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“So, you kiss Marisol like that as well?”

I shrugged again, my lips twitching.

“Your hand is on my boob.”

“It has blood on it.” I moved the cloth over it, then did the same to the other side and had to fight my smile of triumph when she sucked in a breath. “So does this one.”

She rolled her eyes, even as her face got darker and her breathing grew choppier. “Okay, Mr. Suds, I think they’re clean enough now.”

I said nothing and washed her belly and thighs. She wasn’t the only one having trouble breathing normally. But as I was finishing up, I felt her weight lean on me more heavily, and I could feel her limbs trembling. She was exhausted, in pain, and I was in here feeling her up.

Fuck.

I quickly rinsed her down, switched off the water, and grabbed a towel. I slung it around her and picked her up, carrying her back to the bedroom. She didn’t protest this time, and that told me more than anything just how tired she was.

Sitting her on the bed, I got one of my shirts and pulled it over her head, then used the towel to wring as much water from her hair as I could. I shoved back the covers and helped her lay back.

She opened her mouth, to argue about something, no doubt. “Sleep, Iris,” I said, getting my words in first and started to pull away.

She grabbed my hand. “I’m scared to close my eyes,” she whispered.

I could only imagine what they’d done to her in that cave, but it had to be bad for her to admit that to me. I could see the terror in her beautiful eyes. Horrors I could only imagine.

“Will you stay with me? Wake me if I look like I’m having a nightmare?”

“Yeah,” I said before she even finished asking, because there was nowhere else I wanted to be. I’d planned on staying in here with her, anyway. My wolf wouldn’t allow me to do anything else.

I climbed onto the bed beside her. That probably wasn’t what she had in mind, there was a chair right there, but I needed to be closer to her than that.

She didn’t tell me to back off, though. No, she pressed deeper into me when I moved in behind her. Giving in to the all-consuming force between us.

“Thank you, Draven,” she said softly a few minutes later, her voice slightly slurred from fatigue. “I’ll repay you for all you’ve done. F-for everything, I promise…”

“Shh, don’t worry about any of that now, petal. Just close your eyes, I’m not going anywhere.”

She nodded and her eyes were closed a moment later, her breath slowing, her body pressing deeper still into mine.

I watched her sleep.

There was nothing that could pull me from this room at that moment. It scared me and filled me up in a way I’d never experienced before. How could this little witch, this pain in my ass, the ancestor of my most hated enemies, be the one to bring me the kind of peace I’d only dreamed about while trapped in those woods for over three hundred years.

I didn’t understand it. But it was fact.

She was mine.

When she woke with a scream an hour later, I pulled her into my arms and held her tight. “I’m here, go back to sleep. No one’s going to hurt you here. I won’t let them.”

She was out again a moment later, but this time she hung onto me in return, like she had after I’d found her, as if seeking comfort from me was the most natural thing in the world—as if I was her lifeline.

Iris needed me. Almost as much as I needed her, of that, I was positive.

And I was keeping her.

No matter what.

CHAPTER 19

Iris