Chapter 11: Twenty Yards Is Too Far

Rowena stood on the porch with the moon on her bare legs.

Lachlan stood twenty yards away in the cold, and neither of them had come any closer.

"Go back to your truck," she said.

"I can't."

"Then you're breaking the rules."

"I'm standing exactly where you put me."

Her wolf hit the inside of her ribs.

She gasped and gripped the porch post, because the ache was no longer an ache.

It was a burn. It ran down the insides of her thighs and settled low in her belly.

Lachlan made a rough sound and bent forward with both hands on his knees.

"Full moon," he said through his teeth. "My father told me about it. It makes the bond worse."

"Worse."

"Louder."

She looked at him across the dark yard.

She thought of the speech he had practised for a week, and of his mouth on hers at the stone.

"Twenty yards is too far," she said.

His head came up.

"Say that again."

"You heard me."

He crossed the yard in six long strides.

He stopped on the bottom step.

For the first time since the fire, she was the one looking down at him.

"You said no touching," he said. His voice was ragged. "You made the rule."

"I made it for a girl who was bleeding on a road."

"And now?"

She reached out, took his shirt in both fists, and pulled.

He came up the steps in one movement and caught her against the doorframe.

His mouth took hers hard, and this time it was not a fight.

It was a long, deep, open kiss, with his hands in her hair and her back against the wood.

He tasted of woodsmoke and salt, and every inch of her skin had come awake.

She pulled him inside and kicked the door shut.

He backed her across the room until her knees hit the edge of the kitchen table.

She hauled his shirt over his head and dropped it.

His chest was scarred and broad.

She put both palms flat on it and felt him shudder.

"Rowena," he said. "Wait."

She froze.

He had stopped with his forehead against hers and his breath coming hard.

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