"What can't you do?" I asked gently, pulling back the bedding and lying down on the sheets.
"I can't be gentle.
I know .
.
.
I know you need care, and I can't do that right now." He pulled open the door.
"I've got to go.
I'll send--" "If you leave me naked and waiting on the bed without making love to me, I'll--" I didn't get to finish the threat.
I think it was the word "naked," though maybe it was "bed," but before I finished my sentence, he was on me.
He was right; he wasn't gentle.
Up until that point in our relationship, our lovemaking had been passion tempered with humor and sweetness.
I'd been hurt and he'd been so careful of me.In the darkness of Warren's guest bedroom, sweetness and humor had no place in him.
And though there was care in his touch, he was anything but careful.
Not that he hurt me--quite the contrary.
But he was fire and need that went so far beyond simple desire that it consumed me--and like the phoenix, I found myself reborn in the crucible.
I met his urgency with my own, digging my fingers into the silk-covered stone of his arms as his sinful mouth tasted my skin wherever it fell.
He was hot and hard, his need forcing me to rise to meet his fire with my own.
Sweat dripped onto my skin, and the scent of it was an aphrodisiac because it was all Adam.
If he needed me, I needed him every bit as much.
He rose over me, closing his golden eyes as he pushed through me, into me, became a part of me with one heavy thrust.
Only when he was all the way in did he look at me again, and in that look was triumph and a claiming so basic that it should have scared me.
"Mine," he said, rocking his hips against my own in a move that was more about possession than passion.
I raised my chin and held his eyes in a challenge only I could make without consequences.
I tightened my belly and dug my heels into the mattress to give my own thrust power.
"Mine," I said.
Adam's wolf smiled at me and nipped my shoulder.
"I can live with that," he said.
And then he demonstrated what that possession would mean when it involved an Alpha werewolf who knew how to be patient and thorough when hunting coyotes.
I DREAMED I WALKED IN THE SNOW, BUT I WASN'T AFRAID.
There was a thick golden rope wrapped securely around me.