"How bad is it for you?"
He tensed as she stepped into the bedroom. He had been aware of her movement through the house, the scent of her, like summer in the mountains, flowing toward him.
"Like I said, I'll survive." He shrugged.
"Can I touch you then?"
Agony ripped through him.
"No." He had to force the word out. "Not yet, Haley."
"If it's not that bad, then you could stand for me to touch you," she whispered. "Why are you lying to me, Noble?" He clenched his jaw as she moved closer.
"Wrong time to push this," he growled, turning on her, glaring down at her. There was no fear in her eyes, though he knew he must look more like an animal than the man he tried to be. The hunger was nearly out of control. As long as he kept a careful distance between them, then he survived it, but Haley wasn't keeping that distance.
She flowed toward him, dressed in soft pants and a softer sweater. She looked like an angel coming toward him, and he wanted her with a force that had nothing to do with innocence.
"The wrong time to push it?" she asked him then. "You're hurting, aren't you?" He'd gone past hurting last night. He was to the point that if she touched him, if she pushed him, he was going to take. And he wouldn't stop taking until all the need burning inside him was sated.
"Do I look like I'm hurting?" He wanted her, not her pity.
"You look just as arrogant and as forceful as you ever have," she told him as she trailed her fingers over the footboard of the bed and stared back at him. "Maybe I'm the one hurting, and I need to know if it's the same for you."
He could smell her arousal. It wasn't yet scented with mating heat, but the alluring scent of her, the sense of her need, the pulsing tension that seemed to throb through her body snared his senses like a carefully laid trap.
"I ache to my back teeth to touch you," he snarled back at her. "Is that what you want to hear? My c**k feels like someone's sliced it open I want you so damned bad. Is that hurting enough for you, Haley?" Her stormy eyes darkened, her breathing hitched. "I need . . ." she swallowed tightly. "I need you, Noble, and that need terrifies me. I've never ached for anyone like this. I've never wanted anyone like this. And I'm scared. I'm terrified you'll walk away, be taken away, or decide later this wasn't what you wanted, despite what you say about the hormone. I'm scared of reaching out to someone who might only want me because he has to protect me, or who may grow tired of having a woman weaker than he is. I'm not a breed." She shook her head as her eyes glittered with dampness. "I'm not strong like a breed woman is, and I'm not as courageous, or as adventurous."
He jerked her to him. "Not courageous or adventurous?" he rasped. "What the hell are you then? You risked your life for Sanctuary, and now you're standing here with me, knowing what I could do to you. What is that, Haley?"
Her lips trembled. "Insanity. And I've been crazy about you since the moment you walked in the library and stared at me as though you knew me. As though you felt that same sense of knowledge that I did."
He stared back at her in shock.
"I've never wanted anything, never needed anyone like I need you," she told him, reaching up, her fingers touching his lips. "Show me, Noble. Show me how to be your mate."
Chapter 8
She had spent the day going over it. She had thought it to death, reasoned it around every corner and curve she could reason it around, and come to the same ending each time. If she walked away from this, if she let him walk away, she would never forgive herself.
Like Noble, she had feared for so long that she would never find that feeling that something or someone belonged just to her. That one heart beat for her, her heart for him. For a year she had kept her distance, but only because Noble had kept his. It would have taken very little for her to go into his arms.
The mating heat was a frightening prospect. The tabloid stories, if they were even 80 percent true, were enough to make any woman pause. But at least she had an idea what to expect, she told herself as she stared back at him. At least she had a chance of finding that unknown something she had been waiting for so long.
"This isn't like last night, Haley," he warned her. "There's no stepping into this and pulling back. Do you understand me? Once I kiss you, it starts. I promise you, stopping won't be a part of what comes later."
"I understand that." She nodded. And she did, she hoped. Yet he still stood there, staring at her, his expression tight, arrogant, fierce.
She gripped the hem of her sweater and, as he watched, pulled it over her head and dropped it to the floor. She wasn't wearing a camisole today. She wasn't even wearing a bra. Her br**sts were swollen with need though, her ni**les standing out, hard and desperate for his touch. She licked her lips and gripped the elastic band of her cotton pants.
"Not the panties," he growled. "Leave them on."
Her heart raced in her chest as she remembered the sight of him holding her panties to his face, inhaling the scent of her the night before.
Gripping just the waist of the pants, she eased them over her legs and stood before him in nothing but the thin silk-and-lace panties she wore now.
She shivered as the winds howled outside, and inside, the bedroom filled with steamy, erotic lust. His black eyes moved over her body as he sat down in the chair next to him slowly and lifted one booted foot to his knee.
He unlaced his boots slowly, watching her, simply staring at her, stroking her body with his gaze as she felt her breathing constrict in her chest.