I’m still studying the maps an hour later when the bedroom door opens again.
Caelan stands in the doorway wearing nothing but one of my shirts. The fabric falls to mid-thigh, leaving her legs bare. Her hair settles around her shoulders, and the look she gives me makes my breath catch.
“I thought you were going to sleep,” I manage.
“I tried. I couldn’t stop thinking.”
“About your friend?”
“About you.” She takes a step into the room, then another. “About us. About everything I’ve been too scared to admit since this whole thing started.”
My heart kicks against my ribs, harder the closer she gets.
“I’ve been protecting myself.” She keeps walking until she’s standing right in front of me. “Holding back because I was angry and confused and terrified of what it meant to want someone who started out as my enemy. But I’m tired of it, Patrick. I’m tired of protecting myself from something that might not even be a threat anymore.”
I don’t dare move. Don’t dare breathe. “What are you saying?”
She reaches out and presses her palm flat against my chest, right over my heart. The touch burns through my shirt and brands itself into my skin.
“I’m saying that I don’t know if this is love yet, but I know that I don’t want to lose you before I have a chance to find out.” Her eyes find mine, and I see everything she’s feeling reflected in their pale blue depths. Fear and hope and something else that makes my wolf howl. “You’re about to walk into Thornridge territory and risk your life to save people you barely know. And I realized tonight that if something happened to you, if you didn’tcome back, I would never forgive myself for wasting the time we had on being afraid.”
“Nothing is going to happen to me.”
“You don’t know that.” She fists her hands in my shirt, pulling me closer. “But I know that I want to stop fighting this. I want to stop pretending that you’re just some obligation I’m stuck with because of a forced marriage. You’re more than that, Patrick. You’ve been more than that for a while now.”
I cup her face in my hands, tilting it up so I can see every emotion playing across her features. “Caelan, I need you to be sure. Whatever happens, I need to know that this is what you actually want. Not because you’re scared or feeling guilty or caught up in the moment.”
She rises on her toes and presses her mouth to mine.
I wrap my arms around her waist and haul her against me, and she makes a sound in the back of her throat that makes my cock spring to life. I pour everything I feel for her into the press of lips and slide of tongues, trying to show her what I don’t have words for yet.
She tastes like the wine she drank at dinner as I thread my fingers through her hair and angle her head back, giving myself better access to her mouth while her hands clutch at my shoulders.
When we finally break apart to breathe, her lips are swollen and her eyes are dazed, and I make a silent vow to whatever gods might be listening: I will survive this mission. I will come back to her. I will give her all the time she needs to figure out what this is between us.
Chapter 21 - Caelan
Patrick kisses me like I’m the only thing keeping him tethered to this world.
He frames my face with his hands, holding me steady while he moves his mouth against mine with a hunger that steals the breath from my lungs. I grab his shoulders and haul him closer, because I need to feel him against me. I need proof that he’s real and here, and mine for however long fate decides to let me keep him.
When we finally break apart, we’re both gasping, and he rests his forehead against mine.
“Are you sure?” he asks with a voice rough from the strain it’s taking him to hold back. “Because once we do this, I’m not going to be able to let you go.”
“I don’t want you to let me go.”
Something changes in his amber eyes. A decision has been made; a line has been crossed. He takes my hand and leads me toward the bedroom, and I follow without protest, my heart hammering against my ribs with every step.
Patrick turns to face me, and for a moment, we just stand there with everything we haven’t said filling the space between us. We’ve done this before, twice now, but tonight feels different. Tonight, I came to him with my walls down and my fears laid bare, and that changes everything.
He reaches for the hem of my shirt—his shirt, the one I stole from his drawer—and I lift my arms to help him pull it over my head. Goosebumps prickle across my skin as he tosses the fabric aside, and I watch his face as he takes me in.
“I’ll never get tired of looking at you,” he whispers, and the sincerity in his voice makes my chest ache. “Every time feels like the first time.”
He’s seen me naked before. He’s touched every inch of me, learned the landscape of my body when we fucked in his hotel room and again at the cabin. But the way he looks at me now holds something deeper than simple desire. There’s reverence there, and wonder, and a possessiveness that should frighten me, but doesn’t.
“Patrick.” I reach for him, needing to touch, needing to feel his skin against mine. “Stop looking at me like that and do something about it.”
