I set my spoon down and brushed my curled knuckles over the line of his jaw. “He didn’t kill me though. And we still don’t know why he fired at me. I mean, what if he thought he saw something?”
“He’s too good a shot to make a mistake like that,” Kor said, and I could feel the certainty of his words in the bond. “These were my men, Misha. Men I trained, men I fought alongside for years. The only thing I don’t know is if he was aiming at me or you.”
I closed my eyes for a moment and breathed out. “Well, I’m sure Orion will find out.”
The almost feral grin on Kor’s face should have unsettled me, but really it made me want to pin him down and take him deep inside me. “Yes. He will. In the meantime, I need to put together a proposal for the Council to get us the fuck out of here. Orion’s arranging an interrogation team, and we’re going to vet every Wolf that has come and gone over our borders.”
“And if you find spies?” I couldn’t help but ask. I knew war tactics were going to be brutal, but it scared me a little to think what we might be forced to do.
“We ensure they can’t get information back to their superiors,” was all he said, and I understood the tone. Don’t ask if I really didn’t want to know.
“So,” I said, then took another bite and tucked it into my cheek, “an abandoned city?”
“The humans targeted several civilian cities during the war,” he replied with a shrug. “I spent years studying where their defenses were weakest in order to help fortify the ones that still stood, and I don’t think it’ll take long to secure one or two of them. And eventually more, as our movement grows. Wolves don’t inhabit this area anymore. They found comfort and safety in numbers, so the capital has grown.”
I understood, and I felt some measure of guilt for what my people had done. My former people. “And what about after?” I wondered. “When we have the new cities, when we’re out in the open. What then?”
“Then we gather more information. We rescue our people,” he said, and the surety in his voice made my heart swell with pride. “We figure out what the humans are doing to them. We gain access to their systems.” He licked his lips, then turned to me, and though his eyes couldn’t lock on mine, I still felt so seen. “We burn it down. We burn it all fucking down.”
I leaned in and kissed him. I was helpless against it, and he crushed my body to his and took a deep breath of my scent. “I think I might love you,” I murmured.
He made an almost-wounded noise as he nosed against my temple and through my hair. “Misha,” he breathed, “Misha, Misha,” between frantic kisses. And it wasn’t an I love you, but it was still enough.
Chapter Nineteen
KOR
I could feel the moon when I woke on the morning everything could come crashing down around me. And while I told myself it wouldn’t do either of us any good for me to throw myself into an early panic, I couldn’t help but pull Misha close to me the moment I felt him start to wake.
I kept him tucked along my front in a perfect shape, like he had always belonged there—like he always would. I nosed along the back of his neck, my hands drifting in careful lines over his lean arms, his soft stomach, his thick thighs. He had taken the bandage off by the end of the night, and he allowed me to run my hands over the wound.
It frustrated me not being able to see it, but I could feel where the skin was knitting together, and there was no scent of infection anywhere on him. He was healing, which meant he was absolutely changed. And I wanted that to mean something good, but I was petrified.
I love yous had poured from his lips, and I swallowed them down, trying to show him how I felt the same way in spite of not being able to say the words aloud. And he took from me as readily as I gave, letting me spread him out and bury my tongue deep inside him before taking him with long, slow, agonizing thrusts.
I had never quite understood perfection until my teeth sank into Misha’s shoulder, and I felt the bond take hold. And now I was on the verge of potential loss.
“Kor.” Misha whispered my name, turning in my arms and tucking himself closer against me. His cock was pressed against my hip, heavy with morning need, but he didn’t seem in a hurry to find the edge of his pleasure. Instead, he brushed lips over the edge of my jaw, thumbing across my lips as the rest of his fingers traced my cheek. “Did you sleep at all?”
I shrugged. I had, but not much. My dreams were strange and fractured, like I was running through a kaleidoscope of broken glass. And I was searching for something, and the longer it took me to find it, the more hysterical I became.
I woke with a start and calmed instantly when I felt Misha’s hand pressed to my heart, and I leaned into his touch and was content to wait out the hours until he woke. Now he pressed in close, and I wanted him closer.
My fingers wove into his hair, and I tipped his head back to claim his mouth with my own. “I want you.”
He laughed, the sound husky and deep. “You always want me.”
Shaking my head, I dragged my hand between us until I found his cock, which had pushed through the slit in his boxers. He wasn’t as large as I was—and he’d never have a knot—but he was still thick in my hand. “I want you,” I repeated, then stroked him. I hadn’t even realized what I was saying until the words started coming out, and there was a desperation in them.
I didn’t just want this. I needed it.
“Inside me,” I breathed out.
His entire body stiffened, and I pulled back slightly, though my hand kept the gentle, stroking pace. “You want me to fuck you?”
“Yes,” I told him, speeding up a little. I felt him throb, felt a pulse of precome dribble from the tip as I swirled my thumb through it.
“You want me to put my cock in your ass?”