Page 122 of The Alpha Dire Wolf
I shook my head. “I never said I want you.”
“You didn’t have to,” he said, stepping closer and running a finger along my cheek.
I shivered pleasantly at his touch, but I didn’t move into it. I didn’t retreat either. I was neutral. Mostly.
“You just keep fighting it. Refusing to accept that there’s a connection between us. One that’s irresistible, impossible to ignore. I can wait a little longer.”
I didn’t hear the last words. I was too busy pulling up my grandmother’s journal.
“Listen to this,” I said, reading aloud. “To do that, you must find the guardian. They will be drawn to you—a partnership, a call impossible to ignore. Find the guardian, Vi-vi.”
I finished reading and looked up. Lincoln was staring at me, silent, watching. There was no surprise on his face.
“You’re the guardian. Aren’t you?” I asked.
Lincoln’s mouth curled up, speaking a million wicked intentions without a single word.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked. “You aren’t answering my question.”
He stepped forward. “You just admitted something I find much more interesting than that talk.”
“I did? What’s that?”
“You find the call of me impossible to ignore,” he rumbled quietly, his mismatched eyes twinkling with dueling flames. “You findmeimpossible to ignore.”
“Because you don’t shut up.” I tried to counter with some wit, but he wasn’t having it.
He shook his head, his eyes never leaving mine. “No, not this time, Vee. Not this time. You’re nervous. You’re scared. I understand that. I respect it. But you’re letting that hold you back. From me. Fromus.”
“I told you. The day I arrived here, I found out my ex had cheated on me. I’m notreadyfor this.”
“Yes, you are,” he said, stepping firmly into my personal space, his wide-bodied, um, body, blocking out everything else around me.
My thoughts were scattering. Shattering into millions of incoherent stammerings that settled in my knees, robbing them of strength and coordination. I wobbled ever so slightly.
That was all Linc needed. His arm snaked around my back, his hand dropping to my rear, where his fingers spread wide and found a grip to hold me upright. By my ass.
He was grabbing my ass. Just like that.
Heat exploded from … from … from everywhere, all at once.
“You want me, just as badly as I want you,” he said, leaning in close to all but purr the words into my ear. “And, Vee?”
“Yes?”
“I want youbadly,” he said, stoking the flames to a roaring fever pitch between my legs, a growing heat that was spreading its numbing touch through my body.
He wasn’t wrong. I did want him. From the moment I’d seen him in the forest, I’d been drawn to him in some manner. But logic said—
“I’m going to show you how much I want you. How much I need you,” Linc growled.
“Oh …”
You know what? Screw logic.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Sylvie
