But before I could move away and concoct an excuse for my behavior—and an excuse to leave—the warrior’s low timbre froze my spiral. “Your heart pounds.” Taking a step closer, he drew my gaze and cocked his head, studying me. “Afraid of a little vengeance, wildflower?”

Wildflower.

It was then I understood what the name meant, and I felt both foolish and dizzyingly giddy. I liked it. I had no right to like it.

I loosened my hand in his to let go.

Instead, I found myself turning it over. Tracing the tiny scars and rough skin, I wondered over each one, of how injured he’d been in his lifetime to have earned such marks. And I wondered if months from now, the battered and bleeding organ within my chest might appear the same.

I wasn’t sure which future scared me more—one filled with healing and forgiveness or a continued wilting existence.

“Actually,” I said, my heart racing with a lighter patter. “I’m beginning to think vengeance has an unexpected…” I paused over a raised scar in the shape of a cross. “Allure.”

The wolf rasped, “That so?”

I threaded my fingers through his thick ones and gazed up at him with my lip between my teeth. “Yes.” His eye swirled, the emerald darkened with every shallow rise of his chest, and when he gripped my cheek, I didn’t move away.

Closing my eyes, I awaited the fall of his lips on mine.

I expected rough, hot, urgent—a claiming of some kind. What I received was a gentle, shaken press of silk, sliding soft as he breathed me in. “I want to know you.” His whispered words heated in every way I needed. “Why do I want to know you?”

I couldn’t answer that, nor why I burned hotter at the thought of it. At the idea of this war-hungry wolf wanting something in a way he perhaps hadn’t before and feeling confused by it.

I couldn’t answer, but I could do what I grew more and more desperate to.

I could kiss him back.

With my hands roaming up his chest, brushing over his broad shoulders to his neck, I looped them there and pushed my body against his, my lips against his.

Unlike him, I wasn’t gentle. I didn’t want to melt.

If I was doing this, then I wanted to burn.

Bruising enough to draw blood, I meshed my mouth to his and opened it to explore the warmth and the velvet of his tongue. Our teeth caught, our breaths meeting and our hands grabbing. Mine clasped the back of his neck and head, nails scoring through his shockingly soft hair to his scalp.