Page 90 of Wolf Caged
He might not have touched her body, but that did not mean he had not messed with her mind—that Saphira had not seen things that had imprinted on her. Her reaction to the rite remained with me, rousing my shadows and my darker nature that whispered at me to hunt.
To kill.
She had been drowning in whatever darkness had closed in on her before I had pulled her back to me.
It had been a mistake to order her to come the celebration. I could see that now. There were things about this wolf I should have known, and not only whatever trauma the male wolf had inflicted upon her.
I touched her flushed cheeks, a buried part of me relieved to feel they were cooler now.
The rite had affected her more deeply than I had imagined it would.
I had no love for it normally, but I had found it interesting purely because she had been there with me and I had been able to watch her reacting to the events as they had unfolded. I had liked watching her walls shatter…
But…
I regretted it all now.
I felt responsible for the pain she had suffered because of it, even though I had not known she would react so strongly to the sight and scent of the rite. She loosed a soft sigh as I stroked my fingers across her cooling cheek and feathered them up to her damp brow to brush her wet silvery hair back from it.
What madness had gripped her tonight?
I had hoped to shake her a little, maybe even loosen her inhibitions, but instead I had inflicted pain upon her.
Guilt gnawed at me as I watched her sleep, this peaceful beauty a stark contrast to the wild, desperate female I had found in this room when I had followed her here, needing to know what was wrong with her.
I knew too little about wolves.
I could see that now.
And I intended to rectify that when she woke. She would tell me what had come over her, and confirm my suspicions for me.
That she was in the grip of a mating heat.
The way she had moved in response to my touch, her sweet cries as pleasure had taken her, and the hungry look in her eyes as she had gazed at me, silently demanding more, swam in my mind, keeping my own need at a steady boil.
Her plea for me to fuck her had almost been my undoing.
Would she have begged any male like that, or was it me in particular she wanted so fervently?
She had demanded I find her a male if I would not take her myself, but had seemed to regret her words the moment they left her lips, and had been all too happy to subject herself tomy caress, seeking her pleasure in it instead of issuing another command to find her someone else who would do as she desired.
As if I would let another male touch her.
I growled at the thought of another male laying his hands on her, my teeth sharpening and darkness staining the tips of my fingers as ancient markings tracked down each one towards my palms.
She wasmine.
Mine alone.
Visions of her moving so sensuously with another male, lost in her hungers and a slave to her desire, had my darker side pushing to the fore, my nails transforming into inch long claws I brushed over her skin in a possessive caress.
If another male had come to her tonight, would she have begged him to take her as she had begged me?
Would she have given herself to him?
Or was it me alone she desired?
I did not allow myself to answer that question.
