chest, he nudged his thigh a little higher. He’d slid it between hers and now it pressed up against the hot center of her—
His eyes blinked open.
He already knew who he held, her scent intimately familiar to him. Garnet’s golden hair was soft against his arm and shoulder, her body small and lithely feminine, her breathing even in sleep.
Kenji’s own heart, however, was slamming against his rib cage, every muscle in his body tense and his cock rock hard. He knew he had to pull away before she woke, but he couldn’t. His wolf didn’t want to go back to being cold and alone and without her. Something broke in him at even the idea of losing her when he was finally, finally holding her as he’d always hungered to do.
Moving with utmost care, he curled himself even tighter around her, breathed her in . . . and felt her shift. He slid away his thigh before she could ask him to, but instead of pulling away, she turned and cuddled into his chest, her own arm sliding over his ribs to curl against his back.
Not awake, he realized, just changing position.
Heart still hammering so hard it hurt, he nudged at her head with his arm. She lifted it without waking and he slid his arm under before curving it around her. His thigh, he pushed back between hers. It wasn’t sexual, despite his aching cock. He just wanted to be close to her, their limbs interlocked.
She didn’t stop any of it, didn’t even stir.
That wrecked him, betraying as it did a level of trust that wasn’t instinctive for a dominant predatory changeling of Garnet’s strength. He would never hurt her, of course he wouldn’t, but it meant everything that despite all the years and anger between them, she knew that truth so deeply that she could sleep without concern in his arms.
Nuzzling his chin on her hair, he closed his eyes and just sank into her scent, into the feel of her skin against his, her curves and her softness, and below that, a steely strength that called to the predator within him. His wolf knew bone deep who Garnet was to him, who she was meant to be . . . and it was because she meant so much that he’d let her go.
When she finally stirred, he didn’t move, not wanting to end this before he had to. Stroking her hand down his back, she yawned lazily before rubbing her cheek against his chest. “How’s your head?”
His heart, it filled his entire body, this huge, needy, painful thing. “Good. Did Lorenzo do me?”
A smile he saw because he’d brushed away the strands of hair stuck to her cheek. “Yeah, Lorenzo did you. All night.”
Grinning at the sheer rightness of playing with her, he rubbed his chin on her hair again. “I feel good.”
She continued to pet his back with a small, capable hand that unknowingly held his heart. “What’s up with not sharing skin privileges with anyone for a year?”
He went to ask her how she knew, shut his mouth before the words escaped. They were part of a pack. Secrets were hard to keep. “I just wanted to know if I could do it.”
Lines forming on her brow, Garnet drew back but didn’t pull away from him. Instead, she wriggled up until she could look him in the eye. “You’re lying to me.”
Yes, he was, but hell if he’d tell her the truth. That the reason he’d stopped sharing intimate skin privileges was because no one was her. No one would ever be his Garnet. “You know my family history,” he said instead. “Tanaka men have a constitutional inability to keep it in our pants.”
Garnet’s response was a growl of sound, her eyes molten gold. “Kenji, you’re a lieutenant. You know how to commit.”
“Before he retired, my dad’s father was a lieutenant, too,” he reminded her, telling himself to break this dangerous physical contact.
He couldn’t.
Having Garnet skin to skin against him was filling the dried-up well inside him, making him whole; he needed a little more. Just a little more. “His relationship with my grandmother lasted five years, just long enough to produce my dad. I love him but I’ve lost track of his lady friends at this point—though I do know he’s currently beating out my father for the sheer speed with which he goes through women.”
Garnet kept petting him and even if it was out of pity because of his touch-starved status, he’d take