Since that way lies madness, I get up.
Strong fingers circle my wrist, and he tugs.
Suddenly, I’m in his lap, and I know exactly why his voice was husky.
He wants me.
Badly.
He gives me a long, searching look.
“A run,” he declares, surprising me when I was half expecting him to throw me down on the ground and throw himself on top of me.
My wolf pricks her ears at the thought of a run that ends with a still-kicking bunny for a late-night snack.
But the woman…
The woman wants things she should not want with a man who hurt her so badly. He saved me from Cristofer—likely saved my life in that old mine—but should I forgive and forget everything because he saved me?
“A what?”
“How about a run to work off this… energy.” He lifts me and springs to his feet with such perfect grace I can’t help but admire it. “Come on.”
He walks away, stripping his shirt off and tossing it to the grass as he heads into the forest.
I eye his T-shirt and wonder what happened to the last one he wasn’t wearing or carrying after our short walk with Leo. “Do you leave your clothes lying around everywhere you go?”
“Yep.” The smile he flashes me is equal parts adorable and annoyed. “And now I have barely any T-shirts. The animals must be using them to create dens or something. I can never find most of them. Let’s go,” he adds when he notes I haven’t moved.
“Where?”
“A run.”
“I told you I didn’t?—”
“That was with Leo," he says, turning to face me and gripping the waistband of his sweatpants, but his eyes stay fixed on mine. “This is different.”
“Different how?” It takes brute force to keep my eyes on his face and not on his hands.
“You need to hunt and kill something, and I need to chase those shadows from your eyes.”
I blink, surprised. “What shadows?”
“The ones I saw when you were sitting beside the creek.”
He noticed. I hadn’t thought he would.
“It always helped me,” he says when I don’t respond.
I cock my head.
“When I lost everyone, and I needed to feel in control of something, I ran, I hunted, and I felt stronger because of it.”
I frown. “We’re not the same.”
“The universe decided you were perfect for me, and I’m perfect for you. I figure there’s more that connects us than I like the way you look, and you like the way I look.”
I walk toward him despite telling him I wouldn’t. “You like the way I look.”
