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This time, I know exactly what I’m choosing.

My hands find his shirt, and I pull rather than push. He makes a low sound against my mouth that my wolf answers from somewhere deep in my chest, and the fire pops, and the woods are dark, and I stop thinking about walls entirely.

12

NASH

She tastes like woodsmoke and jasmine and two years of wondering if I’d imagined how delicious she tastes. The reality is better than I remember.

I take my time.

That’s the thing she doesn’t know yet—that I’ve thought about this. Not just the wanting of it, though that’s been a constant low-frequency hum since the moment she walked back into my life in that corridor. But the how of it. The specific intention I’ve carried around like something precious and breakable: that if I ever had her again, it would be nothing like the first time.

The first time was urgent. Stolen. Two people who knew it was temporary, allowing themselves one night of pleasure before going back to their separate lives. It was extraordinary, and it wasn’t enough, and I’ve known both those things for two years.

This time, I’m going to learn every inch of her before I’m done.

I drag my blanket closer with one hand and lower her onto it slowly, one hand cradling her head, and she lets me—which is its own kind of gift, Mia letting anyone guide her anywhere. The fire is low and warm behind us, throwing amber light across her face, and I hold myself above her for a moment, just looking.

She looks back at me with those green eyes that are her wolf and her real self and everything in between. Her expression is open, almost uncertain, stripped of the careful management she applies to everything else.

“Nash,” she says. Quiet. Unsteady.

“I’ve got you,” I say.

Something in her exhales.

I kiss her again. Slow this time, no urgency, just the specific pleasure of her mouth and the way her hand comes up to the back of my neck like she’s decided to stop fighting it. I learn the shape of her by touch: the line of her jaw, the curve of her shoulder, the place below her ear that makes her breath catch when I find it, which I file away with the focused attention of someone building a map he intends to memorize.

She makes a sound against my mouth. Small. Involuntary. The same kind she made this morning over the rabbit that she was immediately embarrassed about, except this time, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about, and I intend to earn as many of those sounds as she’ll give me.

I work my way down her throat. Her collarbone. The soft skin at the base of her neck where her pulse is fluttering. She arches slightly into me, and I take my time there, too, because she’s been running at full speed for so long and somebody ought to make her stop.

“You’re doing this on purpose,” she says. Her voice has gone lower. Slightly smoky.

“Doing what?” I ask innocently.

“Taking way too long,” she says, a slight snarl of impatience in her words.

I chuckle. “Yes,” I agree against her skin.

“It’s starting to make me—” I nip her earlobe, and she gives a sharp exhale.

“Yes?” I drawl, pulling back so I can look at her.

She glares at me, but the fire in her eyes is one I only want to stoke hotter.

“Just let me,” I tell her. “And enjoy yourself. I know I am.”

A pause.

Her ire cools to wariness. Then desire.

“Okay.”

It’s the smallest word, but I feel it land in my chest like a key turning.

I take her apart with patience and attention, and she lets me. Her hands are in my hair, gripping, releasing, gripping again; her way of showing me what she won’t say out loud. When I work my way down her body, peeling off her pants and settle between her thighs, she makes a sound that isn’t small at all.