Page 141 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

The words were rough, almost painful.

I looked down at him, my pulse beating everywhere. “Kiss me again.”

His hands closed over my knees. The touch was careful, but my body responded as if he had dragged his palms much higher. His mouth came back to mine, and this time the angle made everything worse. Better. Both. I had to lean down to reach him, which pulled at my shoulder and pressed my thighs around his ribs. Ian’s hands slid a little higher, then stopped. His thumbs moved once along the outside of my thighs, and the mark flared so hot I gasped into his mouth.

He pulled back. “The mark.”

“Yes, I noticed.”

“It answered.”

“So did I.”

His gaze fixed on mine and I could feel the battle in him. The need. The guilt. The wolf’s certainty. The man’s terror that any of it might be false enough to make him a monster if he touched me more.

I leaned back on one hand and gave him my better leg, hooking it around his side.

His eyes dropped and his entire body went still.

“There,” I said, breathless and furious with how much I wanted him. “That was me too.”

His hand closed around my calf. Not hard. Enough.

The bond turned molten.

Ian bent his head and kissed the inside of my knee, and that simple press of his mouth there wrecked me. I made a sound I would have been embarrassed by if embarrassment had not left the island. His mouth moved higher, slow enough to give me time to stop him. He kissed the inside of my thigh through the thin cotton of my sleep shorts, then stopped with his breath against me.

My fingers sank into his hair and he shuddered.

The wolf rose again, closer now, pushing through his control with a low, possessive hunger that made the mark pulse in answer. Mine, it said again, but this time the word came wrapped in his restraint, in the way his hands remained still while his mouth hovered near a place where my whole body wanted him.

I looked down at him. He looked wrecked. Not lost. Not mindless. Wrecked because he wanted, and wanting me had become another battlefield he was trying to cross without stepping on any part of me.

“Ian,” I whispered.

His eyes lifted and I saw the moment he understood exactly how far this could go if he let it.

So did I.

His mouth was inches from turning the scene into something neither of us could pretend was only a kiss. I wanted it. My body wanted it with a clarity that embarrassed and steadied me at the same time. The mark wanted too, pulsing with heat, urging closeness, answering him in a language older than reason.

Ian felt all of it. His eyes closed…then he pulled back.

Fully.

Abruptly enough that the loss of him felt like a door slamming inside my ribs. He stood and stepped away from the bed. Only one step, but it might as well have been the length of the island.

I stared at him, breath shaking, thighs still parted around the place he had been. The humiliation came fast behind the desire, sharp and hot enough to make me reach for anger because anger had always been easier to hold.

“Wow,” I said. “Excellent timing. Really preserves the mood.”

His chest rose and fell once. His eyes were gold now, not fully wolf, but enough. “Cassie.”

“No.”

His mouth shut.

Good.