Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
VICTORIA
Isurfaced slowly, awareness arriving in pieces. Warmth registered first. The steady rise and fall of breathing that wasn’t mine. The weight of an arm around my waist.
My cheek rested against Feral’s chest. His heartbeat drummed beneath my ear, slower than mine.
The realization settled in without the usual jolt of mortification.
We’d gone to bed together last night. Not accidentally tangling after sleep claimed us, but deliberately.
He’d climbed in beside me, and when I moved closer, he’d wrapped me in his arms. Neither of us had pretended it was anything other than what it was meant to be.
The suite sat dark around us, only the faintest hint of gray touching the windows. Pre-dawn. The quiet hour when the forest held its breath between night and morning.
I didn’t move immediately. Just lay there, cataloging the scratch of stubble against my forehead where his jaw rested. Warmth radiated from him despite the chilly air. His fingers curved against my hip, even in sleep.
This wasn’t accidental proximity. I’d chosen this. We’d chosen this. I didn’t know what it might mean, though I wanted to find out. The weight of that sat in my chest, significant in a way I needed to examine alone.
I slipped out of bed carefully, easing from under his arm with the same attention I gave delicate glasswork. He didn’t stir, though I assumed he was exhausted. The kind of bone-deep tired that came from carrying a kingdom and never asking anyone to help.
In the bathing chamber, I went through my usual routine. Quick wash, nothing elaborate. I wasn’t avoiding anything, just maintaining the normal routine that kept me grounded.
The mirror caught my attention as I rinsed my mouth, and I stopped, studying my reflection.
My expression had changed. The defensive set to my shoulders had eased. The analytical distance I’d maintained between myself and everything else had softened around the edges.
Evidence accumulated whether I wanted it to or not.
The flowers he’d picked and forgotten to water.
The way he’d turned back early from patrol because his wolf wouldn’t settle.
Him on the mop, arms tight around me, making small sounds of terror he’d deny if I ever brought them up.
Thrusting his body between me and the bear without a heartbeat’s hesitation.
I’m glad it was you.
The little wooden wolf he’d carved as a child, kept in a drawer for thirteen years, now sitting on the shelf where it could be seen.
I’d moved it there without thinking. He’d never mentioned it.
Neither had I. But I understood now. Some things didn’t need words.
They just needed to be brought out of the dark and put somewhere the light could reach them.
His arm pulling me close on the balcony when the cold air raised goosebumps on my skin.
The researcher in me couldn’t argue with data this clear.
I gripped the edge of the basin, meeting my eyes in the dim light.
I was falling in love.
The admission arrived like a secret whispered in the earth, with none of the dramatic fanfare I’d expected. I’d pretty much told Acorn days ago, but this went deeper. I wasn’t wondering anymore. I was past that stage now.
I walked over to the door. I should retreat to the laboratory, fill the hours before sunrise with work, and maintain the distance that had always kept me safe.
Instead, I remained in the bedroom.
Feral lay exactly as I’d left him, one arm stretched across the space where I’d been. The gray light through the windows caught in his dark hair, making it look softer than it did during the day when he was a male of sharp edges and controlled power.
I stood beside the bed, studying him the way I studied everything, except my clinical distance had fled.
His hair fell across his forehead, thick and sleep-mussed. The tension he carried through his jaw and shoulders had disappeared, leaving his features unguarded in a way they never were when the sun was up. A thick scar cut across his collarbone. I didn’t know the story behind it, but I wanted to.
The weight of what I felt landed fully.
This man carried an entire kingdom alone. He’d been doing it since he was nineteen, too young and unprepared for something like that. He’d run borders he didn’t feel ready for until the land recognized him even when he didn’t recognize himself.
I recognized him now, and that was the scary part.
Love. Just that. Simple and complicated and terrifying in equal measure.
I didn’t flee from it or try to logic it away. The old Victoria would’ve reduced it to variables I could control. The new Victoria held it, worried it would break if I squeezed it too tight.
I wanted to be someone he ran to, not just a convenience who solved his problems.
So I climbed back into bed.
The mattress dipped under my weight. I moved close, mirroring last night’s position but with full wakefulness behind every choice. His warmth drew me in. The steadiness of him pulled at the strings holding my heart together. I worried one tug would make me unravel.
I tucked myself against his side, resting my hand on his chest. His heartbeat drummed against my palm.
Holding my breath, I waited to see if this woke him, half-hoping it would.
From the sitting room, Acorn’s soft snores drifted through the cracked-open door. The sound made all the tension in my chest ease.
I listened to Feral breathe and let myself want this without immediately building a logical defense around it.
His breathing changed. The rhythm shifted enough that I knew he was rousing. The slight tension returned to his frame, muscle by muscle, as consciousness claimed him.
He didn’t move or speak. He lay awake, and he knew I knew he was awake and neither of us was pretending otherwise.
He turned his head and looked at me in the gray light. His fully alert, pale blue eyes held the particular quality of attention he gave me and no one else. Like I was the only thing in his territory worth tracking.
We stared at each other.
Just him, open, waiting.
Me maybe waiting too.
I moved first.
Slowly, giving him every chance to read my intention, I eased up and kissed him.
For one breath he went still, the barely-controlled restraint he always showed around me locking every muscle.
Then he kissed me back and the sweetness cracked open into heat so fast my breath caught.
His hand came to my jaw, tilting my face, and he deepened our kiss until I couldn’t remember who or what I was. Only him.
He pulled back first, his breathing rough and uneven.
He searched my face. “Can I touch you?”
The question undid all the parts of me I’d spent so much time fusing together. I’d expected a wolf king to take, not ask.
“Yes.”
He kissed me again, slower this time, rolling me onto my back. Climbing over me. I loved how he wasn’t rushing this. He traced my collarbone, my shoulder, and the curve of my waist through my nightgown. He watched and listened for every response I gave him.
A flick of my finger shut our door with magic, leaving us alone with this exploration.
He cupped my breast through the fabric, his gaze fixed on my face.
The warmth of his palm bled through the thin linen, and I felt the contact in places that had nothing to do with his hand.
My moan surprised me, coming out lower and less controlled than anything I’d made before, a sound that didn’t belong to the woman I’d been a short time ago.
He’d learned my language. It turned out I’d been the subject worth studying all along.
His mouth quirked up on one side. “Tell me everything you like, wife.”
“This. Everything you’re doing.”
“This too?” His thumb stroked across my nipple through my nightgown.
Arching my back, I let loose another guttural, needy sound.
He paused, that look crossing his face again, showing me he wanted permission to keep going.
I kissed his hand, then pressed it back to my breast.
Leaning over me, he sucked my nipple into his mouth through the fabric and the sensation shot straight down through my belly to somewhere lower, making heat pool in my limbs.
I lifted my hips off the mattress, releasing a sound I would’ve been mortified by twenty minutes ago. Now I didn’t care at all.
His warm wetness nearly undid what was left of my control. Closing my eyes, I tipped my head back, giving into the pleasure.
He stroked my other breast, rolling the nipple, gently tugging while he sucked on the first.
His hand slid lower, over my hip, and stopped there, giving me time to pull away or say this was too much.
I had no interest in stopping him now. I craved him in a way I had never wanted another man before.
He eased downward, dragging his mouth from my breast and over my ribs. I lost the ability to form a complete thought. His lips were warm and unhurried, tracing my belly in a way that made my muscles jump beneath my skin. Every place he touched felt newly mapped, newly mine.
He paused below my navel, his breath warm against my skin, and looked up.
That pale blue gaze, direct and entirely focused on me, made my heart seize. No one had ever looked at me like I was the whole experiment.
I’d written field notes on hundreds of subjects, but I’d never been the subject before.
“Still yes?” he asked. His voice had dropped to something rougher than I’d heard from him, and it moved through me like a second touch.
“Still yes.” The words came out steadier than I felt. I was so caught up in him and this moment, I worried I’d melt through the mattress and miss something amazing.
His mouth curved, releasing that private half-smile I was quickly coming to adore, and he eased my thighs apart with a patience that was its own kind of devastation.
He kissed the inside of my knee, then higher, his stubble dragging lightly against my skin.
I understood then that he was going to take his time, that he was going to make me feel every single bit of this.
I gripped the sheets and let him do what he pleased.
With a soft twist to his mouth, he stroked his fingers up my legs to my thighs, spreading them wider while easing my nightgown up around my waist. I lifted my hips and tugged it up further, over my head to toss it aside.
His groan rang out. “Lovely. Simply lovely.”
He settled between my thighs, his hands warm against my skin, and kissed the inside of my leg.
This was a wolf who did nothing halfway. He approached my pleasure with the same intensity he gave everything he’d decided mattered.
His mouth found me, and my mind went blank.
I was analytical about almost everything. Here, my thoughts went quiet for the first time in my life. No dictating observations to my enchanted pen. No cross-referencing data. Just sensation building and building until I couldn’t breathe through it.
The trace of his tongue on my clit devastated me, a slow stroke that made me jerk my hips off the mattress. He growled, and it vibrated against my most sensitive flesh.
“Stay right where you are,” he whispered against me, the word both a command and a plea.
I couldn’t have disobeyed if I’d wanted to. He circled my clit with the flat of his tongue, then flicked it with the tip, alternating between the two until I was writhing beneath his hold. My thighs trembled on either side of his head.
“Feral—” His name came out a rasp.
He hummed his approval, the vibration shooting through me, and sealed his lips around my clit, sucking.
A keen tore from my throat, a sound I’d never made in my life.
The wet sounds of his mouth on me only made everything hotter.
His fingers dug into my hip. “Again,” he said against my flesh. “Make that sound again.”
He doubled his efforts, his tongue moving faster, more focused, and I shattered into sensation. Another keen, then another, sounds I couldn’t control or moderate or analyze.
“That’s it, wife.” His words came out muffled. “Show me what I do to you.”
He slid one finger inside me, and I arched my back so sharply I nearly came off the bed despite his restraining hand. He added a second finger, stretching me, gliding them in a way that made stars burst behind my eyelids.
My hands found his hair, needing to hold onto something.
He read every response and adjusted, learning me the way I’d learned his territory. Sample by sample. Detail by detail.
The pleasure built to something impossible to contain. His tongue pressed flat against me, his fingers crooked inside me hitting a spot that made me see white. Everything inside me coiled tighter and tighter until—
I came apart with a cry that tore across the walls, my body convulsing. Wave after wave of pleasure crashed through me while his mouth gentled but didn’t stop. He drew out every aftershock until I was left trembling and oversensitive and completely undone.
I cried out his name, and the sound of it in the quiet room surprised me, how unguarded it was and how little I cared.
Significant data I’d examine later.
He moved back up to lie beside me, tugging me close.
His mouth glistened. He didn’t wipe it away, just watched me with those pale blue eyes gone dark with want.
“You taste like honey,” he said, his voice wrecked. “Like the wild honey the bees make in the deepest part of the forest. I could spend hours between your thighs and never get enough.”
Heat flooded my cheeks, but I didn’t look away.
I could feel the hard length of him pressed against my side through his loincloth, proof of his own need, but he made no move to address it. This had been entirely about me.
I was undone, but not in a mortifying way. It felt like the lab moment I’d described to him on the balcony. Finding out I’d been speaking a language wrong my whole life and finally getting the pronunciation right.
He watched me with that expression I was still learning to read but getting closer to understanding.
Neither of us spoke.
Everything had changed between us, yet I wasn’t afraid. This was just the beginning, with a wide-open world ahead.
My enchanted pen lifted off the bedside table. It floated over to my notebook and scratched something across the page.
I didn’t look at what it wrote.
I didn’t need to.