Page 166 of The Demon Tide

“Oh, Jarod,” she breathes, meeting his loving gaze. “Thank you.”

Hugging the gift to her chest, she reaches up to take hold of his sinewy upper arm, stands on her tiptoes and kisses him, their lips lingering past a simple thank-you as Jarod’s arms wrap around her waist. Aislinn’s heartbeat deepens in her chest as that familiar spark of desire ignites in them both.

She wants to pull him into the purple forest and kiss him for hours. She wants to press her body closer to him, as close as she can...

Aislinn hesitates as Jarod draws back, looking at her searchingly as her familiar trepidation wrests hold, cutting into the lovely moment like a tight binding. She knows Jarod can read her growing desire as clearly as she can read his. But she also knows that Jarod is keenly aware that her strengthening physical draw to him is mixed up with so much trauma and anger over what Damion did to her that she fears it might keep them physically apart forever.

Aislinn’s breath shudders through her like the breeze coming off the Vo as Jarod releases her, now touching her only lightly on her arm.

Her brow tightens as she peers over the river, unable to meet Jarod’s gaze for a moment as glowing Xishlon runic orbs are released from a crowded ship in the near distance.

She wants Jarod more than she’s ever wanted him before, her desire further heightened by the ominous fact that war is closing in. And she desperately wants to be Jarod’s full mate before it does.

But every time she comes close to taking him, flashes of Damion Bane assault her mind. Aislinn winces as she struggles to beat back the dark memories that threaten to accost her even now. How Damion forced and humiliated her. The unspeakable, painful things he did. His cruelty. His bottomless cruelty.

And yet, both Jarod’s unflinching love and the love of the Forest have been like a constant, caressing balm this past month, gradually dulling the edges of what Damion Bane took from her like persistent water coursing over jagged stone. And creating a safe space for her to gain strength and heal.

And there’s so much loving desire in him. Aislinn can sense it coursing through him as she takes in the lines of violet rippling over the Vo. It started out as intimidating, this new Lupine ability to read his overpowering want for her so vividly. Troubling at times, so clear that he wants more than to just kiss and hold her.

But her sense of his desire has since morphed into its own kind of comfort because Jarod’s intense passion is stripped of any cruelty. Even though his touch on her arm in this moment is featherlight, she can feel the warm echo of his strong arms around her, night after night, like a bolstering imprint. Loath to ever be separated again, the two of them have fallen asleep beside each other every evening since their reunion, even though, at first, she awakened crying out in terror from the persistent nightmares, and even though Jarod sometimes had trouble sleeping as his desire for her burned through his body.

She’s seen him unclothed both before and after a Change—and once she even saw his desire for her in shockingly vivid terms. And yet, he’s always holding back and careful to tread gently around her spikes of fear, her flashes of revulsion and outrage. Waiting.

I’ll wait for you forever, he’s told her more than once as he cradled her in his arms.

And so, night after night, Aislinn has fallen asleep to Jarod embracing her in the darkness, every Lupine sense heightened as she breathed in the intoxicating male scent of him, as he stroked her arm, kissed her forehead, her lips. So gentle, when the desire in him was anything but.

And slowly, she’s felt herself beginning to heal. To the point where, these past days, things have turned a corner, her love and desire for Jarod starting to feel stronger than the trauma.

Aislinn turns her gaze from the river and looks at Jarod, warmth coursing over her as their eyes meet. She swallows, her mouth and throat suddenly thirsty with want for him, her nerves alight with what she’s about to offer.

“Take me to mate.”

Jarod pulls in a hard breath, and Aislinn can feel the hot flare of his desire, every part of him controlled but straining to move toward her.

Jarod nods slowly, a slightly stunned look on his face. There’s no need to ask if she’s sure. Aislinn knows he can scent her feelings and desire as clearly as she can his. He knows that she’s also keeping herself back from him, in this moment, with as much force as she can summon. Scared, yet not scared. And ready to make him her own.

“I can’t announce this to a group,” she tells him shakily and with real remorse, the emotional storm inside her kicking up. “I know it’s the Lupine way, but... I just can’t.”

They broached this a few nights ago, well past midnight as she lay awake, caught up in wanting him while being afraid of opening the door to the nightmare memories and dangerous vulnerability. Jarod roused alongside her, perhaps sensing her tossing emotions and seeming to read the war going on inside her. They talked through the night, and she finally told him, raging and storming as she sobbed into his hard shoulder, exactly what was done to her.

“That was violence,” Jarod said, holding her tight as rage on her behalf coursed through him. “That wasn’t mating.”

Aislinn’s thoughts sweep back from the memory to the present as tears glass her eyes and Jarod’s fingers gently touch her arm, light as gossamer, as if he knows how fragile this moment is. He coaxes her around to face him, then reaches up to caress the side of her face.

“There are no rules in this for us,” he says, voice low and unfailingly kind.

Grief kicks up in Aislinn. “But... I know it’s important for you. To...honor the Lupine ways.” Aislinn can’t say more. She can feel the flare of grief in him, as well. His people, dead. His parents, his younger sister, murdered. And, in light of all of his terrible trauma, it pains her to have to say no to this most basic of Lupine traditions—the announcement, to the entire pack, of a couple’s desire to take each other to mate.

Tears glisten in Aislinn’s eyes. He’s being so kind, but she’s asking too much of him. She’s always asking far too much of him.

Jarod embraces her loosely, his amber gaze on her searching as a tear slides down her cheek. “Aislinn,” he says, “sometimes tradition needs to yield to something greater.”

She manages a faltering smile. “Like true love?”

Jarod returns her smile. “Yes. Like love. It always needs to yield to love.”

And that’s when Aislinn begins to cry in earnest, her sense of safety enlarging.

---