Page 137 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

“No, but it was a reasonable attempt to have a task.”

He didn’t smile. His gaze dropped to my hand gripping the sheet, then rose back to my face.

“Give me one,” he said.

“One what?”

“A task.”

I looked at him. The question should have been absurd, but he meant it. I could feel that too, the need to be useful in a way I could name and control.

I pointed toward the end of the room. “Open the curtains.”

Ian turned without argument and crossed to the windows. The curtains pulled apart, revealing black glass and a thin spill of moonlight over the water beyond the resort. The moon was not full yet, though it hung heavy and bright over the ocean, turning the surface silver. At the sight of it, my shoulder tightened and the damned mark answered with a low pulse that made my fingers curl in the sheet.

Ian looked back immediately. “Too much?”

“No.”

He released the curtain and waited.

Moonlight changed him. That was an unfair thing to notice under the circumstances, but fairness had apparently left the island with my cell service. He didn’t look like a man softened by night, he looked more like something built for it.

Dangerous. Beautiful, though I hated that word for him. Beautiful in the way wolves probably were when you saw them from a distance and forgot teeth existed.

The mark sent warmth down my core again and his eyes darkened.

Damn it.

“You felt that,” I said.

“Yes.”

“You are not supposed to answer that fast.”

“I cannot lie well to you now.”

“That sounds inconvenient.”

“It is.”

I looked at the moonlit water because it was safer than looking at him. “What did it feel like?”

His voice came carefully. “Your feeling?”

“Yes.”

A pause.

“Wonder,” he said.

I had expected desire. I had expected want, heat, hunger, some word that would let me be angry enough to shove this whole thing back into a box and sit on it. Wonder was harder because it was true.

“I wasn’t wondering at you,” I said.

“I know.”

“I was wondering at the general nightmare ambiance.”