The bond channel opened.
This was a door. A door that had been locked for months, rusted shut by grief and guilt and the words I’d used to destroy the woman now holding my hand.
It opened by inches. Warmth seeping through first, tentative, testing the spaces between us. Then deeper. Filling the cold places in my chest where the absence of her had lived since the day I’d stood in front of her and performed the worst act of my life.
My wolf settled into a stillness so complete that for three seconds I couldn’t distinguish between peace and shock.
I pressed my forehead to our joined hands, breathing.
“Solomon.” Her free hand found my jaw, tilting my face up. “Look at me.”
I looked.
Her eyes were bright, teary. The mismatched irises steady through the tears she was allowing herself because this space was private and this time, neither of us had an audience to perform for.
She kissed me.
Her mouth found mine with a softness that undid what remained of my composure. My hand released hers and found the back of her neck.
Fingers threading into her hair, pulling her closer, the kiss deepening that made my wolf press against my ribs with a hunger I no longer tried to contain. My tongue swept past her lips, tasting her, and the groan that escaped me vibrated against her mouth. She opened wider for me and I took everything she offered, sucking on her lower lip until it was swollen.
She tasted of the camp’s morning tea and the adrenaline from the fight and the salt of tears. Her fingers curled into the front of my shirt and pulled, dragging my body flush against hers. My hands slid down her back and gripped her waist, pressing her into me until there was nothing between us but fabric and the heat building beneath it.
My cock hardened against her thigh and she didn’t pull away. She pressed closer. I memorized the pressure. Memorized the sound she made when my mouth moved from hers to her jaw, sucking a bruise into the soft skin below her ear, the soft exhale that carried my name in a register I’d never heard from her before.
“Solomon.” Breathless. Against my temple. “We’re in your den.”
“Ourden.”
The correction left my mouth without permission. Her breath caught.
I kissed her again, harder this time, one hand fisting her hair to tilt her head back while the other slid beneath her shirt and spread across the bare skin of her lower back. The contact made her gasp into my mouth.
My thumb traced the curve of her spine and she rolled her hips against me, a slow grind that pulled a sound from my throat I didn’t recognize. I pressed back, letting her feel how hard she’d made me, and the whimper she breathed against my lips almost snapped the last thread of my restraint.
“Don’t start something we can’t finish,” she whispered. But her fingers were already tracing the scar along my jaw, her mouth following, pressing soft kisses against the raised skin.
“Then stop doing that.”
“No.”
A kick landed against my ribs. We both froze.
Mira looked down. The bump pressed between us, and the second kick came with enough force to register through my forearm where it rested against her waist.
“I think they have opinions,” Mira said.
“They have bad timing.” My forehead dropped against hers. “Percival’s influence, clearly.”
Real laughter escaped her. The sound echoed in my chest.
A third kick followed, softer. Three heartbeats returning to a rhythm that no longer carried the frantic energy of moments ago.
Suddenly, a shadow passed across the windbreak’s gap.
Brief and masked but I caught and recognized it.
Giselle.Through the narrow space between the panels, she would have seen us from that angle.
