"Men will always be men... Nothing special... You can have three to ten women, nothing new on this Earth!" She disgustingly muttered.
"Having many women fixes nothing. It only creates disorder. I haven't learned how to care for one flower without breaking it, why would I cultivate more?" He slightly smirked.
"Because broken things don't expect to be kept."
"I'm easier to maintain," Dakota responded with cool detachment, even as her body continued its slow, deliberate grinding against his lap. "You don't need to do anything. You just need to exist! And I just need to exist!"
Her wolf was fully awake now, burning through her veins with intensity that bordered on pain. The heat was building, spreading through her system in waves that made her skin feel too tight, too hot, too confining. Everything hurt, her heart, her mind, her soul, and her wolf was demanding something, anything, to make the pain stop. Physical sensation to override emotional devastation. A stranger's touch to replace the memory of her mate's. Anything to forget, even for a moment, what she'd just remembered.
Her hips moved with more purpose now, her body responding to instincts that lived below conscious thought. She could feel him beneath her, could feel his body beginning to respond despite his apparent exhaustion, despite whatever control he was trying to maintain.
The man in the front seat, Marcus, though Dakota didn't know his name yet, was staring at them through the rearview mirror with an expression somewhere between shock and alarm.
"Alpha..." Marcus was startled, his voice urgent.
Alpha motioned him to keep moving with his fingers.
But Dakota wasn't listening to anything. Wasn't thinking. Was just moving, grinding, letting her wolf take over because the alternative was remembering. Was seeing Cooper's face when he'd called her 'Kota.' Was feeling Ethan's eyes on her across that hall. Was knowing that her daughter was dead and her son didn't know her and her mate belonged to someone else.
The heat intensified, her eyes flashing red in the darkness of the car's interior, casting crimson shadows across the stranger's face. Her breathing had gone shallow and rapid, her body trembling with the effort of containing a wolf that wanted out, wanted to run, wanted to fight, wanted anything except this crushing weight of grief and betrayal.
"Stop," the man beneath her said quietly, but there was steel in that single word. Command. Authority. The kind of voice that expected obedience.
Dakota didn't stop. Couldn't stop. Her body kept moving of its own accord, seeking friction, seeking distraction, seeking anything that wasn't the pain threatening to consume her entirely.
"I said stop." This time the command was accompanied by hands, large, strong hands that gripped her hips firmly, stopping her movement with effortless strength.
And then his eyes snapped open.
Gold.
Bright, burning gold that seemed to glow in the darkness, meeting her crimson gaze with an intensity that cut through even her wolf-driven haze.
Not Ethan's silver.
The thought hit her with unexpected force, and suddenly the stranger beneath her became real in a way he hadn't been moments before. Not her mate. Not Ethan. Just a man whose car she'd thrown herself into, whose lap she'd climbed onto without permission, whose patience she was testing with behavior that bordered on assault.
Shame tried to surface through the grief and heat and desperation, but Dakota's wolf snarled it back down. She didn't care. Couldn't afford to care. Caring meant feeling, and feeling meant drowning.
"Do you know where you are?" the man asked, his voice still rough but carrying a thread of something that might have been concern beneath the authority.
"Who cares which hell I fall into!" Dakota responded coldly, her voice flat despite the way her body was still trembling against his, despite his hands still gripping her hips firmly enough to prevent movement but gently enough not to hurt.
The man's golden eyes studied her face with unnerving intensity, taking in her wild expression, her tear-stained cheeks, the crimson glow that hadn't faded from her gaze.
"Do you know what I do with my enemies?" he asked quietly.
"You kill them and drink their blood!" Dakota shot back with that same broken laugh, not caring about the answer, not caring about anything except the fact that his hands on her hips were warm and solid and real, anchoring her to something that wasn't pain.