Page 62 of Savage Hunter

He runs the tip of his nose up the side of my cheek and breathes me in. His lips are by my ear when he speaks next. “I will be the one who kills your mother. No one will keep me from ending her. Telling the Savages your mother is the queenpin of the Society will have Ares pushing me out. I can’t have that.”

“Is that the only reason? Revenge?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“Yes,” I answer honestly.

“No one needs to know who you are. You haven’t told them up until now which means you rather they don’t know. And they don’t have to.” A fierceness shines through his dark eyes. He’s intent on protecting me in every way.

“Are you saying I should keep lying to them?”

Without a care in the world that anyone can walk in on us, he takes my face between his palms—a gesture he seems to favor. Remnants of blood stains mark his skin in places he couldn’t clean in a hurry, but for some odd reason I am not pushing him away. Usually the sight of blood makes me want to vomit, but right now I’m turned on. I shudder under the force of my revelation. My nipples tighten and the further south the heat travels the more excited I become. I want Wolfe to kiss me and tell me I’m his. If only just once.

That makes me sound messed up in the head, and maybe I am. No, I know I am.

“They’ve done nothing but protect me. I can’t keep who I am buried for long.” My voice is barely above a whisper.

“I’m saying I will protect your secret. If you trust me with your life, you can trust me with this. Everyone knows enough about you, they don’t need to know everything.” A hand moves around to cup the back of my head. The instant our lips meet desire to let the world fade to only this moment, to hell with everything else, is overwhelming. His fingers slide into my hair. Using his other hand he reaches down, palms a thigh and lifts me to sit on the countertop.

He steps between my spread thighs and for the first time in a really long time I welcome the feel of a man’s tongue stroking over mine. There’s no stopping the soft moan that escapes me. I slowly melt into the heat of the kiss, the possessive hold on my head. His grip tightens and the roughness of his beard scrapes across the softer skin of my chin as he takes more of me with his mouth. Wolfe Carter, I am relearning, is not a man who stops to ask permission.

My mind tumbles back to the night I gave him my virginity. He called me his good girl. I never thought I wanted to hear those words again in my life, but when he breaks the kiss before the heat level hits extreme I find I crave to hear him praise me.

My breathing turns shaky and my fingers can’t seem to stop trembling as I press my palms against his chest. This is reckless. Uncontrolled. The slow burn, yearning ache thrums between my thighs.

“Wolfe, this isn’t happening.” He palms a thigh and the feel of his roughened palms and fingers gliding up my leg sends chills of another kind rushing through me. These are made entirely of lust and pent-up emotions that have searched for an outlet for months on end.

“You’re right. Not right now anyway.” His lips find my neck. “I was afraid I would lose you back there. Let me smell the brown sugar on your skin just one more time.”

He kisses the pulse point under my ear. My eyes shutter closed. The air grows thick, but a voice in the back of my head says danger is close.

Wolfe’s gaze flicks over my face. He leaves no part of my upturned face untouched. My God, this man. He actually considers me like I’m some innocent angel.

I drop my eyes, unable to hold his gaze. “Wolfe, I—”

“—I know, baby. I know,” he says in a sound that is little better than a hungry growl. “I know. Later.”

His raspy words come out like a promise. Or at least that is what my head is telling my heart. My body hears it too and wants later to be right now with the amount of heat cascading through me.

My eyes peel off a point on his chest to find him staring down at me with such an intensity I feel like there will be no escaping the animal in him. He’ll hunt me down the second I try to run.

He’s found a bulletproof vest in the time since pulling Persephone and Rage out of the flower field. I curl my fingers around the edges and shake him.

“Don’t look at me like I’m some saint to you, Wolfe.”

“How else does a man look at the woman he loves?”

God, what do I say to that?

“I’m not some daydream come true for you. I’m a nightmare. I scream in my sleep. I wake up trembling in the middle of the night. I’m ruined, don’t you get that?”

Horror streaks through me and leaves burning embers in its fiery wake.

“I don’t know what to do anymore, Wolfe. I’m scared, angry and want to hurt everyone trying to hurt my family. I meant what I said. I’m going to help you. And then—”

“—And then I help you. You let me in and I will do whatever it takes to help you heal.”

“You’re not hearing me.”

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