His scent fills every breath I take, and my wolf rises through me, sure of herself. No pacing this time. No pulling. She knows before I do that the waiting is over.
His hand moves. It slides from my back to my waist, over the fur, and settles there. It’s not the grip of a man holding an injured woman together. It’s something else, and my whole body answers it before I can pretend otherwise.
I’ve been calling this thing by other names since the moment I first laid eyes on him. Fear. Nerves. My own head playing tricks in a locked cave. I knew better every time I said it.
“Grace.”
My name, low, in the dark. I feel it more than hear it.
I lift my head. His eyes are already on me, dark and steady, and there’s nothing careful left in them. He’s done holding whatever he’s been holding. Heat comes off him in waves, and the space between our mouths is nothing at all.
His hand comes up. His fingers slide along my jaw, rough and warm, tilting my face to his.
“You’re hurt,” he says. His voice is different. Rough. Restrained.
“I’m healing.”
“You should rest.”
“I’ve rested.”
His thumb traces the corner of my mouth. He holds there one more second, a last door left open for me to walk out of.
I close it.
I kiss him, and it’s nothing like careful. His arm locks around me and pulls me up his body. The fur slides off my shoulder, and the cold never reaches me, because he’s everywhere. Heat. Weight. That scent I’m done running from. He turns us, his body coming over mine, braced on his forearms, his mouth never leaving me. The sound he makes low in his chest isn’t a word in any language.
He pulls back an inch. His breath is ragged. His eyes search mine, one last time.
“Your hip—”
“Is fine.” I slide my hand up the back of his neck, into his hair, and pull him back down.
Then he stops holding back.
Chapter 20
Decker
Her mouth opens under mine, and the last of my care goes with it.
She presses closer. Her hands curl against my chest, and I roll her under me and hold my weight off her bandaged hip. The fur slides away somewhere behind her. Neither of us reaches for it.
Her skin is warm everywhere I touch. I put my mouth to her throat. She tips her head back and lets me have it. Her pulse is right there under my lips, quick and getting quicker. Her scent is strongest here. I stay until she squirms.
Her hands move on me. No hesitation in them. One palm flattens over the gashes on my ribs—closed now, still tender—and her touch goes through me harder than the claws did. Her other hand finds my hip and pulls me down against her.
I give her some of my weight. She takes it with a sound I haven’t heard from her before, low and open, and my whole body answers it.
I run my hand up her side. The old burn scars pass under my palm, and she doesn’t flinch, doesn’t go stiff. She presses into my hand instead. She knows exactly what I’m touching, and she offers it anyway, and my hand goes still over the scars for a beat that has nothing to do with heat.
There’s plenty of heat everywhere else.
She hooks her knee over my hip and rolls up against me. Her breath goes ragged. Her fingers dig into my back. I’m hard against her through my pants; she can feel it, and she doesn’t shy from that either. She moves against me, slow and deliberate, and my control starts coming apart a piece at a time.
I want to take my time, and I want to take her now, both at once. I want my hands on every part of her. I want the sounds she makes when nothing’s held back. The bear is wide awake and wanting the same things, shoving me on, and for once the two of us are pulling in the same direction—
Then it hits.
