For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten (freda ebook reader .txt) 📕

lip, mind churning fire-laced thought. His mouth on her throat, her hair in his hands, tree bark against her back as he pressed against her center. He’d thought it a mistake, but she hadn’t, and now she was leaving. Even though she was coming back— dammit, she was coming back— she’d still heard that finality in his voice last night. The thing he’d murmured when he thought she was asleep.

Maybe you should.

It angered her, that he had room for doubt, to think she’d want to linger anywhere that wasn’t close enough to see that faint scar on his cheek. Room to think they were the same people who’d faced off in a library on her twentieth birthday what felt like lifetimes ago, room to think the space between them hadn’t fully and irrevocably changed.

Red stood, her chair scraping backward across the floor. “I can do more.”

He stiffened.

“I’m capable of more than that. You know it.” Red propped her hips against the edge of the table, fingers curling into the wood, and the next words were plea and invitation and challenge all at once, rough with want. “Help me do more.”

His turning seemed to take ages. Eammon’s arms fell from crossed to hang by his side, fingers already curved like they held something. The first step was tentative, then he strode across the room like it was a battle march, face determined. His hands hit the table on either side of her hips, tensed enough for her to trace the tendons.

“Are you sure?” It was strained, tightly reined in. It begged an answer.

“It worked yesterday, didn’t it?”

“You called the Wilderwood before I kissed you.”

Her fingers skimmed across his cheekbone, the nail tracing that thin white line. The first mark she’d left on him. “But not before I wanted you to.”

A tiny, rueful smile flickered at the corner of his mouth, but his eyes were all hunger as his fingers slid up the small of her back, slipped beneath the fabric of his shirt she still wore. She traced the outside edge of his ear, his jawline, stubble rough under her fingers. The hand not on her back cupped her face, thumb running a half-moon over her cheek, scarred palm against her throat.

“Am I close enough?” The space between his mouth and her pulse was paper-thin.

Red tugged his hair, tipping her head so her lips barely brushed his. “Not yet.”

Yesterday was a kiss born of fear and desperation and relief. Forgetting it wouldn’t be easy, but it would be possible— a momentary slip, a lapse in judgment, easy to dismiss.

This was different. This was deliberate. It would unravel the bonds they’d made of necessity and turn them irrevocably to something else. His eyes burned into hers, looking for benediction.

When Red pulled him down, his mouth opened on a sigh.

Eammon’s tongue swept her lip, slow, purposeful. Red made a helpless noise in her throat, pressed farther into his chest. Her fingers dug into his back, pulling him as close as she could, searching for empty places she could fill as one scarred hand skated over her rib cage, her hip. The other cupped the side of her neck like it was something too fragile to let go of, something he was afraid to lose.

His thumb pulled against her bottom lip, opening her mouth for another, deeper kiss. “Now?”

“Not yet.” She arched into him as the coffee cups clattered to the floor, greedy for more of his touch, resentful of the fabric between them. “Closer.”

A low laugh, rumbling against her throat. “Try, first.” They were reduced to snatches of words, mouths eager for other things.

Red caught his lips again even as she bent her fingers in the vague direction of the branch. Flaring golden light behind her eyes, a momentary glimpse of the two of them as tangled roots— his beacon-bright, hers a thin candle-flame, fed by his closeness.

A rustling noise beside them, and neither looked toward it. Her fingers tangled in his hair, pulled his mouth back to hers.

Her power redirected itself as Eammon pressed against her, as heat built between them and their breathing grew ragged. She could feel the Wilderwood around them, in them, blooming upward. The rush of roots in the ground beneath the tower, the stretch of branches toward the open windows, the forest drawn to her as she was drawn to him. Bonds, slipping off. Whatever had held it shackled ebbed away, grip loosening, letting the Wilderwood creep closer—

Eammon froze, hands on the bare skin of her waist beneath her shirt. His fingers dug in, and he kissed her, once more and fiercely. Then, releasing her like a burning ember, he pushed away, breathing hard.

Red reached for him, just for a second. But he’d turned, back to her, and she let her hands fall empty. “Eammon?”

“Give me a minute.” His hand scrubbed through his hair, made it stand up at odd angles. “Just . . . just give me a minute, Red.”

Slowly, her magic recoiled, shrinking back down into her hollows. As her pulse slowed its thundering, she noticed the windows.

The greenery growing on the outside of the tower had bloomed into a riotous, anachronistic spring. Thick, woody vines nearly covered the gaps in the stone, blocking out the lavender light of the Wilderwood with huge white flowers and verdant leaves. Tendrils of roots spilled over the windowsill, stretching toward the table where she sat, studded in tiny blooms.

As Red watched— as Eammon stood with his back to her, shoulders moving with his breathing— the new growth slowly shrank back. The root tendrils retracted, slipping back out the window, away from her. The white blooms closed. The leaves dropped away from the vines as they disappeared, back to their proper places, leaving gaps of sky in their wake. The movements were rhythmic, matched to Eammon’s breath.

He’d said that holding the Wilderwood used all his concentration. And now, kissing her, distracted from that singular purpose— it’d slipped, the magic escaping the careful cage he kept it in.

“I’m sorry.” His