Page 22 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

“Then eat your dinner. I’ll massage you as long as you finish everything on your plate,” I said, affecting a motherly tone.

“I think you might find I’ll draw out the process like a child facing down a plate of boiled turnips,” Dane said, but I just laughed. He picked up his cutlery and began to make headway through his meal as my thumbs pressed into the curve between his shoulders and his neck.

Things came undone when I started to work on his shoulders. His shirt and my fingers seemed to snag on each other so he set the utensils aside and then whipped the garment up and over his head without too much of a thought. They were so casual with their nakedness, something I was still acclimating to and he realised this.

“I can put it back on,” he said, looking back over his shoulder as I just stood there, hands hovering in the air.

“Ah, no, it’s fine.”

But fine wasn’t the way I would describe the way his skin felt when I finally went back to touching him. Hot, satiny, and all too male, that was definitely more accurate. It was ridiculous of me to baulk at this. One thin layer of fabric could hardly make a difference.

Except it did.

Because as I touched Dane, it wasn’t hard to imagine my hands wandering further, mapping every inch of his body, not just his shoulders. I could fill in the blanks now, because thanks to Weyland and Gael’s tutelage I knew a lot more about the male body, but that just forced my questing mind on. How was he the same as them and how was he different? Did he respond to me as they did? Was he hard, straining against the front of his trews, ready—?

The train of thought was abruptly curtailed when the plate was set aside, shoved away along with piles of paper. Dane got to his feet and turned, grabbing me around the waist and then depositing me on his desk in the space he’d cleared.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” he asked with a low growl.

“What?”

“Do you know what you’re doing to me?” As if to emphasise his words he leaned in, eating up the space between us. I could feel him then, how hard his body was as it wedged itself against mine.

“I…” My voice sounded like a little girl’s, high and breathy, so I swallowed hard and frowned. “I think I’m still working that out. I don’t know you, Dane, not like I do the others.” I lifted my hand then and traced it down the hard line of his breast bone. “But I’m trying to.” His breath came out in one shuddering sigh as I trailed my fingertips lower.

His hand snatched mine away and shoved it behind my back, his much longer fingers able to circle both wrists and hold them locked together.

“Give me some parameters to work with,” he said, his eyes burning into mine. “Tell me what you want and don’t want before things escalate. I won’t hurt you, won’t rush you, but…” A low growl trickled out from between his teeth, his eyes inhumanly blue as he stared. “You have to know how much I want to take things further.”

Well, I did now. For a second, I just watched him hover above me and that’s when I saw the mask crack.

“I tasted heaven the other night,” he said. “Your lips were on my lips, your hands were on my body, your skin touched mine.” A confusing tumble of emotion swelled in response to this as I saw both his desire and his sadness. Because everything he’d felt wasn’t with me. “I thought for a moment, just a moment, that it’d all come together. That somehow I’d managed…” He leant back then, his frown forbidding.

But it wasn’t me he was censoring, it was himself.

“I feel like I’m holding myself back by a string every time I’m in your vicinity, Darcy, so forgive me if I need some rules to work with. I have to keep from tearing your damn clothes off and gorging myself on you like the starving wolf I am.”

Part of me wanted that. The rebellious part that when someone drew a line in the sand, I wanted to step over it, no matter what the consequences were. Another part wanted to see exactly what was simmering inside these strange men who claimed me as their mate. What would they be like, if they weren’t always worrying about me? How would they act if they finally saw me as their equal? But there was a truth to their tentativeness. If it’d taken some prompting to sink my fingers into his hair, it’d take more to…. I blinked, then looked up at Dane and refused to look away.

“You said you wanted to restrain me, take control?” He just stared back, not bothering to answer because we both knew this to be true. “Well, that’s not going to happen tonight.” A slow hiss of breath whistled between his lips as he finally let it out. “I need you to sit down in your chair and put your arms behind your back.”

My words were crisp, slicing through the air and he seemed to feel every single one of them. His head jerked to one side as he studied me and then he let me go. I missed the firm weight of his fingers around my wrists, making me wonder at that, but I didn’t get long. He collapsed into his chair, slouching like an indolent king on his throne, and perhaps that’s what he was.

“Behind your back,” I said, pushing his knee with my toe.

He smiled then, really smiled, and that’s when I saw the resemblance between him and Weyland. The same cocky twist of his lips, the same challenge in his eyes, but I’d never seen that in Dane ever. He locked his arms around the high back of his chair slowly, as if making a show of his compliance, the muscles straining as a result.

“Now what?” he asked, his eyebrow sliding upwards.

I slipped from the table, moving closer, stepping between his splayed thighs.

“I don’t know you, Dane. You’re remote, untouchable in ways the others aren’t. I can’t exactly work out why. You’ve slept beside me, stroked me until I…” I let out a little gasp, an echo of the pleasure I felt as his hand pressed into my pelvis, washing through me. “But even despite that, you’re an undiscovered country to me.”

He watched me shift, closing the gap between us until I could feel the heat radiating off his body.

“I think I want to change that.”

“Then come forth and explore me,” he replied, staring up at me. “I have always been and remain, yours. You just have to crook a finger and I’ll come running.” His smile widened. “Maybe I will even if you don’t.”

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