The Lone Wolf's Rejected Mate (Five Packs #3)(63)

His awe.

Of me.

I can feel it all, and it blows my mind and breaks my heart, and I feel as young as he sees me and a million years old at the same time.

“You want me,” I whisper.

“Yes.”

“A lot.”

“Like air,” he says.

My lips curve, sad and rueful and bittersweet. “Nobody wants air.”

“They need it.”

“You don’t need me.” He walked away. He stayed away.

“Like air,” he says again with a note of finality.

“You don’t even know me.” I cradle my wrist closer to my bare breast. The throbbing is easing more quickly than I’d expect. Maybe my heat is accelerating the healing.

Darragh leans closer. His chains clank. I feel guarded. Protected.

“I know the important things.” His fingers stroke down my cheek, finding the divot at the corner of my mouth. He strokes lightly across my thirst-chapped lower lip. He traces my nose from the bridge to the tip like I’m exquisitely delicate. Like I’m a work of art. “You’re strong. Brave. Beautiful.”

“You’re just saying nice things because you feel bad.”

He rumbles a denial, and his touch disappears. I blink my blurred eyes, distressed by the loss, but before my wolf can growl, he scoops me up, adjusting me so I’m right side up, drawing my back to his chest, wrapping his arms around my middle. He gently rocks us side to side. I prop my hurt wrist on his forearm.

“Is this okay?” he asks.

I hum and lean back, letting him take my weight.

“If you need me to stop, just say so, okay?” he says.

I tilt my head back to rest it in the place where his neck meets his shoulder. This is another “not quite the truth.” Soon, I won’t be able to stop myself, and not too long after that, he won’t be able to stop himself, either. We’re powerless against our biology, powerless in this situation, but somehow, still, when he says he’ll stop if I ask him to, it isn’t a lie.

It’s what the truth would be if it were just us, Darragh and Mari. If there were no past and no present. If we existed in a world where Fate didn’t decide for us. In that world, Darragh would say, “If you say stop, I will.”

And I’d say, “Don’t stop.”

So I do. I say it. “Don’t stop,” I murmur.

His lungs catch. He groans and buries his face in the crook of my neck, breathing me in. He places a reverent kiss on my pulse point, so carefully, like I’m glass. Like he’s never kissed anyone anywhere before.

“Oh, Mari,” he growls. “I want to do things to you.” His breath is hot on my earlobe. A shiver judders down my spine.

“Like what?”

“Anything you want. Make you feel good.” His voice grows even more ragged. “Kiss you.”

“You are kissing me.”

“You know what I mean.”

“You mean on the lips?” He rumbles. For some reason, I want to giggle.

He’s so male and dominant and grown, but in this moment, he reminds me of Fallon and the other scrappers who come by the cabin on some pretext—to borrow a video game or get a cut fixed up—and try to chat us up, puffed up and bold and transparently scared as shit.

I squirm in Darragh’s arms, but I don’t try to escape him. He tightens his grip anyway, but gently. A fizzy warmth tingles between my legs, and it’s not heat—it’s a more subtle sensation. I’m surprised it even registers.

“Yes, I want to kiss you, Mari,” he mutters like I’ve tortured it out of him.

“How bad?” I whisper.

“So fucking bad,” he groans.

“Okay,” I say and twist in his arms.

“Okay,” he says back, cupping my bottom to scoot me closer while he gazes down at me as if he’s never seen anything like me in his life. Sheer wonder. Slight terror.

I smile and tilt my head. He tracks my curls as they fall back, and then his gaze falls to my lips. I don’t have time to take another breath. He takes my face in his hands and kisses me.

Like he’s starving.

Like I’m everything.

Like he’s wanted to do this his entire life, and he never thought he would, and reality has exploded into a technicolor dream, and I’m the center of it all.

Like that.

The power makes me lightheaded. It scares me witless.

His lips taste like salt and copper, and they’re rough but soft, and I can’t get enough. He won’t give me enough. He kisses me and then holds me away, his grip tight on my upper arms, searching my face—I guess to see if I’m freaking out—and then he groans in surrender and kisses me again.

I’ve never been kissed before.

I’ve never been this close to someone, and he doesn’t let me adjust at my own pace. He demands that I open my mouth for his tongue, that I wrap my good arm around his neck, that I hold on to him tight.

His hand slips between us. Between the clank of the chains, a button pops, a zipper unzips, and fabric rips. I glance down. His jeans are in tatters, his ruddy cock jutting up, flush with his taut abs, thick and proud.

I nip his tongue so that he’ll let me up for air. He growls into my mouth, his eyes flying open. They’re burnished, swirling gold, the pupils mere pinpricks.