“Sometimes I lose control around you.”His voice was careful.Measured.Like he was choosing each word with care.“There are parts of myself I usually keep locked down.Dark parts.Dangerous parts.You make me forget to hold them back.”
It wasn’t a real answer.I knew that.But I was too wrung out, too satisfied, too deeply in love to push for more.The soreness between my thighs was a pleasant ache, proof that this had been real, that I was changed, that I belonged to him now in a way I could never take back.
“I’m not afraid of your dark parts,” I said instead.
His laugh was soft and bitter.“You should be.”
“Well, I’m not.”
Silence settled over us, warm and thick as a blanket.I pressed my cheek to his chest, listening to his heartbeat.Feeling the rise and fall of his breath.
“I love you,” I said.
The words came out easier this time.Not desperate, like they’d been before.Just true.A simple statement of fact.
He didn’t say it back.
But he pressed a kiss to my hair, and his arms tightened around me, and when I looked up at him, his eyes were wet.
“Sleep,” he said softly.“I’ve got you.”
So I did.I let my eyes drift closed, let my body relax into his warmth, let the exhaustion of the night pull me under.I was sore and satisfied and utterly, completely safe.
The last thing I saw before sleep took me was his face in the firelight, watching me with an expression I couldn’t name.
But I was too tired to wonder why.
When I woke hours later, still tangled in his arms, his fingers were stroking through my hair.Slow, repetitive, like he’d been doing it for a long time.His eyes were fixed on my face, dark and unreadable, like a man memorizing something he expected to lose.
I was too drowsy to question it.Too warm and safe and satisfied to question it.
I closed my eyes and let sleep pull me under again, telling myself the grief I’d glimpsed was just a trick of the dying firelight.
29
RAPHAEL
I watched her sleep.
The fire had burned down to embers hours ago.Dawn was coming.And still I watched her.
She was curled against my side, one hand splayed across my chest, her breath soft and even against my skin.Her hair was tangled from everything we’d done, spread across my pillow like spilled honey.Her scent surrounded me.I breathed it in like a man trying to memorize the smell of home before exile.
I’d marked her.Inside and out.My scent was in her skin, my seed dried on her thighs, my teeth had been at her throat.The wolf had nearly claimed her.Had nearly completed the bond that would tie her to me forever.
I’d stopped it.Barely.
Mate.The wolf paced, restless and wanting.Ours.Keep her.Never let go.
I closed my eyes against the surge of longing.Against the bone-deep certainty that she belonged here, in my arms, in my bed, in my life.That she was mine in every way that mattered.
That was exactly why she had to go.
No.The wolf’s protest was immediate, sharp.Wrong.She stays.We protect.We keep.
I’d been awake all night.Watching her.Memorizing the curve of her cheek, the flutter of her lashes, the small sounds she made in her sleep.The way her fingers twitched against my chest when she dreamed.The way her breath hitched and then settled.The warmth of her body pressed against mine, so trusting, so unaware of what was coming.
I traced the line of her shoulder with my eyes.The marks I’d left on her skin.The faint bruise at her throat where my teeth had pressed too hard.Evidence of what we’d done.Evidence of what I’d almost let the wolf do.
