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“I hope it will.”
“Why?” I reached out, letting my fingertips touch the unmarked skin near his waist, running my hands over those ridged muscles I’d stared at so many times. I’d never gotten to see them this close. He was perfect.
His fingers closed around mine, and I felt it again. A surge of longing, a heat that left me burning inside in places I’d only just begun to feel.
“If it scars, it’ll be something I have of you. A memory that you were real. When you’re gone…” His voice broke. “When you’re gone, I’ll touch that scar and remember all that I had and lost, because I was a fool and a coward.”
I wanted to protest, tell him he wasn’t those things, but a part of me agreed.
Suddenly, an odd feeling filled me. A silent whine. I closed my eyes for a moment, concentrating on what it was.
It was my wolf. I could feel her, faintly. I took a deep breath, listening to her.
She paced inside my thoughts, angry. Unsettled. She didn’t like this, didn’t want to leave him. Another long, pain-filled whine filled my mind.
I sent her thoughts of calm.
She sent me a snarl.
I opened my eyes, inexplicably angry at what I knew was my own soul. My own stupid inner self. What did she know? She’d only met Luke in the past few days. She’d seen him at his absolute best.
Of course, I was the one still touching his warm skin, tracing his muscles.
“It doesn’t seem fair,” I muttered, still moving my fingers slowly on my favorite muscle, the line that cut down from his waist toward his groin. His abdomen twitched underneath me like my touch was irritating, but he pressed closer as well.
“What’s not fair?” he breathed, shuddering. Maybe he felt the way I did, like he wanted me both nearer and much farther away.
If he was farther away, I could think. If he had been farther away, I wouldn’t have said what I did next. I leaned closer, letting my fingers dip below his waistline. “You get a souvenir, and I don’t.”
He took a shaky breath, and I let my fingers move higher, memorizing the way the hairs, dark and coarse, broke up the softness of his skin. The way his nipples were puckered, like he had been swimming in the creek. Were they hard like mine got when I thought about him? I let my fingers slide higher to find out.
“Flor,” he hissed, his hand closing around mine.
“It’s not fair,” I said, my voice far away. “I dreamed of you for all those years. When I was being hunted. I would find a place to hide, and I would dream that you would come and save me. And you never did.” He let out a sound that was heart-breaking, devoid of hope, but I went on. “But I dreamed you did, and when you saved me, you took me away, and you kissed me.” I frowned at his chest. “It’s not fair. You get this scar to remember me by, and I get nothin’. Not even a kiss.”
I sighed. “And I’ve never been kissed, not by someone I chose, not when I wanted to be. Not when I wasn’t being hunted.” I looked up into his impossibly silver-blue eyes. “I want you to be my first real kiss. Before I leave.”
When Luke didn’t move, or speak, or even blink, I knew I’d made a mistake. But except for the blood rushing to my head, I couldn’t move either.
My face felt like it had caught fire. Who even was I, right now?
I knew the answer to that, and it was the reason Luke was stalling. I was the pack reject. The too-skinny, uneducated outcast. I knew that. I knew a reject was all anyone at Southern would see me as.
What was I doing, begging my lifelong crush—the gorgeous Acting Alpha of my almost ex-pack—to kiss me? I’d like to blame my inner wolf, but she had gone quiet now, like she was waiting to see what would happen next.
Finally, Luke stammered, “W-what?”
I scowled as hard as I could, cursed myself out internally, then took another breath. This fucker owed me. “You heard me.” I repeated my demand. “I’ve never been kissed, not for real. So kiss me.”
Luke blinked, obviously shocked. “Flor, I don’t deserve?—”
I’d heard people talk about lady balls, but I never thought I’d grow a pair of my own. It was getting easier, the longer he hemmed and hawed, to feel justified in my simple damned request. I cut him off with a short laugh. “I know that. But you don’t get to say no now.”
I paused, stunned as I thought about what I’d just said. It echoed things that had been said to me. The blood drained from my face as quickly as it had risen, and I rushed to explain, “I didn’t mean that. I won’t make you. I don’t ever want to force someone to do something like that, when they don’t want, if you don’t?—”
And then I couldn’t say anything else, because he had pressed his lips softly to mine.
It was everything I had dreamed about, and yet not enough. Warm, gentle, a soft press of his mouth on mine. He dropped smaller, breathy kisses around my lips, on my jawline, my cheeks. I closed my eyes as he moved slowly, reverently, kissing along my hairline, and then on my eyelids.
