All at once the pain was gone, and he felt only her deft, callused fingers undoing the buttons of his shirt one by one. Her breath scalded his bare chest as she tugged the shirttails free of his trousers. Her hands unknowingly brushed his stomach, sending a jolt of electric sensation through his body. She was too close—working the shirt over his shoulders, sliding it down his arms, her breasts under the bodice-armor other gown pressed to his side…
She paused when his shin was halfway off, binding his arms and leaving him unable to move. Her breathing had grown more rapid, shallow, drawing in air as if to taste it. Her hands fell.
Inescapable awareness flowed between them. Braden could feel her confusion. Except for their first meeting, when she’d so impulsively embraced him and kissed his cheek, she hadn’t touched more than his hand. Except from a distance in the Great Hall, she’d never seen him less than fully dressed.
She was a girl of no experience, barely grown into her woman’s body. A half-human child.
Half-human and unable to Change. And if she couldn’t Change, she was no fit mate for Quentin and his pure blood. No longer suited to be the mother of Quentin’s children. Useless to the Cause.
Free. Braden struggled out of his shin, and Cassidy took it without quite touching him. Fabric hissed as she tore the shirt into strips.
“It’s not too bad,” Cassidy said. She led him to a chair, awkwardness forgotten, and pushed him down. “I know a little about this from my work on the range.” She fell silent and began to pull out the slivers one by one. “There are a few tiny ones I can’t get out,” she said. “They’ll sting if we don’t—”
“It’s nothing,” he said.
He felt her gazing at him. “All right.” She wrapped his hand with the strips of cloth, deft and efficient in her movements. “There. It’s not even bleeding much anymore. You said that loups-garous heal quickly. Whenever I was hurt, I always—” She broke off sharply.
He clenched his hand, willing it to hurt again, but already his resilient werewolf body was repairing itself. There was so much it could repair. But not everything.
“I’m sorry,” Cassidy said. “I didn’t mean to fool you. I wanted… so much to be like you.”
The smell of tears—tears he knew she must be fighting with her own undeveloped, stubborn brand of pride—made his throat tighten. He lifted his uninjured hand. His fingers skimmed her lashes and came away wet.
“I can learn,” she said in a broken whisper. “I know I can.”
“You don’t understand,” he said, despising himself. “The Change… is in the blood. When we—when our kind reach maturity, it boils in our veins and nerves and muscles, impossible to ignore, demanding release. If you’ve never felt the call—”
“But I have felt it. I can feel it now.”
“Do you?” He grasped her hand with his good one and flattened his palm to hers. Her pulse pounded under his skin, and her body tensed as if she listened to faraway music. He could almost hear it himself, springing from within her, pouring from her flesh into his. Soul-music, life-music, a symphony pure and rich as the roar of ocean surf or the ancient beat of the forests heart.
Cassidy’s music had the power to make him believe that all she said was true. There was more to her than the blood she carried in her veins. When he touched her he began to believe that he, too, might have some worth beyond leadership of the Cause.
But emotion had brought him only ruin, even before he had learned the full extent of his defects. They were forever linked in his mind: passion with treachery, hope with disgrace, love with annihilation.
He pulled back, folding his injured hand against his chest. A knock rang on the library door, and it swung open.
“I beg your pardon,” Quentin said. “Am I interrupting? I thought I heard something break. Not serious, I hope?”
Braden rose and made his way across the room until his foot connected with his discarded coat. He scooped it up and draped it over his shoulders. “A small accident,” he said. “Nothing that need concern you.”