belly slamming against her backside. She was dying, dying a slow death of pleasure overload. The bliss. The euphoria. Him.
Their rhythm increased, his grunts growing louder, closer together until he howled with pleasure, gripping her hips, slamming into her, then slowing, slowing until it was only their mingled pants, the heat of their sweat-slicked skin. The sky and the earth and the ground beneath them, still moving, rocking, pulsing in the same gentle undulations as their bodies.
The world returned slowly, dreamily as though they had been awake and only now were falling back to sleep.
He turned her, his eyes probing hers, moving over her face, looking for . . . what, she didn’t know. But whatever he found made his lips turn up, made his gaze gentle as he pulled her to him, nuzzling her neck, her hair, kissing her lips, licking the tears from her cheeks that she hadn’t realized were there. “You’re crying,” he said, but he didn’t sound upset.
“Yes.”
“Female wolves cry when they find their forever mate,” he said, smoothing her hair back.
She laughed softly. She was undeniably human—all too human most of the time—but maybe there was a thread of uninhibited wildness in her too. An instinctive recognition of her life mate.
He spent long minutes soothing her, loving her, kissing away her tears, nuzzling, nipping softly at her skin so that she laughed.
“I love you,” she said, nuzzling him back. “All of you. Maybe the wolf most of all, because he was the one who ensured you lived so you could love me when I arrived.”
The look on his face was filled with joy; Harper laughed with happiness. “I love you too,” he said. But then he went serious, his face falling. “They’re going to lock me up, Harper. I have to . . . I have to pay for what I did to one of the other boys who was left out here.”
“Oh Jak, no,” she whispered. She shook her head. “No one blames you for that. They saw the pictures, Jak. Agent Gallagher saw the video. They know what happened, that you were only defending yourself. No one’s going to lock you up.”
His eyes moved over her face for a moment as though he was having trouble believing her. “I’m not in trouble?”
“Of course you’re not. You’re the victim. The lone survivor.” She smiled. “People will write books about you someday, and you’ll be the hero.”
He looked at her in wonder, the relief in his expression so stark that tears sprung to her eyes again. He’d thought they would lock him in a cage? He had been prepared to pay for killing the other boy. What immense guilt he must carry with him. Guilt that only belonged at the doorstep of one man: Isaac Driscoll. Whoever had killed him, she was glad he was dead. She would have been tempted to kill him herself if he wasn’t.
She rolled in Jak’s arms, wrapping the blanket more tightly around them. They were on the hardwood floor, his sticky release drying on her thighs, and she’d never been more comfortable and content in her life.
They nuzzled some more, kissed, she languished in the feel of his rough, scarred male skin against hers, the heat of him in the cold cabin, the delectable earthy masculine smell. After a minute, she looked into his eyes, the worry she’d had nudging her, needing to be voiced. There was only honesty now, only truth. What they’d experienced together left no room for anything else. “I worry that as you learn and grow and change . . . as you become the man you’re meant to be, you’ll . . . leave me behind.” She lowered her eyes.
But he stroked her hair from her forehead and kissed her there, causing her to lift her chin and meet his gaze. “You think everyone you love will leave you behind.”
“I . . .” She looked away again but then raised her eyes, unable to look away for long.
“I understand,” he whispered, looking straight into her eyes. “People have left me too. Lied to me, betrayed me. I know I have a lot to learn about the world. But, Harper, I’m not a child. I’m a man, and I know who belongs to me, and who I belong to.” He paused for a moment, looking at her. “Did you know the trees speak to each other?”
She wrinkled her brow. “No.”
“They do. They tell secrets in their roots, those deep, dark places that can’t be seen.