Without warning, he swept her up into his arms.
She yelped, her hands clutching at his shoulders for balance. “What are you?—”
“Carrying you home.”
“I can walk perfectly well.”
“I know.” He kicked the laboratory door open and stepped into the morning sunlight. “I just enjoy carrying you.”
“Insufferable,” she muttered, but she was smiling as she said it. Her arms settled around his neck, her body relaxing against his chest with the ease of familiar intimacy.
The walk back to their cottage took only a few minutes. He prolonged it deliberately, taking the scenic route through the hedge maze, pausing to point out a bird’s nest he’d discovered in one of the flowering bushes. She exclaimed over the tiny speckled eggs with the same wonder she’d shown when she first saw the ocean, and something in his heart cracked a little wider.
She finds joy in everything,he thought.Even after everything she’s been through. Especially after everything she’s been through.
Their cottage came into view—a modest structure of local stone, with wide windows that let in the light she craved and a small porch where they often sat in the evenings, watching the stars emerge. It had been a storage building before Ember converted it, but now it held everything they needed: a bed large enough for two, a kitchen where she experimented with recipes from the books Ember provided, a sitting area where they could read or talk or simply be together.
Home.
The word still felt strange in his mind. He’d lived in pack settlements, in temporary camps, in a hundred different places that had served as shelter but never felt like anything more. Even his original pack—before Lysara’s manipulations had torn everything apart—had felt like his pack’s home, not his own.
This was different.
He pushed through the cottage door and finally set her down, though he didn’t release her entirely. His hands settled on her hips, holding her close.
“Now then,” he murmured against her hair. “About that breakfast.”
“I thought you said I needed food.”
“Food can wait a few minutes.”
He kissed her—soft at first, almost gentle, then deeper as she melted against him. She tasted like the mint leaves she chewed while she worked, and something sweeter beneath, something that was purely her. His beast stirred at the contact, the mating bond between them humming with warmth.
Two months of this, and kissing her still felt like a revelation.
“I thought,” she said against his lips, “you were concerned about my nutritional intake.”
“I’m a complex male. I can be concerned about multiple things.”
“Clearly.”
He trailed kisses down her jaw, across her cheek, along the delicate shell of her ear. She shivered in his arms, her fingers tightening on his shoulders. Pip made a disgusted sound andlaunched himself from her shoulder to the windowsill, where he pointedly turned his back on them.
“We’re traumatizing your creature,” he observed.
“He’ll survive. He’s very resilient.”
“Mm.” He nipped gently at the sensitive spot below her ear, savoring the small gasp it produced. “So are you.”
“Flatterer.”
“Truth-teller.”
She laughed, but there was a breathless quality to it now. He recognized the signs—the flush spreading across her cheeks, the way her pupils had dilated, the subtle change in her scent as arousal began building. Even after two months of learning her body, of discovering every way to bring her pleasure, he found fresh fascination in watching her respond to him.
He was just reaching for the fastenings of her laboratory coat when she pulled back.
“Wait.”
