Page 70 of Mane Rival in Store by Milly Taiden

“You’re being very careful.”

“Yes.”

“Stop.”

The fourth stage: the break.

His mouth found hers again and the carefulness shattered and what replaced it was hunger—direct, unfiltered, a low growl against her lips that she recognized from weeks of tells and notes and the running list she’d been building since a sidewalk in SoHo. His hands stopped gathering and started pulling. Her hips flush against his. Her back arched. Her fingers tightened in his hair and his entire body responded—a shudder that started at his scalp and ran the full length of him, the lion pressing against the surface until his pupils went feline and the light hit them at an angle that wasn’t human.

“Inside,” she breathed against his mouth.

He lifted her. It was effortless—six-three of supernatural strength picking up five-six of human stubbornness—and she wrapped her legs around his waist and kept her fingers in his hair because letting go was not an option, and he carried her through the glass door and across the private floor she’d barely seen and she was aware, distantly, of pale wood and linen and a bed that was too neatly made for a man who’d spent the past week sleeping like she had: badly, and in pieces.

He set her down on the bed. Stood over her. His hair was vertical—every strand standing at full attention, the bronze mane in human form, framing his face in a dark-gold halo. His chest was heaving. His eyes were half-human, half-animal, the blue lit from somewhere behind the iris.

“Last chance.” His voice was a ruin. Cracked, raw. “If you want to stop⁠—”

She pulled him down by the front of his shirt. “If you give me an exit speech, I will never forgive you.”

The fifth stage: surrender.

THIRTY-ONE

LARK

He kissed her neck. Her collarbone. The hollow at the base of her throat where her pulse hammered. Each kiss precise, reverent, placed with the focus of someone whose life was built on knowing the value of what he held. His mouth was hot. His hands tracked the curve of her waist, her hips, learning her, and from deep in his ribcage came a continuous, low hum she could feel through her skin. The private sound of a lion who had found the thing his entire body was oriented toward.

She pulled his shirt over his head. The claw rake from the night before—three shallow lines across his left shoulder, already healing at a speed that was distinctly not human—caught the light. She touched them. His breath hissed.

“Does it hurt?”

“No. It—” His jaw worked. “It’s sensitive. The healing is—” Another hiss as her fingers traced the edges. “You’re not helping.”

“I’m not trying to help. I’m investigating.” She kissed the uppermost line. His hips jerked involuntarily. “Your body heals from lion fights in twenty-four hours. My brain is making notes.”

“Your brain is making notes. During this.”

“My brain is always making notes. You should know this by now.” She kissed the second line. “Note one: the healing rate is remarkable. Note two: the scar tissue is sensitive to touch.” She kissed the third. “Note three: you made a sound when I did that and I intend to hear it again.”

He responded by removing her shirt with an efficiency that suggested he’d been thinking about this specific sequence of events with a level of planning he normally reserved for quarterly acquisitions. Her bra followed. His hands found her bare skin and stilled—fingers spread across her ribcage, palms absorbing the heat of her, and the focus in his face deepened into worship.

“You’re staring.”

“I’m studying.” His voice was low, wrecked, barely recognizable. His thumbs traced the undersides of her breasts—slow, testing, watching her reaction with the concentration of an expert learning a new medium. She arched into the touch and his pupils blew wide and the blue disappeared into black.

He bent his head. His mouth found her breast and she gasped—embarrassingly loud—and his hair brushed her skin and stood on end at every point of contact, each golden strand reaching toward her like a separate, sentient expression of want. His tongue was hot and slow and methodical, circling, tasting, and when he sealed his mouth over her nipple and sucked, the hum in his chest deepened until she could feel it through her own body, through the bed, through the base of her spine.

“Rune—”

He switched to the other breast. Same thorough care. Same unhurried pace that was making her hands shake and her hips roll and her vocabulary shrink to his name and a series of sounds that she would deny making if questioned later.

His mouth traveled lower. Kisses along her stomach, her hip bones, his hands moving ahead of his mouth to unfasten her trousers and slide them down her legs with the same focused efficiency he’d applied to every step—as if undressing her was a process he intended to execute flawlessly. Her underwear followed. He paused. Knelt between her legs on the too-neat bed and looked at her—all of her—and the expression on his face was naked hunger held at bay by a reverence that made her breath catch, because no one had ever looked at her like she was the answer to a question they’d spent their whole life asking.

“You’re staring again.”

“I’ll be staring for the rest of my life.”

Oh. That wasn’t fair. That was a weapon deployed without warning and she had no defense against sincerity from a man who didn’t know how to be anything else.