Chapter 21: Mine Tonight

The Alpha's rooms were at the top of the hall, behind a door nobody had opened for me.

By nightfall Blackwater wolves had carried every one of Hiram's things out of them and set the pile alight in the yard.

I watched it burn from the window.

The old keeper had found a plain, narrow bed in a storeroom and made it up with clean white linen.

He bowed, and left, and shut the door behind him.

Rhett stood in the middle of the floor in a borrowed shirt with his shoulder bound.

"You don't have to," he said.

"I know I don't."

"Your shoulder."

"Is healing." I turned from the glass. "Yours?"

"Bleeding."

I smiled slowly.

"Then it's a good thing I've got a rule about that."

"Jessa."

"Not a word, Alpha."

I crossed the room and put both hands flat on his chest and pushed.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, and I stood between his knees.

"You'll keep your hands on the sheets," I said.

His eyes went dark.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Until I say otherwise."

"Yes."

I pulled the shirt over his head and let it fall.

I kissed the scar through his eyebrow, and then the bandage on his shoulder, very gently.

He was shaking again, and this time it wasn't fear.

His fists were wrapped in the white linen, and he did not lift them.

I undressed slowly, the way he had promised to undress me on the porch.

The torn green dress went on the floor, and what was under it after that.

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