He stayed there for a swelling moment while roughened fingers ghosted over my arm and down my ribs, allowing me to adjust after a night spent filled with him. “It’s been maybe five hours.”

“Five hours too long.” Those fingers tickled across my stomach toward my breast, then squeezed. “Perfect size.” My breasts weren’t overly large, but they were what I considered to be a subtle handful. To which he confirmed. “Fit in my hands like they were made to.”

Bonds mean nothing when you were made for me.

The memory of one of Rorn’s many heated declarations charged through my mind, my heart, my very soul, and with such ferocity that I whimpered.

The wolf inside me thankfully mistook it for pleasure and began to move.

He took his time, and I was tempted to push back into him—to push him to the bed and force him into distracting me more thoroughly. Yet again, he surprised me, somehow knowing what I needed without knowing much of me at all.

His lips marked my shoulder with gentle fire. His hips rotated with delirious finesse.

Before too long, my breathing grew labored, my bones began to burn and tremble, and I was falling. I was falling into this stranger with more gratitude than guilt, more thankful than he would ever possibly know.

He caught me before following, our bodies still joined as his hand roamed over my chest and stomach, and I soon succumbed to sleep.

Starlight sprinkled through the gap in the tattered drapes when I woke alone and wrapped in the gray and white bedding.

I rolled to my back, then sat up when I failed to sense another beating heart inside the apartment.

The bed I’d been left in shared space with a rectangular dining table. It resembled a workbench, the wooden top worn and the metal legs rusted. Two wooden chairs with chipped red paint perched at either end. Through an arched doorway behind it was a small kitchen. Pastel blue and cream paint peeled in patches from the cupboards, the tiled countertops holding little more than a stovetop and a small collection of mismatched glass jars.

My limbs protested as I crawled to the edge of the oversized bed.

Stretching them, I stared down at the rumpled sheets, the few feathers floating upon them from the pillows. I chewed my lip as I recalled biting into one just hours ago, my stomach upon the bed while I was entered ruthlessly from behind.

An experienced and demanding lover, most certainly. The wolf had made that abundantly clear more times than I dared to count. Yet there was a softer, unexpectedly devoted side to him that made my chest squirm when I thought of him sharing all he was with someone else.