Page 47 of Love At First Roar
Her legs brushed his thigh, heat blooming everywhere their bodies met. His lion roared approval, clawing at his chest. Shegasped his name into his mouth, and he drank it in, barely holding himself back.
But something pulled at him, deep and sharp.
He broke the kiss.
Cora blinked up at him, lips parted, breath heavy. “Callum…”
“You don’t want this,” he whispered again, forehead resting against hers.
“I do,” she whispered back. “That’s the problem.”
He closed his eyes.
They stayed tangled like that, lips swollen, breath uneven, wanting more but knowing better.
After a moment, he sat back, rubbing a hand over his face like that’d erase the taste of her from his mouth. It didn’t.
She touched his hand. Just once.
“We’ll figure it out,” she said.
He nodded, still catching his breath. “But not tonight.”
She stood slowly, pulling the blanket tighter around her shoulders. He walked her back under the hush of twilight, their hands brushing once but not twining. Not yet.
Not yet.
The scent of lilacs followed him long after she shut her door.
25
CORA
Twyla Honeytree’s blessing dinners were legendary, or so Cora had been warned. But nothing could’ve prepared her for the magic of it.
It wasn’t the spells, or at least, not the kind cast with wands or whispered words. It was the way the entire town showed up just as the fireflies began to stir, how laughter wove through the trees like silk, how the wind smelled like rosemary and roasted peaches.
The glade behind the Griddle & Grind had been transformed. Tables stretched beneath a canopy of fairy lanterns strung through the branches, each one glowing with a warmth that hummed of hearth and hope. Bright quilts had been draped over logs and benches, hand-stitched and mismatched, soft with years of stories soaked into their seams.
Cora stood near the outer edge, fingers curled around a honey-sweet mug of spiced cider, soaking it all in. She wore a deep green wrap dress that Twyla had “accidentally” left on her cottage hook that morning, with a note:Wear it. And brush your hair, stardust.
She had. Mostly.
“Tell me you’re not hiding back here,” a voice teased.
Cora turned to see Maeve leaning against a tree, looking entirely too smug in a dark wine-colored tunic and leather pants that made her look like she belonged in a tavern ballad.
“I’m not hiding,” Cora said, though it sounded unconvincing even to her. “I’m surveying.”
“You’re blushing.”
“No, I’m warm.”
Maeve’s smirk widened. “Sure.”
Cora smiled, though her heart fluttered in her chest. “I just—this is a lot.”
Maeve tilted her head, sharp eyes softening. “Good lot, though. You belong here. We see it, even if you don’t yet. And you need this. Hell, I think we all do about now.”
