Another step. She’s almost within reach. “They’re just scared. They don’t understand.”
“Well, you don’t deserve that,” I snap, and then force myself to take a couple bracing breaths. The last thing I need to do is take my anger out on the one person who doesn’t provoke it. “You didn’t deserve it when I treated you that way, and you don’t deserve it now.”
“Oh.” She hesitates. “Are you still…? Dare, I understand. Why you did what you did. I don’t hold it against you. I could never.”
A growl rumbles in my chest. She’s a better wolf than me. A better person than me. I’m lucky she accepted me back, when she could just as easily have told me to get the hell away from her before I hurt her again.
“I hate them.” I shake my head. “I fucking hate how it hurts you.”
“I get that,” she says slowly. Her fingers latch gently on to my shoulder. “And I appreciate the way you stood up for me. But you can’t just attack people like that.”
I don’t reply. I hear her and I smell her, but her fingers on my bare shoulder are what holds my full attention. That small connection might as well be all that exists in the whole fucking world. I imagine her hand sliding down my back. Her fingers kneading the hard knots in my muscles, chasing away the demons that I somehow continue to harbor inside me. I never want her to stop touching me. I never want to stop touching her.
As if she can hear my thoughts, her other hand moves over my shoulder blade, and then both her hands are caressing my back. Warmth flows from her skin, heating me, awakening my cock with more fury than seems possible. I harden my grip on the tree, my blunt nails biting into the rough bark.
When I don’t speak, her voice behind me softens. “You know, I sometimes worry that you feel the same way as that guy,” she murmurs, pain in her tone. “I worry that you’re disgusted by me. That you’ll always struggle to accept who I am. And I can’t even blame you. If I’d grown up a shifter, if I’d watched my people slaughtered…”
She trails off, her voice clogged with emotion.
God, she’s an incredible woman. Kind. Lovely. Compassionate in a way I’ve never been able to manage. The sweet vulnerability in her voice rips my heart into pieces. Sable is everything true and beautiful in this world, and I’ll be fucking damned if I don’t spend the rest of my life proving it to her.
In a flash, I whip around and take hold of her arms. I switch our positions, pressing her back up against the tree, boxing her in with my arms so that she can’t run away from me.
So that she’ll know I don’t want to run away from her.
My gaze runs down her naked body. My heart picks up a frantic pace, and I slide my hands lower, brushing over her arms, then her trim waist and her soft, round hips. I lick my lips, aching to bury my face between her legs until she cries my name.
But even more powerful than the need to claim her in this moment is the need to make sure she knows. To make sure she understands.
“I am done letting anyone make you feel bad about who you are,” I say vehemently. “And that starts with me. I love you, Sable.”
Her eyes widen, a small gasp falling from her lips as her breath catches.
Fuck, I want to steal that gasp, swallow it up as I devour her with ravenous kisses. I lean closer to her, my hands growing more urgent as they roam over her petite body.
“Some part of me has loved you since the first second I saw you standing in the moonlight by that stream,” I murmur. “And every other part of me has fallen in love with you day by day as I discovered what an amazing woman you are. And the fact that I ever made you feel like less than that? It fucking kills me. No matter what happens or what comes, witch or wolf or something else, I’m on your side, and I will be until the bitter fucking end.”
Her wide, blue eyes are wet with unshed tears as she stares up at me, and I hope it’s a good emotion. I hope I haven’t scare
d the shit out of her, since that seems to be my MO most days.
I realize I’ve said the right thing when her gaze moves to my lips, and her soft, torturous fingernails trail down my abdomen.
That’s all I need. Hell, it’s more than the hungry wolf inside me needs.
I stop holding back, releasing my tight grip on my control.
Lunging forward, I close the last bit of space between us, capturing her lips with mine and pressing our bodies together. The kiss is hard, deep, and hungry, and the feel of her soft curves rubbing against me make me lose all sense of myself. All sense of anything else.
It’s just me and my mate. Her soft skin and her full lips, and the way she fits so perfectly against me as she kisses me like she might die if she stops.
The man in the meeting house is a long-forgotten memory by now. My rage is gone. Nothing else exists but the burning need to claim my mate.
6
Sable
The heat that rises inside me from Dare’s kiss is all-consuming. I’m burning from the inside out, and my rugged mate is the spark that lit the fire. The deep, searing truth in his words washes away the pain of that pack meeting until I can hardly even recall the face of the man he threatened.