TO CATCH A WOLF By Susan Krinard

I’m not cold, she almost said, and realized her mistake. She needed to draw him close, but he was staying as far away as he could.

Was his self-contempt so powerful? Was it that he didn’t trust himself with her? Did he no longer want her?

No. Not unless his body acted independently of his mind. She knew what she saw, what he tried to hide. He thinks you don’t want him. Maybe he hasn’t enough strength. Maybe this is wrong.

Wrong, yes, by the rules that governed people like Cecily Hockensmith. But not wrong for them. This was not only right, but necessary.

All the questions were silenced. She stood and walked toward him, each step taken with great care. He looked up and flinched as if she confronted him with a loaded rifle and death in her eyes.

She dropped to her knees before he could move. “Morgan,” she said, and touched his arm. “I don’t hate you. I could never hate you.”

He didn’t respond. She brushed his face with her fingertips. Every muscle in his body tightened.

“Whatever you may have done, Morgan… whoever you were in the past… it is not who you are now. I know you. Did you think I would stand as your judge, like Niall, and condemn you?”

His laugh was barbed like the new wire fences being strung across the prairie. “The saintly Miss Munroe, always so generous to the wretched.”

The insult had no power to wound. She understood its source.

“Would a saint do this?” she whispered. She took his face between her hands and kissed him. His lips, firm and set, resisted for the space of a second. Then he groaned deep in his chest and pulled her into his arms.

Victory was sweet, but Athena knew at once that the savoring must come later. Morgan’s kiss was urgent, almost ferocious, brimming with needs she could not expect him to control. Didn’t wish him to. Not when she had the power to ease his pain for this little while.

She allowed her body to melt into his. He raised up onto his knees, taking her with him, so that their bodies touched along nearly every point: breast to breast, hip to hip, thigh to thigh. He was burning as if with fever. She felt the stiff fullness of him pressed to her belly and went hot and cold by turns.

Not fear. There was no room for fear. But this was the next great Change, the one that followed the transformation of her heart and her human body. This was the threshold from which she could not return to what she had been.

Morgan must not sense any hesitation or doubt. This was for him. Just for him. He’d have no cause to rue what they did together now, no matter how many other things in his past he regretted. This was their chance to make one perfect memory to last a lifetime.

Athena was prepared to accept Morgan into her body even without the sweet persuasion of kisses and caresses.

She almost wished him to pull her down and consummate the hunger they shared.

But he anointed the corner of her mouth with a whispered kiss, his tongue darting out to touch the rim of her lips. Its very delicacy was arousing. She opened her mouth, needing to feel some part of him inside her. He ignored the invitation and gently closed his teeth over her lower lip.

The sensation of his suckling was exquisite, tugging at nerves that reached deep into her belly. She closed her eyes and stopped resisting. When he had carefully explored every line and curve of her mouth, he bent his head to her shoulder and grazed his teeth across the sensitive skin at the juncture of her neck. There was no pain, only delight, but he soothed each nip with his tongue. His breath sizzled in her ear.

“Morgan,” she sighed. “It is—”

He pressed his finger to her mouth and shook his head. She understood. There were to be no words, nothing of the human world to invade this oasis in the snow. Morgan lifted her against him and pulled her down again, warm skin on skin. Her breasts came to rest in the hollow of his shoulders. Effortlessly he positioned her, hands about her waist, until her nipples brushed his chin and then his lips.

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