Page 138 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

“I know.”

“You do not know everything.”

“No.”

He came one step closer.

“You were looking at the moon,” he said. “Then at me.”

I closed my eyes. “That is an extremely rude level of detail.”

“I am sorry.”

“You’re not.”

“I am sorry it makes you feel exposed.”

The answer scraped something open in me. I looked at him again. He was still by the window, one hand at his side, the other curled slightly as if holding still required grip. His face had gone careful in a way I understood now, guarded for my sake.

“You are too good at that,” I said.

“At what?”

“Making restraint look like respect.”

“It is respect.”

“It is also self-punishment.”

His jaw tightened.

There. I had hit something true. The bond confirmed it with a quiet pressure under my ribs, then Ian looked away as if he could deny me the evidence by denying me his face.

“I hurt you,” he said.

“Yes.”

His gaze returned to mine. “Wanting you does not change that.”

The room lost air. The wanting moved between us again, and this time he didn’t hide it fast enough. Or maybe I had become better at feeling it. It came through stronger now, not the messy flare from the elevator, not the sharp jealousy from Grant’s letter. This was worse because it had been there all along, buried under guilt and fear and held down so tightly I had mistaken its absence for safety.

He wanted me.

And because the bond had become a treacherous little translator, I felt the way he fought it. Every line he would not cross. Every image he forced away before it formed. Every instinct to come closer locked behind the fact that I had not asked him to.

My body responded before I could stop it and a slow, answering heat moved through me.

Ian’s breath changed and his eyes closed.

“No,” he said, almost silently.

That did it. Something in me snapped hot and human.

“Stop saying no to yourself like you’re saying it for me.”

His eyes opened.

I pushed the blanket aside and stood. Badly. The floor shifted under my feet, and pain caught at the bite, but I stayed upright. Ian moved toward me, then stopped when I lifted a hand.