Page 10 of Predator

I respond as enthusiastically as I can, just about climbing into his lap to get as close as possible to this man.

My mate.

Moving his lips just enough that he could speak against my cheek, he wraps his arms around my middle as he rasps, “I missed you. Luna, I missed you so damn much.” He squeezes me tightly, all of his worry that he’d never get a chance to do this again obvious in the gesture. “I don’t know where you went. I don’t know why you did. But, please, don’t ever go where I can’t follow again. Please.”

I throw my arms around his neck. “I promise.”

That’s all he needs to hear. And though I know that moving on from what the last few weeks were like for the both of us isn’t going to be as simple as making a vow I’m not so sure I can uphold, for the moment, it is.

I understand his ‘privacy’ comment now. He’s still fully dressed, and though he murmurs that he brought a change of clothes for me because he was so determined to find a way to bring me back, I don’t bother getting dressed. Not when I lost out on the rest of my bonding night, and something inside of me is telling me that I still need to claim him.

When I was a feral wolf, I interpreted it as the need to bite him. In my skin, that urge to mark him with claws or my teeth is gone. I mean, the longer he holds me on his lap, the more I want to initiate mating with him if only to remind him that we are mates… but I almost sense that he has a mark as prominent as the slightly raised scar I’m probing near the base of my throat.

And when I follow that strange instinct and it draws my attention to the scarf he still has on, my stomach goes tight.

I lick my bottom lip, pulling enough away from him that our eyes meet.

After laying my palms against his t-shirt, I ask. “Can I?”

“You can do anything you want to me, Fallon.”

He might come to regret telling me that, but I don’t give him a second to change his mind. With slightly shaky fingers, I reach for the knot in the scarf.

Lucas flares his nostrils, a muscle ticking in his cheek, but he doesn’t stop me.

Determined, I remove the scarf—and when I see what Lucas has been hiding from me, I gasp.

His throat is covered in so many pale thin silver lines, it takes me a second to make sense of what they could be. They almost look like a shimmering tattoo of some kind of abstract design, but the closer I study it, the more I see that the darker parts create an outline about three inches apart.

It’s slightly raised, with a few points that look like he’s been bitten by fangs?—

—because he has been bitten by fangs.

This isn’t a tattoo. This is a reminder of what I did to him with my teeth.

My fingers wrapped around his throat, I rub my fingers along the silver scars that cover most of the front. It feels just like the mark on my skin, only there are so many different ones.

Of course. Lucas bit me just once. But me? I kept chomping until he somehow got me to stop.

“I did this.”

“Fallon—”

No.

Scurrying away from him, I quickly climb off of his lap, and take a few frantic steps away from him. My opal bounces between my tits with how fast I try to put a little space between us, but no matter how fast I go, Lucas is faster.

“No. Fallon.” Is it my imagination or is he purposely using my name more than usual, just to make sure that I remember who I am and stay here? “It’s not what you think?—”

“It isn’t?” My voice sounds slightly hysterical, probably because I am. “Those scars you have aren’t from where I tore my fangs through your throat, trying to kill you.”

Most of my time as a wolf is hazy. But if there’s one thing I remembered and just really, really hoped was another bad dream, it’s how I definitely ripped out a chunk of Lucas’s throat with my fangs after I first shifted.

“You weren’t trying to kill me,” he begins.

I wave my hand at his throat. “Could’ve fooled me. How did you even survive that? Oh my God, Luc. I… I can’t believe. I’m so fucking sorry. I just?—”

His hands land on my shoulders, keeping me in place so that I can’t escape him.

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