“Tell me!” Madeleine squeezed Hæra’s shoulders even more tightly. “Am I the only one? Please just tell me—” She pressed her face into the curve of Hæra’s throat. Her voice was barely audible. “Tell me there was nobody else.”

Hæra’s eyelashes fluttered as pure bliss spread through her, more potent than the wine they’d shared weeks ago. Her mouth pulled wide. Fire warmed her teeth and gums.

And with her thigh, she bore down between Madeleine’s legs, as she’d done in the alley.

Madeleine scrabbled her nails over Hæra’s back. Her hips rolled up into the pressure. “Hæra!”

“You understand.” Triumph dizzied her, and she wrapped both arms around Madeleine once more. “You understand what it’s like, how I feel.”

“This can’t be how you feel!” Madeleine shook her head back and forth against Hæra’s shoulder. “It’s not right. I shouldn’t care if you’ve been with anyone else.”

Hæra pulled back. She cupped Madeleine’s face in her hand and looked into her eyes. She waited.

“But I do,” Madeleine said brokenly. “I just thought about it, and suddenly I wanted to kill anybody who might have…”

“They haven’t.” Hæra rubbed her thumb along the exquisite edge of Madeleine’s jaw. At the base of Madeleine’s throat fluttered her pulse, beating with blood from her heart. “I want only you. I’ll have only you.”

Madeleine tugged, and their mouths collided, a joining that was almost brutal. The room spun around them. There wasn’t enough air in it. There wasn’t enough of anything, most especially of Madeleine. There could never be enough Madeleine.

“And,” Hæra breathed against her mouth, “I’ll have all of you.”

All of you. It should be a terrifying thought. This whole scenario should scare Madeleine out of her wits—it was too much, too soon.

Maybe tomorrow it would feel that way. Tonight, Madeleine was done with everything she should do and be.

Tonight, Hæra would have all of her, and Madeleine would return the favor.

She’d never done anything like this. It didn’t matter. For the last month, her body had been beyond her control, moved only by its own genius. It had frightened her at first—what right did her skin have to tingle, her breasts to ache, her sex to pulse?

Now she could only bless her body’s wisdom. She lay on her back while Hæra crouched over her, eagerly rubbing her nose beneath Hæra’s ear as she inhaled her scent. A scent she recognized with a shock.

It was the scent of the creature that had met her on the beach and walked her safely back into town, a scent both animal and elemental that had won her over even in the face of danger. This scent was meant for Madeleine, and Madeleine alone.

Mate.