Page 47 of Craved By a Wolf

MacKinnon brushed his right hand lightly down her bare arm, sending heat shimmering over her skin and stealing her breath.

He murmured, “If you want a present, I can give you one.”

She rolled her eyes again, adding a touch more theatrics to it this time. “I’m not interested in the sort of present you want to give me.”

He smiled slowly—panty-meltingly—so confident in his charms that she was torn between slapping him and kissing that smug look off his face.

“Ah can feel ye, lass.” His voice went lower, his brogue cranking her temperature up, and she was sure he was doing it on purpose, knew how he affected her when he sounded so rough around the edges. He dropped his left hand to her chest, stealing her breath all over again as the heavy weight of it settled between her breasts, and stared at his fingers. “Ye be needing your male.”

Hella caught his wrist and shoved his hand away from her, sense slamming back into her to knock the part of her that kept falling under his spell out of her.

“You’re notmymale.” She ducked under his arm and moved deeper into the room, turning to face him as her pulse thundered in her ears. “You’re a confused, cursed wolf. You’re being manipulated and enslaved by your instincts, and they’re wrong. I’m not your fated one.”

He slowly pivoted towards her.

The glow in his golden eyes unsettled her as he stared at her in silence, his expression giving nothing away now.

“My lass has spirit,” he murmured and the corners of his lips twitched. “I like that… but I will have my kiss.”

Persistent, irritating, and gorgeous wolf.

“Come and get it then.” She crooked her finger at him, feeling it tingle with magic as a sliver of her strength returned.

Just enough to carry out a plan that would no doubt make him angry with her again.

He stalked towards her, all predator and male, tearing her between going through with it and giving him the kiss he wanted. His golden gaze dropped to her lips and they tingled in response, an ache rolling through her as she recalled just how firm his lips had been against hers the last time they had kissed, and how thoroughly he had kissed her, stamping his mark on her.

It had been far too long since she had been kissed like that.

Hella forced herself to focus, because she wouldn’t be kissing him again.

When he reached her, his hands coming up to claim her hips, she lifted her hand and brushed her finger over his lower lip, stopping him in his tracks. His eyes grew hooded, another look she found far too sexy, and then drowsy as she swept her finger back again, savouring the softness of his lip.

“What?” he mumbled and blinked, frowned and tried to look at her. “Wha’d’you do to—”

He dropped to his knees and sank forwards, and Hella stepped aside so he didn’t collapse against her legs. She grimaced when he faceplanted on the dirty wooden floorboards instead, out cold.

“I gave you a goodnight kiss,” she whispered.

She sank into a crouch beside him and brushed her fingers across his brow, clearing his dark hair from it, and then feathered them down to his temple. She stroked the smile lines beside his closed eye and then caressed the sculpted plane of his cheek. His whiskers were coarse, just right for making her lips tingle as he kissed her, and she almost wished she had laced her lips with the spell and not her fingertips.

For the second time in a week, Hella found herself looking down at him and asking, “What am I going to do with you?”

She knew what she had to do with him, and it was enough to make her hesitate. He wasn’t to be trusted though. He truly believed she was his fated one and that meant he wasn’t going to stop trying to place a claim on her—a claim she didn’t want. She didn’t want to be his.

And there was only one way to make him see that.

She had to do the unthinkable.

Just remembering how badly he had reacted the last time she had chained him was enough to make her hesitate, to have her stalling and staring at him, simply watching him sleep. She told herself she had no choice, even as some distant voice inside her screamed that she did. She could help him. She shook her head. She wanted to help him, but she wanted it to be on her terms, not his. If she let him run free, he would keep trying to seduce her, and she wasn’t strong enough to keep on resisting his advances.

He was right.

She did want him.

But he wanted something far different to what she did.

He wanted to chain her with a bond.

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