“Next month?”
I think of the guards who died at the mansion. The ones in wolf form struck down in the grounds. The ones inside, overwhelmed before they could shift. Faces I only knew in passing. I will learn their names properly now, too late.
“Not next month,” I say quietly. “There’s going to be a funeral. A mass one, to honor everyone we lost in the attack. That comes first.”
Kain is still for a moment before he nods. “The month after.”
“The month after,” I agree.
He looks at me. I watch as his expression shifts, marveling at the quiet intensity of a man who has a great many things he wants to say and is choosing this one: “I love you.”
The words land in my chest, heavy and warm and entirely certain. “I love you,” I say back.
Then, he kisses me. It starts out softly. Just his mouth on mine, unhurried, one hand still cupping my face. I kiss him back with the same gentleness, my palms sliding up his chest to his shoulders, and for a moment, that’s all there is—just this, just us, just the fact that we are both here and breathing and alive.
He says it again against my lips. “I love you.”
“I love you,” I breathe back, but the words come out differently this time—urgent, desperate, ten years of grief and distance and longing compressed into three syllables.
His hand moves from my face to my hair, fingers curling, and the kiss deepens.
He stands, lifting me with him, and I wrap my legs around his waist and hold on. He carries me to the bedroom with more steadiness than a man recovering from a stab wound to the heart has any right to, and I press my mouth to his jaw, his throat, the curve of his shoulder.
“You should be resting,” I manage to murmur.
“Later,” he says.
He lowers me onto the bed and follows me down, his weight settling over me carefully and affectionately. His eyes find mine in the low light, and he looks at me the way he did out on that grass—like I am the one thing worth surviving for.
He kisses me deeply, his hands moving to the hem of my shirt. He takes his time, his hands sliding up my sides as he lifts it over my head, fingers warm against my skin. His eyes move over me, and what I see in them is not urgency—not yet—but something more deliberate than that. Like he is making a point of looking. Like after everything, he wants to take stock of what he has.
I reach for his shirt in return, and he lets me unbutton it and push it off his shoulders. The old scars are there, the same ones I’ve pressed my lips to. I spread my hands over his chest and feel his heartbeat, steady and strong beneath my palms.
He’s alive. He’s alive, he’s here, and he’s mine.
He leans down and kisses my collarbone. My shoulder. The curve of my neck just below his mark—and I feel the bond flare at the contact, warmth blooming through it, his sensations and mine looping back on each other until I can’t fully separate them.
I arch into him.
His mouth moves lower, kissing down the center of my chest, taking his time with each breath of attention. When his lips close around my nipple, I gasp, my hands flying to his hair. He takes his time there, too; he is slow, thorough, drawing soft sounds from me that I don’t try to hold back.
“Kain…”
He hums against my skin, the vibration of it running through me, and moves lower. His hands pull my jeans over my hips, down my legs, and off. He settles between my thighs and looks up at me, his eyes dark and patient.
“I love you,” he says, and then his mouth finds me.
I cry out. My head falls back against the pillow, and my fingers tighten in his hair. He is unhurried and deliberate and completely, devastatingly thorough. He reads me by instinct, by attention, by the bond carrying back what works and what works better. Pleasure builds in long, deep waves that leave me trembling.
“Kain, please…”
He brings me over the edge gradually, holding me there as my back bows off the mattress and his name leaves my mouth in pieces.
When I come back down, he is kissing his way back up my body. I reach for him, pull him up to my mouth, and kiss him deeply. I can taste myself on his lips, and it makes heat flood through me all over again.
“I need you,” I say against his mouth. “Now. Please.”
He reaches between us, positioning himself, and when he enters me, it is slowly—a long, steady push that I feel everywhere. He stills when he’s fully seated, and my breath goes out of me in a rush.
