“You taste like honey,” he said, his voice wrecked. “Like the wild honey the bees make in the deepest part of the forest. I could spend hours between your thighs and never get enough.”
Heat flooded my cheeks, but I didn’t look away.
I could feel the hard length of him pressed against my side through his loincloth, proof of his own need, but he made no move to address it. This had been entirely about me.
I was undone, but not in a mortifying way. It felt like the lab moment I’d described to him on the balcony. Finding out I’d been speaking a language wrong my whole life and finally getting the pronunciation right.
He watched me with that expression I was still learning to read but getting closer to understanding.
Neither of us spoke.
Everything had changed between us, yet I wasn’t afraid. This was just the beginning, with a wide-open world ahead.
My enchanted pen lifted off the bedside table. It floated over to my notebook and scratched something across the page.
I didn’t look at what it wrote.
I didn’t need to.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
FERAL
The next morning, I woke before Victoria.
The room was quiet except for her breathing, steady and even against my chest. Dawn hadn’t broken yet, just the barest hint of gray touching the windows.
Something had changed between us. I’d stopped pretending I didn’t know what it was.
I eased out from under her carefully, the way I’d move through underbrush tracking prey. She made a small sound, her hand reaching for where I’d been, then curled into the warm spot I’d left on the mattress.
I stood beside the bed, watching her sleep as the sun crested the horizon. Her hair had come loose from whatever she’d done to it before bed, falling across the pillow in dark waves. One hand tucked under her cheek, the other still reaching.
My wolf rumbled, pleased.
I needed to move. Do something with the feeling building in my chest. Doing was the only language I knew.
I bathed and dressed quickly and left the suite before she could wake and find me standing over her like a lovesick fool.
I took the stairs down two at a time, my boots hitting the worn wood in a rhythm I’d walked a thousand times. The compound outside sat quiet in the early-dawn stillness. A few early risers strode through the clearing, heading toward the training grounds or morning patrols.
I told myself I was heading to the guard station because Kirk had left patrol reports there. That I needed to review them before our briefing.
The lie lasted until I turned, took the stairs back up to the second floor, and walked through the kitchen door.
Helen stood at the counter like usual, rolling out pastry dough with the same fierce attention she gave everything. She glanced up when I entered, flour dusting her forearms.
“Alpha.” Her tone stayed neutral. “You’re early this morning.”
“I have patrol reports to review.”
“I see.” She laid a thick coating of butter on the pastry dough and folded it carefully, setting it aside.
“I need a breakfast tray sent up.”
“The usual for you and your wife?”
“Yes. And…” I weighed whether to continue. “Include something for the squirrel.”
