Chapter 23: The Silver Night

I washed his face first, like I'd said.

Pippa had taken one look at us on the cabin step.

She announced that she was sleeping in the hall kitchen, with the door locked and a pie.

"Both ovens," she said. "Full volume. Don't wait up."

So the cabin was ours.

I sat Merrick on the edge of the tub and ran warm water into a basin.

I wrung out a cloth and went to work on the blood at his temple.

He sat very still with his hands on his knees and let me.

"You're staring," I said.

"You're glowing."

I was. A faint amber light came off my skin in the dim bathroom.

I could hear every beat of his heart, slow and heavy and steady.

My wolf was awake and pacing.

She wanted him as badly as I did.

"She's loud," I said.

"I like her." His voice was low. "Is she going to bite?"

"She's thinking about it."

I touched the cloth to the long cut on his forearm. He didn't flinch.

I bent and pressed my mouth to it instead.

"Briony."

"Hmm?"

"Take me to bed."

I smiled against his skin. "Make me."

He stood up so fast the basin rocked.

He caught me under the thighs and I wrapped my legs around his waist, laughing, and he kissed me all the way across the cabin.

We fell on the bed in a tangle.

Neither of us was gentle.

I tore his shirt open and the buttons flew.

He pulled mine over my head, and then his mouth was on my breast.

His tongue circled and his teeth dragged, and I arched off the quilt with a sound I didn't know I could make.

"Everything's so loud," I gasped. "I can feel all of it."

"Tell me."

"Your hands. Your heart. Your breath on me."

"Good."

He pushed my jeans down and tossed them over his shoulder.

He kissed his way down my stomach, my hip, the inside of my thigh.

I knotted my fingers in his hair.

Keep reading free with an account. Start She Stole My Wolf, So I Rejected the Alpha from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.