Page 48 of Her Purr-fect Christmas Mate

More,she told him silently.Body and soul. Everything. All of you. Villainy and all.

Yes,his soul cried out to hers, and she came undone. Pleasure rushed through her as she came, and her clenching, keening orgasm dragged him along with it. He came with a shuddering gasp, and she clutched at him, not wanting to lose one moment of his touch.

Her mind reached deeper into his, and the walls she’d scratched against were gone.

One heartbeat of shock:He let me in.

And then the storm of ice that had been locked away behind the walls crashed over her.

A chasm gaped open inside her, as though the storm Mordecai had kept locked away was scouring her own soul empty. She pushed forward. What was this? How could this be what he’d been hiding behind his impenetrable walls?

Hepretendedto be cold-hearted, but she’d seen past that mask already. She knew he could be warm and careful and kind.Where is it?

Then she saw it, deep within the storm and the emptiness that howled all around. And she understood.

I want her to be happy.His voice wrapped around her like a cloak, ragged-edged and raw.But how can she be happy when I’m like this?

The emptiness. The loneliness. A whole lifetime of wanting one thing, and it had almost lost him the only thing that mattered.

Oh, Mordecai,she thought, her own heart breaking.

He wanted so desperately to be hers, and he thought she wouldn’t have him.

She made her decision.

*You do make me happy,*she told him, and wrapped herself around the cold, lonely core of him.

“Peony?” The shaking in his voice made her open her eyes. He was staring down at her, his gaze half-wild, half-hopeful. “You…”

“It’s true.” She touched his face, tracing the deep lines of stress around his eyes and mouth until they eased. “You’re mine, Mordecai. And I’m not going to let you go.”

He fell onto her. And when she’d come again and thought that was all she had left, he took her again, and again, until any doubt she’d had that he wanted her was a distant memory.

They showered. Ate. Fell into bed again. Ate.Threwthemselves into bed again. Peony lost and recovered her ability to form words so many times she lost count. Their lovemaking became less urgent. Slower, languid, a relaxation into each other’s bodies, a gentle caress of mind to mind like the lap of water against the shore.

And then something changed.

They were still connected, physically and mentally. He closed his eyes—one last pretense that there were any walls between them? Then he looked down at her, his gaze as fiercely possessive as before, but grim, as well.

What now?Tension ratcheted along her spine.

“This wasn’t how I expected today to go,” he admitted. He ran one lazy hand down her side and rested it on her hip. A gentle worship, after the urgency of their lovemaking. “When I sensed your unhappiness and asked you to tell me what you wanted, I was waiting for you to make different demands of me.”

He hesitated, and something like dread curled in her stomach at the watchfulness in his eyes. “What?”

“I thought you were going to ask me for your old life back.”

She snorted. “What life? Maybe if I’d made something of my life before you, I would have regretted leaving it behind now that I’m a shifter—”

“What about the Hypatia?”

Her heart lurched. She lifted her chin. “What about it? I’ve left it behind. You have your own plans for it, anyway, and they’re…”

She swallowed. Swallowed again. Why was this so hard to say?

She had everything she wanted. A mate who made her deliriously happy. An inner animal who wasn’t as helpless and pathetic as she’d feared, even if it was a tiny fluffball. And a future full of… of…

“You don’t have to pretend.” Mordecai’s voice was infuriatingly gentle.

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