ribs. The intensity in his voice, the deep growl of it danced across my skin and I could hardly breathe. The air in the room was charged, so tight and hot.
He came to me, all hard muscle and grace and feline beauty and I couldn’t think for wanting him. He knelt on the bed and braced one hand on the headboard by my head. “Do you, Kit?” he asked again, his breath drifting across my lips.
When in doubt—or terror—reach for the sarcasm. Curling my lip at him, I said, “Are you going to tell me it’s some mystical fated mates shit? Sorry. I won’t buy that. It doesn’t work that way.”
His hand curled around my neck, his thumb resting in the hollow of my neck. “No. Absolutely it doesn’t. This is all on my part, and whether or not you’ll ever feel a damn thing for me is up to you…but you already feel something. Even if I hadn’t already figured that out, I would have gotten a clue when you came muttering my name and clutching at me during the night, baby girl.” The pad of his thumb stroked over me. “No. It’s more complicated…better. Easier. Worse. Harder. It started when you pulled that fucking sword on me in your office. I wanted you then, but wanting is easy. Almost any woman can satisfy a guy when he just needs to get laid.”
“Nice to know this isn’t just about you being horny.” Look away, I told myself. Needed to do that because the raw intensity in his eyes was killing me. Killing me—
But that was one thing I just couldn’t do. Couldn’t. At all.
“Your mouth was another problem for me,” he muttered, leaning in and licking my lower lip. “You fucking smart ass. Mouthing off from the get-go. I’ve never found a smart ass so appealing until I met you.”
“Uh-huh. You’re still not explaining much here.”
A slow smile curled his lips. The hand he had on my neck stroked down. I had the blanket tucked under my arms, but it caught under his palm and went down under the path of his hand, stopping when he paused, just over my heart.
“Sex is easy. Rut is anything but—it’s physical, emotional, mental. We focus on one woman and I started focusing on you from day one. It got worse every damn time I did something that I knew scared you…but you just snarled back at me. I knew you were smart and quick, and all I needed was your brain and your connections—I didn’t want your mouth or anything else.”
His thumb stroked over the inner curve of my breast as he continued. “But you didn’t just give me your mouth. If you’d just been mouthy, or if you hadn’t tried…but hell, you gave me everything. Five minutes after I all but brutalized you, we walked into a hall full of shifters and one of them dared to touch you and instead of showing fear, you busted his nose—you had no weapons and still you fought.”
His mouth brushed over mine as he whispered, “You stood by the body of a dead kid, a wolf you didn’t know and I saw the grief in your eyes and it gutted me. You had no reason to care, but you did. I knew, then, even if the Alpha wasn’t issuing threats you would have done everything you had to do to find Doyle…that was when I really started to slip. But I’d already done the damage and I couldn’t undo it, could I?”
Reaching up, I laid my hand over his. “If you couldn’t undo the damage, pal, you wouldn’t be in bed with me.”
A smile tugged at his lips. “Well, there is that, I guess.”
He shifted his hand around and caught mine, lifting my wrist to his mouth. It was the one Jude had bitten. Even that single thought was enough to send a cold sliver of fear lancing through my mind.
Damon, the bastard, sensed it and a storm danced in his eyes. “Then the vampire showed up—I wanted to tell you then that I’d keep you safe, but how could I make you believe it when you were already scared of me? When you had every right to be afraid of the Alpha?”
Something tickled the back of my mind. The Alpha—
But before I could latch onto it, he continued. “And he bit you. I knew he had, knew there would be troubles. There will still be troubles. As soon as you leave this house—”