he’d never let loose and hurt her.
“We can learn together,” Ellison said, breath against her lips.
Maria formed an unpracticed pucker, her blood warming as Ellison responded with light pressure. His hand, shirt still dangling from it, went to the tree, his lips firming against her mouth.
Maria felt the strength of his entire body through the kiss, like a hum in the air between them as Ellison licked softly across her lips. She tasted salt and coffee on him, and a bite of himself.
She clenched her hands at her sides. She could barely breathe, nothing existing but Ellison’s lips connecting with hers, his mouth tenderly prying hers open, his fingers working under her braid, loosening it.
Another kiss, another slide of his tongue between her lips. Maria flicked her tongue over his in answer, the velvet heat of it stealing her breath.
She should be afraid. She’d been afraid for such a long time. Ellison stood over her, his body against hers, pinning her with his mouth, his presence, himself. Maria should be afraid and want to duck away from him, to run, but she stayed, letting her hand steal to his chest.
She warmed as she contacted the smooth heat of his bare skin, the wiry curls that dusted his chest. She found his heartbeat, his heart drumming as rapidly as hers.
Maria slid her hand up to his neck, feeling the Collar around his throat, the raw skin it had burned. He’d been hurt, while he’d fought for Olaf, but he hadn’t stopped until Olaf was safe. She didn’t understand the whole story of what had happened inside the culvert, but she was too full of Ellison’s taste and warmth to break away and ask.
He laced his fingers through her hair, caressing her neck as he deepened the kiss. Heat, sunlight, everything that was good and warm—Ellison.
Ellison slid his hand down her neck to her back, the other still supporting him against the tree, the softness of his dangling shirt brushing her shoulder. Maria leaned into his embrace, the sweetness of his kiss unknotting her stomach. She flowed into comfort, into wanting.
A small growl sounded, then air whooshed by her. Ellison broke the kiss, his legs bending as the whirlwind of Olaf smacked the backs of his knees.
“Hey.” Ellison turned around, his big hand still steady against Maria. He’d never let her fall.
Olaf shook himself like a dog and rose up into the form of a small boy with white hair and dark eyes. “I’m hungry!”
Maria sucked in a breath, the taste of Ellison lingering and heady. “You already had breakfast, Olaf.”
“But I want pancakes. Can we go see Sean? Where’s Tiger?”
Olaf rarely spoke much—the poor kid had watched his parents be shot to death. To have three or four sentences in a row come out of his mouth was unusual.
“Tiger’s walking Broderick home,” Ellison said. He straightened up from the tree, but he didn’t take his arm from around Maria. “We’ll walk with Maria to Sean’s house and hit him up for pancakes. All right?”
“Yay!” Olaf grabbed Maria’s hand. “Were those men trying to kidnap me, Uncle Ellison?”
“Kidnap?” Maria’s eyes widened, some of the warmth evaporating. “What happened?”
“Some men tried to grab me. I smacked them.” Olaf danced back, swatting with his hands as he would his bear paws.
Ellison looked grim. “Guys in an expensive SUV,” he said. “Their tranq gun was top of the line too.”
Olaf had opened Maria’s bag and was pulling out his clothes. “Why were they trying to kidnap me?”
“I have some ideas,” Ellison said.
Maria bent down to help Olaf pull his shirt over his head. “We need to get him home.”
“But Ellison chased them off,” Olaf said, his rumpled head appearing through the shirt’s neckband. “He fought them with his wolf.” He growled again and punched the air, his shirtsleeves flailing. “And then Tiger came. It was awesome.”
Maria grabbed Olaf’s hands and thrust them inside the sleeves. “Home. Now.”
She tried to berate herself for stopping to kiss Ellison instead of taking Olaf to safety, but the imprint of Ellison’s lips remained on hers. The kiss had opened something inside her, as did the smile Ellison sent her now as he caught Olaf’s other hand.
What had started to open, Maria never wanted to close again.
***
“You got the license number, then?” Dylan Morrissey, who showed his nearly three hundred years of age only by the gray-flecked hair at his temples, gave Ellison his powerful alpha stare.
Dylan was no longer leader of Shiftertown, but he was still one of the