was, she would surely be enthralled.
Dayn awoke near noon, when his internal clock warned that they didn’t dare rest much longer, in case their pursuers were still on the road.
In her sleep, Reda had turned toward him. Now, she was nestled close to his side, her head pillowed on the arm he had curled around her. Her breath was warm on his skin, tightening his nipples and sending tendrils of reaction lower down in his body. But those physical responses were tiny trickles compared to the deep wellspring of emotion that even now threatened to fill him up and spill over.
Affection, gratitude, relief, disquiet—there was all of that and more, a complicated mix that said he probably shouldn’t have made love with her, and definitely not as intensely as things had wound up getting…but at the same time he couldn’t regret the decision, or his eventual loss of control.
They had well and thoroughly loved each other with no pretenses, no expectations and the knowledge that they would go their separate ways at the arch, taking with them only good memories. And if that thought brought a twinge, he ignored it and focused on how damn good he felt suddenly—refreshed and recharged, and ready to take on the world.
Or to take on a pissed-off pack and a countdown to the night after tomorrow—the fourth night—as the case might be.
At that sobering reminder, he touched her shoulder. “Come, my sleeping beauty. It’s time to waken.”
He halfway expected her to jolt awake and panic at finding them in bed together. As responsive and exciting as his sweet Reda had been, he doubted she’d ever before taken a lover mere hours after meeting him, doubted she was accustomed to waking in a near-stranger’s arms. Their relationship, though, had perforce been compressed, accelerated.
She must have been closer to waking than he had thought, though, because she didn’t gasp or jump away from him. Instead, she smiled, eyes still closed, and said, “If I’m Sleeping Beauty, then my Prince Charming should wake me with a kiss.”
“You think I’m charming, then?” Without waiting for an answer, he leaned in and touched his lips to hers, a chaste press at first, then going deeper when her lips softened and parted beneath his.
Murmuring, she shifted closer to him and slid her arms around his neck, capturing him against her. The move tugged at him, reaching inside and filling a place he hadn’t even known was empty. Fierce joy raced through him as he moved over her, into her, pressing her into the mattress as he kissed her thoroughly, his body awakening to the reality of a lover, his lover.
Her soft moan made him want to pull her up and dance her in a mad whirl around the cabin; the gentle tug of her fingers in his hair made him want to sing at the top of his lungs, though he couldn’t hold a tune; and the feeling of her beneath him, her thighs cradling him as he swelled and hardened almost instantly despite having come inside her only a few hours before made him want to race out into the forest to hunt the most dangerous foe, solely so he could bring her a talisman of the kill. Though from what he’d heard, humans could be squeamish about such things. So maybe he would pick her wildflowers instead.
The sheer ridiculousness of it was suddenly very appealing. As was the thought of slipping inside her once more and rocking them both to oblivion. He could feel the slick wetness of her cleft against him and the excited race of her pulse beneath her soft, feminine skin. And although they needed to leave the cabin, he was dying to lose himself in her, with her.
Then, suddenly, her fingers were wrapped around him, guiding him. He stiffened, broke the kiss and groaned as she teased the tip of his hard shaft along her wet folds.
Pulling his head from hers, he looked down at the spread of her coppery curls and the glint of her blue eyes. “Gods, Reda. We don’t have much time.”
“I know.” She reached up and kissed his cheek. “So be quick.” And she curled a leg around his hips, and urged him home.
Groaning, he plunged into her, then hissed with pleasure as her heated wetness snugged around him, urging him on. He was already teetering at the edge of control when she arched up to meet him, and the liquid, heated friction snapped those last thin threads that said