Chapter 17 An Extremely Poor Time for Chemistry #2
I crossed the few feet between us with all the grace of a woman recovering from supernatural assault and a very badly timed emotional crisis. My legs shook. My shoulder throbbed. The mark pulsed with every step, not hurting, not helping, simply awake.
Ian stayed motionless. He looked at me as if I were walking toward the edge of a cliff and he was not allowed to move it.
I stopped in front of him, close enough to feel the heat from his body and see the gold held deep in his eyes. Close enough that the difference in our size became a fact my body cataloged with alarming interest.
“Ian.”
His name felt different from this close.
His voice came rough. “Cassie.”
I lifted my good hand and set it against his chest.
His heart hit hard beneath my palm.
“There,” I said.
His throat moved. “There what?”
“That’s yours.”
His eyes searched mine.
“Your heart,” I said. “I can feel it under my hand. Not through the mark. Not as wolf magic. Yours.”
He didn’t breathe.
I moved his hand to the center of my chest with my other hand.
“And this is mine,” I said, though I was not sure whether I meant my hand, my choice, or the heat moving through me because I was close enough to touch him. “I know the difference.”
His hand lifted, then stopped halfway.
“May I?” he asked.
The question was barely sound.
“Yes.”
His hand covered mine, holding it there over his heart. The bond went warm and deep, and I felt his relief first. Then his want. Then mine answering it. The two feelings and it frightened me, but it didn’t make me step back.
Ian’s thumb moved once over my knuckles. I should not have felt that everywhere.
I did.
His gaze dropped to my mouth. This time, I saw it. This time, he let me see it before he dragged his eyes back to mine.
I rose onto my toes and kissed him. It was not graceful or planned. It hurt my shoulder, and I didn’t care.
For one terrible second, Ian didn’t move.
Then his control broke in one clean line.
He finally kissed me back. His hand came to my waist, careful even then, avoiding every hurt place he knew about.
His other hand slid into my hair and held the back of my head as if I were something precious and dangerous at once.
The kiss was nothing like Grant. That thought flashed through me, unwanted and immediate, then vanished because there was no room for Grant here.
Ian kissed like he had been starving and had decided starvation was still safer than taking too much.
His mouth was hot, controlled, rough only when I pushed closer.
When I made a sound, his whole body answered it.
The bond flared, heat rolling through both of us so fast I could not tell where I ended.
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.”
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.
“No, now I get to say it.”
He looked as if the word had gone under his skin.
I held onto that because anger was easier than wanting him again. “You don’t get to kiss me like that, put your mouth there, and then decide I need saving from myself.”
His jaw tightened. “The mark is affecting you.”
“Everything is affecting me.”
“It is not the same.”
“No, it is not the same. Nothing here is the same. That does not mean I have vanished!”
“I felt it answer.”
“The mark?”
“Yes.”
“So did I.”
His eyes searched mine. “Then you understand why I stopped.”
“No. I understand why you’re scared. I understand why you think stopping makes you honorable. I even understand why part of you believes wanting me after hurting me makes you worse.”
His face went still.