to howl. Shoulders shaking, he gave her pointers on a better technique and was grinning hard enough to crack his face by the time she collapsed into giggles.
He brought the Jeep to a stop in an isolated spot that should guarantee them privacy. It was too deep inside DarkRiver territory to be on any patrol routes, and even if a cat was prowling around nearby, Alexei’s scent was familiar enough that said cat would turn right around and go in another direction.
Wolves and leopards might not be natural allies, but in certain things they agreed. Intimate skin privileges were a private thing, not to be disturbed.
“It’s so still, so quiet.” Memory leaned forward to look out the windscreen. “I can’t see the moon, but the world’s all silver outside.”
A wind rustled the tree leaves at that instant, and he knew it had come from the mountains, would hold the kiss of the ice and the snow. Memory felt the cold. That decided him: playtime in the forest could wait for another day.
“Backseat,” he said, and when she frowned at him in an unspoken question, Alexei realized that he was leading his sweet E astray.
He smiled at her. “Please.”
Eyes narrowing in suspicion, she nonetheless did as he’d asked, crawling back there between the seats. He came around the outside. After pulling the back driver’s-side door shut behind himself, he put his hands on the bottom of his sweater to pull it off over his head. His T-shirt was next. Memory’s sucked-in breath was loud in the confines of the car, but when he threw aside the tee and looked at her, it was to see her shrugging off his jacket, her gaze locked on his chest.
A slow smile creeping across his face, Alexei leaned close . . . and growled at her.
“Don’t you growl at me,” she said, but she was laughing.
He pretended to bite at her while she finished ridding herself of his jacket. He was aware he was crowding her, and was ready to pull back at the first sign of distress, but Memory seemed to soak in his closeness.
Jacket off, she put her hands on his chest, stroking the fine pelt there. “You have fur,” she said, her teeth sinking into her lower lip as her fingers curled into him.
It was actually just a very fine layer of chest hair, but if Memory wanted to pet his fur, he wasn’t going to complain. He wasn’t a stupid wolf. Crowded up against a corner of the backseat, she let him pull one of her legs over his hip, then took her time learning the shape of his shoulders and chest. “Control” had long been Alexei’s watch word, but he’d never been petted with such unabashed delight in his life.
He was fucking putty in her hands.
When he slipped his hands to her waist and under her top, stroking the skin on her lower back, she raised her arms. Alexei fought back a shudder and shifted them so she was straddling him, his back to the leather-synth of the seat.
He’d thought he’d have to work his way up to such intimate contact, but if Memory was ready, he wasn’t going to be an asshole and puncture her confidence. His heart drumming against his chest, he tugged her top over her head and threw it aside with his T-shirt. Her body was all woman, but still too slender despite the tempting food he’d been leaving at her door, unable to stop taking care of her that way no matter how hard he’d tried to stay away.
“Did you eat the peach pie I left you?” He’d started putting her name on everything after the blueberry cake incident.
She scrunched up her nose at him. “Yes. I cursed your name with every bite.”
Grinning, he snapped his teeth at her while stroking his hands up and down the curve of her waist. “As long as you ate it,” he said in unhidden satisfaction before returning to his visual delectation of her body.
Her bra was fuchsia lace. It made his smile deepen, his heart fall even harder into her hands. Memory would never go for the sedate or the ordinary. Memory was fuchsia lace and sequined shoes and glitter-emblazoned shirts.
Memory was color and light and a primal joy in life.
Sliding his finger under one strap, he gloried in her shiver. She didn’t tell him to stop when he leaned in to kiss her throat, and his growl this time was an uncontrolled thing that came from his