SECRET OF THE WOLF By Susan Krinard

“Let me… let me show you,” she whispered.

He turned his head. “Again, why now? Is it pity?”

She reared back. “Pity? Can you say such a thing, when—” She pressed her lips together. “I do not waste my time on pity.”

“No.” He met her gaze, and his eyes softened. “You’re a curious woman, Johanna.”

“It is a hazard of my occupation,” she said. The nightgown was still damp with perspiration, and she realized that she was shivering. “Either you want me, Quentin, or you do not. I would appreciate an expeditious decision.”

He laughed aloud. “Oh, Johanna, Johanna. Even now you can’t stop playing the doctor.”

“I don’t play at anything,” she said. “If that is your answer—”

His hand came to rest on her knee, burning through the muslin of her nightgown. “My answer, Johanna… is that I’ve always wanted you. From the very beginning.”

A gush of heat rushed to the core of her body. “Then we need not talk any longer.” She placed her hand carefully on his chest. It was bare, sleek with soft hair, and strongly muscled. The heat pooled between her thighs. “I am not afraid.”

He seized her wrist. “Do you know what you’re asking?”

“Is it so great a sacrifice on your part?”

“Not on mine.” He eased his grip and ran his fingers up and down her arm. The sensation was delicious, but she tried not to let herself become distracted.

“You are concerned for my honor,” she said. For all his joking and flirtation, he was no despoiler of women.

He was not. Fenris was another matter.

“I’ve known many women,” he said. “I know what society demands.”

“Of your aristocratic females, perhaps,” she said. “But I am not a member of your society, nor am I attempting to make my way into an advantageous marriage.”

He worked his fingers between hers. “You don’t wish to be married?”

“We have had this conversation before, have we not? I have found that my work and marriage are not compatible.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Do not pity me, Quentin. Do you think less of me, for making this offer?”

“No.” He squeezed her hand. “You could never be less than honorable.”

Her eyes began to prickle with incipient tears. “Then there is no obstacle—”

“What of your professional reputation?” His voice hardened. “I did not tell you before, but when I went into town with Oscar, comments were made regarding your possible relationship with male patients.”

“I know. As they’ve undoubtedly been made in the past. I am not the first woman doctor to face such prejudices. But if they already suspect or prefer to believe that I am a loose woman of dubious morals, what we do now will make no difference.”

“You must have plans for the future—”

“Yes. And I will continue with those plans. I am perfectly capable of discretion. What I do as a physician is entirely apart from what I choose as a person. A woman.”

The bed shook with his silent laughter. “And to think I once asked you what you wanted as a woman, and doubted you’d ever allow yourself to find out.”

“You have also made assumptions, Quentin,” she said.

“I thank you—for your gallantry, and your desire to protect me. But I do not need your protection, nor that of any man. I can make my own decisions and weigh the consequences.”

He was quiet for a long time. “You know that our relationship can never be the same if we go forward.”

“I know.” And she did. It was long past time for regrets. Neither one of them had much to lose by proceeding to the next logical step.

And she knew, in the center of her being where scientific discipline held no sway, that a more intimate connection between them would only strengthen her ability to help him. She’d always relied on intuition in her approach to treating the insane. She saw with complete clarity, for the first time in her life, that emotion was the very basis of that intuition. Her feelings for Quentin were an inextricable part of her.

Feelings she wasn’t yet prepared to name.

But there was a final reason why the hour had come to let fall the barriers she’d constructed to keep them apart.

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