Page 43 of Season of the Wolf

“Do you also remember the one and only thing Ieverasked you to promise me in return?”

The question sobered me, made me focus again. When I didn’t answer quickly enough, he answered for me.

“I asked that you never run toward danger. No matter what. Not even for me, and you gave me your word,” he huffed, each syllable leaving his mouth more laboriously than the last.

“Liam, I—”

I lost my thought when he came closer, a mass of bronze skin and intense emotion as he stood before me.

“Our word to one another has always been everything.”

I blinked, I breathed, but words wouldn’t come.

We were nearly toe-to-toe now, staring into one another’s eyes as our every thought and feeling came bursting from within like fireworks. I couldn’t even pinpoint when he took my hand, when his fingers interlaced with mine, but they had.

“Nothing in this world is more important than you breathing your next breath.” There was so much conviction in that one statement, it rendered me speechless. Maybe that had been his point.

My heart throbbed inside my chest, heavy as it pounded my ribs. A confession was brewing within me, one that both frightened and freed me all at once. I inhaled a mouthful of air, and exhaled words my soul demanded I speak out loud.

“Without you, I’ll die.”

I knew how weak and desperate that sounded, but also knew how much lighter I felt now that it was out.

A bitter tear slipped down my cheek and I was surprised by the anger that followed. I was angry forever was no longer on the table for us. Angry at how I failed to prevent this all from happening.

The side of my face warmed against Liam’s palm when he pulled me to his shoulder, embracing me at the exact moment I was about to explode—with rage, sadness, everything.

Hot tears slipped from my cheek and onto his flesh.

“I’m sorry,” I finally said.

No, I wasn’t sorry for running off on my own, but Iwassorry I made him worry for what I might do in the future. I may have even been sorry I knew I loved him enough to cause him this same hurt again if it came down to it.

He sighed and his air breezed through my hair, but a response never came. Instead, I was moved from his shoulder and a kiss just beside my eye melted away some of the tension. Then another to the corner of my mouth nearly made me forget.

My lips moved with his when he captured them, as his hands blazed a heated trail, moving the material of my shirt up my torso, my chest, so slowly. He knew he didn’t need to ask permission. The confidence in his touch made that clear.

We both knew I belonged to him.

The rest of my clothing followed, and then those jeans that rode low on his hips were on the floor, too. Stripped bare—physically, emotionally—we felt more like us.

A set of broad hands lifted me from the floor and taut skin met my calves when they encircled his waist. At the feel of being laid on his bed, when he stared down on me with unmatched adoration, there was no doubt I’d been forgiven.

Forgiven for the one and only crime I’d ever been guilty of.

Loving him.

*

We stayed close as the high we’d just ridden leveled off. There was no space between us. Where his skin ended, mine began. The world could have been decimated outside his window and we wouldn’t have moved from this place.

A soft kiss to the back of my shoulder made me draw a deep breath at the feel of it.

“I’m sorry I missed the meeting,” he sighed. “I should have been there.”

Shaking my head required strength I no longer had, thanks to him, so the movement was halfhearted, lazy.

“It’s fine. You needed space. I get it.” When I finished speaking, I pulled his arm tighter around my waist, pushing my hips back toward him a bit more.

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