Bitten (Once Bitten, Twice Shy #1)(94)

It was like nothing she’d ever felt before.

She pulled away with a breathless gasp. “Do I taste like liquor to you?” she challenged, feeling more brazen than she ever had in her entire life.

For a long moment, Bastian remained as still as stone.

But then he shook his head. And slowly wrapped a calloused hard around the back of her neck, allowing his fingers to entangle themselves in the hair he found there. “You are absurdly beautiful,” he muttered, and slammed his lips back onto hers.

Hands grasping either side of his face, Katherine kissed him back, responding with equal fervor. He swiped her bottom lip with his tongue, begging for entrance into her mouth, which she immediately granted him. Their mouths clashed in a battle for dominance that he easily won. Every sensual lick and twist of his tongue set her body afire – a heat that was only amplified as he used his free hand to caress the small of her back and press her body closer to his.

And then, as quickly as it had started, it was over.

Bastian retreated, tearing his lips from hers and digging his face into her hair, breathing in deeply, like he couldn’t get enough of her scent. Not the alcohol that covered her dress, but her.

She’d never wished so zealously to know what she smelled like to him than right at that moment.

For a long minute, the only sound that filled the air was their noisy breathing. Then, he spoke. “You have no idea, Katherine. When Markus told me he’d lost you this afternoon, I… I lost it.”

Still feeling lightheaded from the kiss they’d just shared, Katherine offered her first breathless apology of the night. “I’m sorry.”

“Just promise me you’ll never do anything so reckless again. You have to tell me when you’re planning on going somewhere. This world we live in – the one I dragged you into – it’s a dangerous one. I can’t stand the thought of something happening to you.”

Swallowing around the wad of guilt that suddenly made itself known in her throat, Katherine offered another apology. “I’m sorry.” But she couldn’t allow herself to be completely swayed by him. “But, Bastian, I still think-”

“I’ll allow you to learn how to fight, if that’s what you really want,” Bastian interrupted, knowing exactly where she was going with the protest. “I still don’t approve, but I understand that it’s not something you’re willing to give up. But you have to compromise with me. Let me teach you, Katherine. Please.”

Didn’t he realize that was all she ever wanted in the first place?

Nothing could have stopped the giddy smile from creeping onto Katherine’s face just then. “Okay.”





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


For the next week, kissing Bastian was all Katherine could think about. The feeling of his lips pressed against hers – the heat of his body as it enveloped her own – haunted her every waking thought.

Non-waking thoughts too, if she was being perfectly honest.

She became aware very quickly, however, that she was the only one who’d been so utterly consumed by what she referred to in her head as the kiss.

Bastian, on the other hand, was acting as if it had never happened. As if he’d never gripped the back of her neck and slammed his mouth onto hers. Never held her close afterwards, burying his face in her hair and breathing her in.

He treated her as he always had.

Well, that wasn’t exactly true. He became more distant. He stopped driving her to school. He didn’t boss her around. He merely offered her a courteous “good morning” when she awoke every sun up and bid her an equally polite “good night” when she retired at sunset.

He was merely... cordial.

It was exactly what Katherine thought she’d always wanted from him.

But it wasn’t. Not anymore. Not after the kiss.

Now his behavior just left her cold. Still, she played along. Made believe, like Bastian, that their lips and tongues had never met. That, even if they did, it didn’t mean anything to her. She didn’t know what else to do.

Katherine was pleased, at least, that the man had kept his word about helping her learn how to fight. After talking to Markus and Zane and discovering what they’d already taught her, Bastian decided that teaching her how to voluntarily transform into her wolf form would be the next logical step in her education. He took her outside to practice nearly every day, always traveling a ways into the woods before beginning.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t seem to do it. Without the powerful pull of the moon, Katherine’s wolf seemed content to lay dormant inside her.

She grew more and more frustrated as their sessions lagged on. And it was just the afternoon before, in the midst of such a session, that she’d finally cracked.

Katherine didn’t know when Bastian had turned into some Zen-loving guru, but this whole meditation business was getting on her last nerve.

After a week of attempting to teach her how to voluntarily transform – and utterly failing at it, she might add—Bastian had apparently decided that meditation was the key to unlocking her inner wolf. He was fixated on the idea.

Thus far, however, no amount of introspection or reflection had helped.

She could sit there with Bastian, trying to picture her inner wolf until kingdom come and she was convinced that absolutely nothing would come of it.