Page 140 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

His.

Mine.

His hand tightened at my waist, and my fingers curled in his shirt.

The wolf rose. I felt it. Mine, it said through his body, through the mark, through the sudden fierce quiet around us. The word should have scared me more than it did. Maybe it would later, when my mind had room for a philosophical objection to supernatural possessive grammar. Right then, Ian’s mouth was on mine, his hand was in my hair, and he was holding himself back so hard that I felt the tremor run through his arm, so I pulled him closer.

The sound he made was low enough to travel through my bones. His mouth left mine and found my jaw, then the place beneath it where my pulse beat too quickly. He stopped there, breathing against my skin, and the pause was somehow more intimate than the kiss. He was asking without words. Waiting for me to tilt my head. Waiting for me to give him access to a throat he could have taken by force on the first night if he had been the thing he feared he was.

I tilted my head. He went still for half a second, then his mouth touched my throat. Heat moved through me so sharply I grabbed his shoulders.

“Ian.”

He pulled back at once. “Did I hurt you?”

“No.”

His eyes searched mine, gold threading through the dark. “Tell me.”

“I will.”

The promise steadied him enough that his hand moved again, sliding from my waist to my back, broad and warm through the thin fabric of Sava’s borrowed shirt. I had never felt so breakable and so powerful at the same time.

I kissed him again, harder this time. Ian answered with a restraint that began to fracture under my mouth. His hand moved down my back, then stopped before reaching anywhere that would make the kiss more than a kiss. I made an annoyed sound against his mouth and took his wrist, guiding his palm lower until it settled at the curve of my hip.

His fingers flexed. “Cassie.”

“That is my hip.”

“I know.”

“It has been mine for a while. I am familiar with its policies.”

His breath left him in something too rough to be a laugh. “You are injured.”

“I am also annoyed, aroused, and very tired of being treated like a cursed vase.”

“You are bleeding.”

“Not from there.”

His eyes closed for one moment. When they opened, the gold had deepened. I probably should not have enjoyed winning that round as much as I did. Then he kissed me again, and humor burned away under the pressure of his mouth. He backed me carefully toward the bed, not pushing, never pushing, only moving when I moved with him. The backs of my knees touched the mattress. I sat because my body had been threatening collapse anyway, and Ian followed me down only as far as a kneel in front of me.

Oh.

That was new information. Very significant information.

Moonlight cut across his shoulders. He was still mostly shadow, but from this angle he looked less like a guard and more like a man at worship, which was deeply unfair to my ability to remain rational. His hands rested on either side of my thighs, not touching skin yet, just braced against the mattress. His eyes lifted to mine.

“You can tell me to stop.”

“I know.”

“You can tell me to leave.”

“I know.”

“You can tell me anything.”