the core of her femwolf.
He lowered his head and silenced her continuing arguments, filled as they were with deceit.
Did she even believe herself?
He did not think she could be that deluded, but then Gart had proven just how easily even Chrechte might blind themselves to truth.
Just as he expected, despite all Ciara’s claims to the contrary, her lips went soft and parted immediately against his. She wanted him true enough. She might even crave his touch as much as he did touching her.
Terror pounded in Ciara’s heart, but even the fear that had so many years to grow strong could not overwhelm her natural response to her dragon shifter. Her wolf demanded the chance to touch and scent the man holding her so close to his heart.
She broke her mouth from his in a last attempt at defiance. “I am not mating you.”
The words sounded like the lie they were, even to her own ears. Her body strained toward the man her wolf had deemed mate, while her heart beat for the chance to join more than their bodies in mating.
’Twas not fair. Nor right, that she should be so at risk for loss, but the most stubborn will in the world could not deny the instincts and emotions roiling through her.
He laughed and shook his head, as if amazed at her audacity, so clearly not deceived by her best attempts. “In the morning, you can tell me that again.”
She could try. In the morning, Ciara could fight her wolf’s needs and instincts, and she might even win for a time. But she knew deep in her heart that by tomorrow it would be too late to hope to return to the woman with the stone-encased heart.
Tonight, she would give in to the dragon and he would finish the work he began when the first crack happened in the granite around her once-shattered heart.
She acknowledged aloud, “Tomorrow will be too late.”
“Aye, it will.” His amber gaze challenged her to deny him regardless.
Her wolf growled, not at him, but at Ciara and she knew she was lost. She tilted her head and reconnected their mouths, giving her acquiescence with desperate lips.
He took the kiss like the prince of the Chrechte that he was, with power and possession. His mouth slanted over hers until the last vestiges of her fear drowned under his passion and she could have cried with gratitude. The dread she had lived with since the final loss of her birth family had become a burden almost too heavy to bear.
Continuing the crooning sounds he’d used earlier to calm her, Eirik set Ciara on her feet. Though he kept their mouths fused, his body bowed over hers, his arms encasing her in a way that both excited her and made her feel safe.
She let that feeling of safety wash through her like a cleansing tide. If he could give her this sense of peace, it was almost worth the pain that would inevitably follow.
Finished with thinking, she focused entirely on the sensations he elicited in her with his kiss.
Her hands went to his chest of their own accord, sliding over hard muscles and brushing the tiny nubs they found there. His big body shuddered at the contact and she had to do it again, circling her fingertips around his small male nipples.
Then she traced the lines of the leather straps that held his sword scabbards to his back. They crisscrossed the golden skin of his chest in the most fascinating way. She followed each line, brushing over the brown disks of his nipples again, but moving on as she explored the delicious combination of the leather and his smooth skin.
With a growl he tore his mouth from hers. “Do that again.”
“What?” she asked in a husky voice she barely recognized as her own.
“Touch me there.” He grabbed one of her hands and guided it to rest over his hardened nub.
She did, no thought to the contrary. Circling and pinching the tender flesh, she exulted in the power she exerted over this giant warrior who shared his nature with both dragon and raven as he shivered with each caress.
“Yes.” He threw his head back, pleasure etched in every harsh line of his face. “Excite me as only you can, faolán.”
She let her hands explore every spot she could reach, but now the leather straps from his sword scabbards were in her way. “Take these off.”
“Aye.” The look he gave her was hewn from the granite that had used to protect