Page 46

I’d spent years going through the protocol on other people. Now I wanted to be seen.

“You need to verify who I am before you accept me as pack,” I said.

Conan remained still. Then understanding dawned in his face, slow and bright, and his eyes flickered gold.

“Checkpoint one,” he said quietly. “The eyes.” He used the words he’d heard from me.

I tipped my chin up and didn’t blink. He stepped close and looked into my eyes for a long time. Longer than the protocol needed.

“Gray,” he said. “Like a rainstorm. Observed and stated.”

“So that I can see you,” I said.

His breath caught. Those were the words he’d given me in the cottage that first morning.

“Checkpoint two. The ears.”

He bent his head and put his mouth beside my ear. I didn’t know what he’d say. There was no protocol for this part. I waited, and felt his breath against my skin, and then he whispered, so low I almost didn’t hear it.

“Why did I open the door to the cottage?”

I closed my eyes. “So that I can hear you.”

“And did you listen?”

“Yes,” I whispered back.

He drew back. His eyes were bright with gold.

“Checkpoint three. The hands.”

I held out my wrists. He took them one at a time, the way I’d taken his, his thumb resting over my pulse. He turned them over. He looked at the healing cut on my forearm, the blisters on my palms from digging graves, the faint old line on my left wrist where the bone had broken at fourteen. He bent his head and kissed each one.

Then he laced his fingers through mine.

“So that I can hold you,” I said.

“Checkpoint four.” His voice had gone low and rough. “The teeth.”

I didn’t look for his teeth. Instead, I stepped in close, tipped my head to the side, and bared my throat to him. The place his teeth had grazed before, which had both terrified and thrilled me.

I offered it to him and touched his mouth. “So that you can mark me.”

The sound that came from him was a low vibration, somewhere between a groan and a sob. His hands came up, trembling slightly, and he cradled my face.

He bent down and pressed his forehead to mine. “Are you sure?”

My heart beat as fast as my racing breath. The warmth of his hands and his forehead touching mine calmed me.

I took a deep, shaky inhale, found my courage, and voiced my choice. “Yes.” And then louder, “Without a doubt, yes. I want to be part of your pack, part of your life, and…”—I paused—”your mate.”

We stayed like that for several seconds, foreheads touching, breath coming fast. Then he kissed me.

It was slow at first, and then moved fast. He lifted me off my feet, and I wrapped my legs around him. He carried me through the doorway into the bedroom and laid me down on the furs. The coat came off first, and then our clothes.

This time there was no hurry. No army on the road. No grandmother in a tent. Just the sunlight spilling through the parted slats, streaming gold across his scarred chest, and the smell of cedar. He moved his hands over me slowly, like he had the rest of his life to learn every inch.

Conan kissed his way down my body with devastating patience, lingering at every scar, every bruise from the battle, until I was arching off the furs and begging. When he finally settled between my thighs and tasted me, it wasn’t the fierce hunger of that first night. It was slow, reverent, relentless. He held my hips down and took me apart one long stroke of his tongue at a time, until I came with my fingers knotted in his hair and his name ragged from my throat. He slowed but didn’t stop, until I came again, harder this time, with the world whiting out at the edges.