—even at the hips, where, in spite of the two releases he’d given himself in a bathroom stall before she’d come in, he was raring to go.

Oh, God, she was so much smaller than he was, but as her breasts came up to him and her weight shifted so she was leaning against him …