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“Today I have spent most of the morning trying not to think about it.”

“How’s that working?”

“Poorly.”

I stepped closer. “Good.”

Something changed in his expression then, and his voice dropped.

“Robin.”

“What?”

“Don’t play with me.”

“I’m not.”

“Then tell me what you want.”

I looked up into the face of the man who had hunted me through this forest for three years, who had put a price on my head and his own body between me and a knife, and for once I did not reach for a joke to hide behind.

“I want you to kiss me, Guy.”

He went absolutely still.

“Are you certain?”

I nodded.

“Say it.”

“Yes. I’m certain.” My voice came out steadier than I expected. “I wanted you last night and I want you now. Not because I’m an Omega. Not because you’re an Alpha. Because you’re you, and because I have never wanted anything I chose for myself as badly as I want this.”

He did not kiss me.

Instead he lifted his hand, and this time he did not stop it an inch short of my face. His palm came up along my jaw and his fingers slid back into my hair, and his thumb brushed slowly across my cheekbone, and I understood that he had wanted to do exactly that twice now and had made himself refuse both times.

My eyes closed. I leaned into his hand before I could decide not to.

“Robin,” he said, very quietly. “Last chance to send me away.”

I took hold of the front of his shirt with both hands and pulled him down to me.

For three years I had imagined a hundred ways to silence Guy Bisbane, from an arrow through his hat to a well placed insult delivered from the safety of a high branch.

Never once had I considered using my mouth.

Which was unfortunate, because the moment I kissed him I discovered it was remarkably effective.

He made a sound against my lips, low and wrecked, and then every bit of that terrible iron control of his came apart at once. The hand in my hair tightened. His other arm came around my waist and gathered me in against him, and he kissed me the way a man drinks after a long march, like it had been a very long time and he had stopped believing there would be water.

It started slowly. I will give him that much. For about three heartbeats it was almost reverent, careful, as though he thought I might still change my mind.

Then I pushed up onto my toes and pulled him closer, and whatever was left of his restraint went out of the room entirely.

I got my fingers into his hair, which was softer than it had any right to be, and when I curled my hand against the back of his skull he made that sound again, and I decided I would be spending considerable effort in future on getting him to make it. The heat under my skin that had been circling me since dawn woke all the way up and stretched, and for once I let it, because there was no suppressant in my pocket and no reason to be ashamed of what my own body wanted.

His mouth moved to the corner of mine, and the words came out of him against my skin.