One of Liam’s hands came up to my face, his fingers cradling my chin, angling it towardhim.
“You can’t leave,” he said, his voice a huskywhisper.
“Whynot?”
His warm breath rushed over my face. “Because then I’d spend my days tracking you down instead of focusing on the pack. What sort of Alpha would that makeme?”
I lowered my lashes. “You think they’d make you track medown?”
“No one would make me doit.”
The room was so quiet I heard himswallow.
“Do you…feelanything for me…besides contempt?” His lips worked on a smile but tumbled nervously back into a straightline.
“Would it change anything if Idid?”
Emotion flared over his face, fast and bright like lightning. “It would changeeverything.” He spoke the last word so slowly goose bumps erupted over my bare legs and arms, over the slice of bare stomach peeking between my sleep shorts and tank top. “Doyou?”
The goose bumps breached my skin and skittered over my ribs. “What do youthink?”
“I don’t want to think; I want to know. Do you?” Even though his grip on my chin was gentle, his fingers were not. They dipped into my skin as though trying to leavemarks.
“Yes,” Iwhispered.
Before my next heartbeat, he’d splayed both his hands on my hips, lifted me, and propped me onto his lap. I bent my knees around his thighs. And then one of his hands was in my hair, his other on the base of my spine. And his lips…his lips were on mine, hard and soft, punishing andkind.
A series of explosions went off inme.
I was kissing LiamKolane.
Liam Kolane was kissingme.
When his tongue swept over the seam of my mouth, my entire body rocked with a shiver. My hands, which had been resting lightly on his biceps, reached up to grip his shoulders. I burrowed my fingertips into his t-shirt, afraid that if I loosened my grip, I would tumble offhim.
I parted my lips and took his tongue in. He growled into my mouth, his hands pressing harder into my skin. In his bruising grip, he scooped me up and stood. I locked my legs around him, locked my mouth on his. He walked to one side of the bed, knelt on the mattress, then lowered my body beneath his. Slowly I untangled my legs from around his waist and stretched them out underneath him. He braced himself on his forearms and pressed his lips against mine, tangling his tongue withmine.
Kissing Liam Kolane felt like running through a starlit field in my wolf form—the purest form of power and sensation there existed in this vast, darkworld.
I ran my fingers over the runnel of his spine, then dipped my hands beneath the fabric of his black t-shirt to touch the warm, tanned skin I’d barely ever dared glimpse. His muscles roiled underneath my exploring hands; tendons pinched, fleshtensed.
He broke thekiss.
“Not fair,” he whisperedhoarsely.
I arched aneyebrow.
He rolled me over so that I was on top, so that his big hands could slip underneath my tanktop.
“I’ve been dying to touch you, Ness. Every fucking inch of you. Myturn.”
His hands stroked my spine, the sides of my body, the indents of my waist before traveling upward, his thumbs trailing over my stomach, my ribcage, the underside of my breasts, stilling on my nipples. His touch sent so many tremors through my bent arms that I almost collapsed over him. He drew a line of kisses from the edge of my jaw all the way down to the hollow of mycollarbone.
I moaned. Embarrassingly loud. And not justonce.
He fit his mouth back over mine and swallowed the rest of my sounds, then slid his thumbs backdown.
“You are so fucking perfect,” he murmured against mylips.
