Chapter 35 - Dove #2
Regret punches me so hard my stomach pitches. I shouldn’t have said it like that. Shouldn’t have thrown my pain down between us like a challenge. My mother was stolen from me. His was a monster he had to stop.
I search for the right words to take it back, to fix it, but the compassion in his gaze tells me he understands what I meant.
He looks down at the purple robe draped around him. Her robe. A shadow crosses his eyes, and something decisive and final settles there.
Before I can ask, he reaches for my hand, his grip determined. He doesn’t give me a chance to resist as he leads me downstairs, each step creaking under our weight, the guest house quiet around us.
In the living room, he kneels before the fireplace, flicks on the gas starter, and watches the flames catch.
“Your mother loved you,” he says quietly. “You had that, even if only for eight years. That makes you whole, Dovey. Not damaged. Lucky, even.” He stands and sheds the robe. “I never had a mother.”
My eyes sting as he begins to shred the robe, ripping it into strips and feeding the pieces into the fire. The flames accept it hungrily, devouring the fabric and its history.
“Let her be gone.” He stares into the blaze, watching the purple scraps curl inward as they burn, crumbling into blackened edges and ash. “Let the past be done. Let this be the start of something else.”
I swat at the wetness on my cheeks, fighting the sob trapped in my throat.
He turns toward me, arms outstretched, standing in nothing but his scars and tight black briefs, nothing to hide behind now, nothing to shield him from being seen.
“This is me. Bared. Exposed.” He raises that strong, square-cut jaw. “Take a good, hard look.”
“Wolf.” The sob wins, choking my breath.
“Do it! Look at me!”
God help me, I do.
The firelight paints him in molten shadows, every angle sharpened, every scar highlighted. He towers over me by a foot, all lean muscle and long lines. The defined shoulders, arms mapped with veins, sculpted chest and abs, and solid power in his legs.
He looks both dangerous and vulnerable, half-wild and wholly human, staring at me with a challenge and a question in his gleaming eyes.
An achy pressure climbs my throat, swelling through me until my skin feels too tight to hold it.
“No one’s ever gotten this close.” He floats closer. “Tell me what you see. The truth, Heart-thief. You know me better than anyone.”
My mouth goes dry, but the truth is right there, clawing its way out.
“I see an artist,” I whisper. “Someone who feels everything too deeply and turns it into magic and meaning.”
He keeps his face unreadable.
“I see strength. Soul. Wild beauty.” My voice breaks. “Compassion. More than you think you have.”
His gaze drags down my face, hungrily searching, as if trying to absorb every syllable.
My eyes flicker lower, unbidden and involuntary, and land on the unmistakable shape forming beneath the black fabric of his briefs.
“And…” I swallow hard. “I see desire.”
“I’m so turned on right now.”
A burst of sparks arouses every nerve ending in my body. “I know the feeling.”
The shift in him is immediate. His eyes darken. His lips part, and his muscles tense, readying.
“You want me.” He steps behind me, so close his breath stirs my hair. “Deny it.”
“Can’t do that.”
He circles slowly, a predator’s prowl, deliberate and controlled. His fingertips graze my hip, a featherlight caress that makes my heartbeat ricochet.
“I want you, too.” He flicks his tongue against my earlobe. “What are we going to do about all this wanting?”
My knees weaken.
He comes around to my front, his chest rising and falling, every inch of him confident in an unrehearsed way. This is instinctual. The real him. The alpha wolf.
He lifts a hand and touches my jaw with the brush of his knuckles, lighting fireworks in my veins.
“You’re going to stay.” He lowers his head and nips at the sensitive spot beneath my ear. “You’ll give us a week. Just you and me. No work. No leaving the island. We’re going to hole up here and get to know each other really fucking well.”
My lungs can’t keep up, and my heart races so fast I fear I’ll pass out.
“We’ll spend time talking.” He traces a slow line down my arm with one finger. “Touching.” His lips ghost near my cheekbone without landing. “Exploring.” His hand settles at the base of my spine, warm and assertive.
Every word curls around my ribs, every touch coiling a fierce need inside me. I can’t feel my face. My skin tingles everywhere, and the hollow ache in my chest transforms into a bright, urgent pounding, pounding, pounding.
“I’m going to learn everything about you.” He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers lingering at the hinge of my jaw. “All of you. Your mind. Your body. Every secret. Every warm, dark place. Inside and out.”
All the arguments I rehearsed melt beneath the heat of him, and my body betrays me. A breath caught too long, a pulse that skips, and he notices.
“Before the week ends…” Pressing closer, close enough to let me know how goddamn hard and hungry he is, he takes my face in his hands, tips my head back, and forces my eyes to his. “You’ll fall in love with me.”
He’s frighteningly right. I’m already falling.
The electricity between us is unbearable, want threaded through fear, tenderness tangled with risk. His hand cups the back of my neck, holding me there, asking without words.
Despite my exhaustion, despite the grief and fear and everything breaking apart in my life, a warm glow cracks open inside me. A yes I’m not ready to say aloud. A want I can’t swallow down. A need that erases all rational thought.
This time, I don’t pull away.
I open my mouth, and he captures it, not gently, not cautiously, but with a certainty that steals every scrap of air from my lungs.
The kiss hits me sideways, knocking me off balance in the shockwave. His hand fists my hair. His other collars my throat. A desperate claiming wrapped in tenderness, complete control, and domination.
I liquefy.
He tilts his head and deepens the kiss, bolder, wetter, coaxing, and demanding. His lips move over mine with a reverence I’ve never felt, memorizing, learning, and infusing me with deep hunger.
My fingers clutch his shoulders, tight, greedy, aching for more, and he answers with a rough, guttural growl against my mouth, unraveling me.
The world narrows to taste and breath and the impossible pressure of his mouth on mine.
The hand in my hair wanders to my waist, pulling me flush against his chiseled body, aligning our hips. Then he grinds.
Oh, God.
I gasp into him, and he smiles against my lips, a dark, knowing curve. He kisses me again, harder this time, swallowing the sound I make as if it belongs to him.
Everything inside me tightens, sparks, shivers, and gushes. It’s dizzying, devastating. A one-of-a-kind kiss that resets the tectonic plates in a woman’s heart.
“Tell me you felt that.” He pulls back, his forehead against mine, breath shaky, eyes dark and heavy-lidded.
My entire body trembles, my mouth swollen, my pulse thundering like I’ve been kissed down to the bone.
“I felt it.”
“Good.” His seductive bedroom eyes make my knees give out all over again. “Remove your clothes.”