Page 86 of Smoke and Moon

“Where are we?”Morlie asked once Chanin closed the door behind them and set her on her feet on the floor.They had traveled all night through the woods to get here, and it wasn’t quite dawn outside, hindering her from seeing much of her surroundings, especially since he brought them right behind the place from the woods.

“My house.”He slipped his hand down her arm and grasped her hand.“Come in, I’ll show you around.”

“Ouch.”She hissed at the pain radiating in her hand and pulled it away from his touch.

He stopped.His brows furrowed with concern.“Let me take a look at your hands.”

She curled them into her chest, not wanting to show them to him.However, there was something in the way he cocked his brow as he stood there waiting with one of his hands extended towards her.

The mark connected her body to him, but she didn’t know him and wasn’t a hundred percent sure of putting her care in his hands.But she also realized he wasn’t giving her much of a choice.She stretched her hands out.

Chanin cupped them from underneath as he lowered his gaze and assessed them.“They haven’t healed as much as I would have liked.But I can take care of them for you.”

She drew them back again.“If you bring me a first aid kit or point me toward it, I can handle the scratches.”

Seeing the abrasions and cuts on her hands in the light, it shocked Morlie to witness what she had done to herself.Instead, the memories had her feeling twisted and hot inside.Never in her wildest imaginations or her vivid, heated fantasy of the wolf-shifter did she conceive of such an erotic act as Chanin performed on her.However, it was not only his actions but her own that startled her and made it hard for Morlie to meet his gaze.

He’d placed her hands on that tree branch and ordered her not to let go, and even when her hands and arms ached from the strained position, she only held on tighter, not wanting to disappoint him by letting go or her hands slipping.

What is wrong with me?Morlie couldn’t say if this were her because she’d never been in a relationship with a man, or even a boy, to know what she would or wouldn’t do with one.All she knew while deep in the woods was that she wanted Chanin not only to touch and kiss her...but to see her.

She felt invisible.That was a large part of her issues living among the Drahk, her sister’s people—a part of a place where she didn’t matter.Kai was who they wanted, and the baby she carried sealed the deal.But she knew those two things were unrelated to why she ran.

It was him.Chanin.The Lupine Alpha.She could feel him in her bones, her core.

While he carried her back and his steady gait through the woods had lulled her in and out of exhausted sleep, she tried to sort through her thoughts and decipher why she had run, been compelled not to run from something to something, someone.

Even though she hadn’t seen him in the woods, she understood her connection to him on some level, and he had called her forth like a mythical sorcerer, casting a binding spell around her and drawing her toward him.

She could say she didn’t believe in sorcerers, but until Morlie met the Drahks, she hadn’t believed in dragons either.Or Fae.Or bears.Or Vampires.

Or wolves.Wolves who could shift into a tall man with lean muscles so well-defined it made a woman desire to trace each ridge of the sculpted landscape with hands and tongue.Shift into a man with eyes so clear Nordic blue she felt she could see his soul if she let herself get lost in his gaze.The thin, amber rings around the shifter’s irises appeared to wink and flirt with her, daring her to swim in dangerous, deeper waters.

“You are my responsibility, Morlie.And I’ll care for you.”He curled a finger under her chin and tipped her head back to meet his gaze.His height overshadowed hers greatly.

She stood a full seventy-one and a half centimeters on her best day when Chanin had to be at least seventy-five.As tall as the Drahk but nowhere near as wide.She lifted her chin higher and shot him with a stern look.“I didn’t walk away from one place only to end up in another to be coddled.”

“Oh, mate, I plan to do a lot of things to you, but treating you like a helpless child is not one of them.”His voice took on a rough tenor as his sensuous mouth curled up into a wolfish grin that caused the amber ring to widen and flash.“And so we’re clear, you ran.To me.”

Morlie gasped not only at the salacious intonations of his words but the responding heat that flared in her core and made her thighs ache.She swallowed hard to keep her mind focused.“Be that as it may, there are only a few scratches—”

“Still.I’ll take care of it.”There was a finality to his words, cluing her in that he would not broker further debate on it.

That pissed her off.Chanin’s commanding Alpha persona may be hot as hell during intimate times, but outside the bedroom or woods, she didn’t like it.She’d had to prove to her sister that she was capable, and she’d do it to this sexy wolf-shifter, too.But she had to learn to pick her battles.“Fine.But, can you at least put on some clothes first?”

Yup, she’d been struggling since she faced him in the night not to allow her gaze to drift lower than the man’s abdomen.Her eyesight had become sharper, and there were things in the woods she discovered she could see if they were no more than a yard and a half away, which meant Chanin’s entire frame was distinctly visible if she was bold enough to look.She wasn’t then or now.

That grin again reminded her the Alpha was more animal than man.“Sure.I can do that.But so you know, my kind enjoy the freedom of the air in our fur and on our skin.Bare skin.”He cupped her cheek and slowly ran his thumb below her bottom lip.He leaned in close, and she thought he would kiss her, but he kept his lips just inches from hers.“Soon, you’ll have to put away your shyness and accept the true nature of your wolf.”

“But I’m not a wolf,” she declared, then licked her lips.

The growl that emitted from the man vibrated around the room and crawled up her body, setting off tremors in her sex and around her nipples.The audacious quakes danced over her skin like his fingers touched her.

How did he do that?

“Not yet, little bunny, but soon.Very soon.”

Forgetting about her injury, she fisted her hands, trying to stifle the volcanic eruption of need ready to erupt in her core, and winced.

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