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It’s like her scent is coiling around me and holding me prisoner, triggering the howling wolf inside of me.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Of course.”
“I was sitting at the window, watching the storm. And then mom walked in behind me and collapsed. She just fell like all the strength went out of her. She was crying, crying like I’d never seen her. She hates herself for that, for how she crumbled that day. But what else was she supposed to do? She’d lost the love of her life. Of course, she loves my step-dad, she really does. But she loved my biological dad more I like to think.”
She pauses, wringing her hands together.
“He skidded off the road during the storm. He crashed into a tree, he died instantly. There was nothing anyone could do. And then…”
Her fingers twitch. She pulls at the tie of her bathrobe, fiddling with it, as though her hands are desperate for something to do. I wrap my hands around hers without giving myself time to think about it, without giving myself the opportunity to remind myself how wrong it is.
“It’s okay,” I whisper, shuffling closer.
She flinches as though my words have struck her, but she tightens her grip on me, moving closer, closer until our thighs are pressed together. We’re twisted so we’re facing each other and we could kiss, any second now, we could lean in and taste each other.
Stop, stop, stop, a voice roars inside of me, battering in time with the rainfall.
“It’s not. I’m a crazy weirdo, that’s the truth. Because ever since she told me about what happened to my dad in that storm, I’ve been an absolute baby about them. They scare me so freaking much. I try to tell myself it’s irrational. I’m being childish. But it’s difficult. It’s like the rain reminds me of the sight of my mom, lying on my bedroom floor, crippled with anguish.”
“Come here,” I whisper, smoothing my hands up her arms and wrapping them around her shoulders. “It’s okay, Rayla. It’s all going to be okay.”
She falls against me, clawing her hands against my chest, her fingernails digging into my skin. I smooth my hand up her back and through her hair, massaging her scalp, and she moans, a high-pitched whimper that goes right to my base.
My heart hammers like there’s something trying to break out of me, and there is. My lust, my need, my desire to make her feel okay.
“What are we doing?” she whispers, her breath hot against my neck, shivering over my skin. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
“I know,” I snarl, but I can’t stop my hand moving through her hair, across her scalp, the hot alive nearness of her crippling my defenses. “You don’t have to be scared anymore, Rayla. You never have to be scared again. I’m here. And I’ll fucking kill anybody and anything that tries to hurt you.”
She giggles, but there’s a croak in her voice, betraying her emotion. “How are you going to kill a storm?”
“I’d find a way for you.”
I lean back, stroking my hand over her cheek and smoothing her messy hair behind her ear.
She turns toward my touch, closing her eyes as though savoring it. “Why are you saying these things?”
“Do you want me to stop?”
She stares into my eyes, stares hard like she’s trying to make sense of what’s happening. But there’s no making sense of this primal need slamming inside of me, compelling my every movement, my every gesture, everything.
There’s no making sense of all this pent-up desire, as though it’s been trying to burst free for years, not hours.
“No,” she whispers. “I don’t. But I should.”
“I know,” I growl, lean down and claim her lips.
She gasps as our mouths collide and nature chooses that moment to send the loudest and most explosive crack of thunder across the heavens yet. I snarl through the kiss, tasting her, gripping her hips, and pulling her even closer.
The tips of our tongues clash together as she whimpers and moans.
I slide my hands under the fabric of her bathrobe, squeezing onto her thighs, heat flaring up inside of me when I feel how juicy and perfect they feel, how mine.
There’s no going back now.
She belongs to me.
Forever.
She just doesn’t know it yet.
Chapter Nine
Rayla
I squeeze onto his rock solid arms, my fingernails straining under the pressure of his irrepressible muscles. He growls and I let out a whimper, stifled by the closeness of our mouths, as his solid body presses harder against mine.
So I wasn’t misreading the signals. He was going to kiss me in the kitchen.
He feels it too, this thrumming desire…
But does he feel the other stuff, all those mad thoughts of the future and a family and an impossible happy-ever-after?
The questions slide from my mind as his hands slide further and further up my legs, squeezing tightly so that sizzling sensation coils around my thighs and dances all over my skin, torturing and teasing.
