TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 49

CHAPTER 31: GROWING OBSESSION–1

KNOX’S POV

I watch her walk into the elevator, and my wolf tracks every second of her descent like a map burned into my skull.

Nathaniel flanks her with all his bulk and scar tissue and lethal competence, and even after the elevator doors close and she vanishes, even after she’s gone beyond my line of sight, I can feel the phantom pull of her scent in the room.

It lingers in the air like a drug. Like possession. Like a problem I can’t solve by looking away.

Which is precisely why I need to look away.

I turn from the window and cross the penthouse, moving through the space she’s started to inhabit.

The floor–to–ceiling windows still hold the ghost of what we did at 4 AM. I can picture it too clearly: her palms flat against the glass, her breath fogging the view of the mountains, my hand fisted in her hair while I took her from behind like I was trying to fuck the sanity out of both of us.

I didn’t kiss her this morning. Not properly.

I pressed my lips to her forehead for approximately two seconds, muttered something about calls I needed to take, and walked away before she could look at me with those eyes that see too much.

I caught the flicker anyway. That moment where hope dies and gets replaced with something harder, more resigned.

I felt it settle in my chest like a weight I deserve to carry.

This is what I do. I take and take and then I disappear before anyone can ask me to give something back.

The problem is that I recognize the pattern. I’ve lived it before, and it nearly destroyed me the first time.

It starts with small things. The way her scent makes my wolf sit up and pay attention whenever she enters a room.

The fact that I can identify her laugh in a crowd of a hundred people by the specific pitch of it, slightly higher when she’s genuinely amused versus politely pretending.

How my hands itch to touch her even when there’s no audience to perform for, no strategic

Y CHARTER 31. GROWING OBSESSION–1

reason beyond pure want.

The intrusive thoughts are the worst part.

They arrive uninvited when I should be sleeping.

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