She looks at me.
I lean closer, but I don’t go for her mouth. Not yet. My face lowers to the curve of her throat, to the place where her scent is warmest, and when I breathe her in, her shiver runs through my hand, down my wrist, into the part of me that has been reaching for her since before I knew my own name.
My lips brush the skin below her ear. One touch. Light. The barest contact, and the warmth of it rushes through me: her skin, her pulse, the small, sharp breath she pulls.
I pull back.
Her eyes are wide. Her hand has found my forearm, her fingers wrapped around the muscle, gripping.
“I want to kiss you,” I say. My voice is low, but the words are clear.
Her breath catches. Her grip tightens on my forearm.
“Are you asking?” she says.
“I’ll always ask.”
Something moves across her face. Not the healer. Not the woman calculating risk. Something underneath both of those…warm, certain, a little reckless.
“Maybe sometimes you won’t have to,” she whispers.
Her hand slides from my forearm to my jaw. Her thumb settles against the hinge of it…the place where the wolf usually takes hold first.
I’m still human. More human than I’ve been in years.
She leans in.
And the chapter of my life where I was only a number ends in a cave on a mountain, with her mouth finding mine in the firelight and the snow falling silent outside.
Chapter 16
Sable
His mouth is warm.
That is the first thought, stupidly simple and devastating. I have measured his temperature, counted his pulse, checked his pupils, watched his breathing under sedation for two weeks, and none of that prepared me for the living heat of his lips on mine.
He kisses carefully at first, learning the shape of my mouth the way he seems to learn everything now: with focus, with restraint, with a kind of fierce attention that makes my knees weaken.
Then my hand slides into his hair. His breath catches against my cheek.
The careful part ends.
His arm comes around my waist and pulls me into him. The kiss opens, his tongue finding my lower lip, his hand tightening on my hip. The heat of it pours down through my chest and pools low in my belly. He tastes like smoke and cold water, andunderneath that, pure male. My fingers grip his hair. He groans against my mouth, and the sound vibrates through me.
He pulls back. Just far enough to see my face.
“Sable.” His eyes are like sapphire in the firelight, and the man is right there, no sign of the wolf.
“I’m here,” I say. “Stay with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Can I touch you?”
He nods.
I reach for his shirt and slide my fingers under the hem.
