Page 18 of Salt Between the Wolves

The silence afterward shifted instantly.

Eira’s brows pulled together slightly. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Soren regretted the words the moment they left him.

Not because they were inaccurate, but because they sounded far too much like jealousy when spoken aloud.

He stepped back once, forcing distance into the room before the instinct behind the reaction could deepen further.

“This was a mistake.”

He turned toward the door.

“Don’t.”

The word stopped him immediately, less because of the command itself than because of the way she said it.

Soren closed his eyes briefly.

When he turned back toward her again, Eira had moved closer without him noticing, close enough now that he could feel warmth radiating from her skin through the colder air between them.

“You came here for a reason,” she said more quietly.

He could smell her now beneath the cedar smoke and firelight — warmth, skin, the faint lingering trace of snow.

The bond reacted violently to the proximity.

His breathing shifted. Eira noticed.

Neither of them moved as the silence stretched between them.

Then she took another step.

The remaining distance disappeared.

Soren reached for her almost instinctively, catching her wrist with the vague intention of stopping her.

The moment his fingers closed around her skin, that intention dissolved.

The bond surged through him, drowning thought beneath something older and far more dangerous.

Before he could reconsider, he pulled her toward him.

Eira stumbled forward, and the force of the movement sent them both back a step until the edge of the bed caught against the backs of her knees.

Neither of them seemed to notice.

His hand slid to her waist. Her fingers found his shirt. The reaction between them surged instantly, far too fast for restraint to recover.

Eira inhaled sharply as he drew her against him, and the sound nearly undid him.

His mouth found her throat before he kissed her properly. The sound she made at the contact nearly undid him.

Heat spread beneath her skin where his mouth moved lower along the mark, slower now, rougher than before. He could feel her pulse racing beneath his lips, could hear the uneven rhythm of her breathing each time his hands tightened at her waist and drew her closer.

“Tell me to stop,” he said against her throat, voice rough enough that he barely recognized it.

Eira’s fingers tightened in his shirt instead.