Chapter 17: Her Terms Tonight

Miriam's POV

The key was still in my fist when I turned around.

Dalton stood in the middle of the cabin with one hand pressed to the dressing on his side.

The stove lit half his face orange.

"Sit," I said.

He sat on the edge of the cot.

I walked over and stood between his knees, and he tipped his head back to look up at me.

"You owe me the truth," I said. "Do you want me?"

"Yes."

"Say it so I believe it."

"I have wanted you every day since the night I pulled you out of the river," he said.

"I wanted you when I thought you'd betrayed me. I wanted you while I was saying those things in that room."

"I hated myself for it, and it didn't stop."

My throat hurt.

The healer had told me, a week before, that a woken wolf mends a body in half the time.

Sixteen days since I gave birth, and I felt strong and whole and starved.

I took off my coat and let it fall.

His eyes followed it down.

"My terms," I said. "You don't touch me until I say. You keep your hands on the frame of that cot."

His hands closed around the iron rail behind him, and the knuckles went white.

"Yes," he said.

I pulled my sweater over my head.

I was not the woman he had known.

My body was softer, and marked, and fuller in the breast and the belly and the hip.

He looked at every bit of it, and his breath came out rough.

"Miriam," he said. "God."

"Don't talk."

I knelt over his thighs on the cot.

I undid his borrowed shirt one button at a time, and eased it off the dressing, and he sat still while I did it.

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