Page 76 of The Wolf Queen’s Curse

“Good. I’m glad something has gone right for someone, because those confusion and calming spells are still beyond me.”

“You’ll get them.” He tilts his head. “Are you not going to ask what has gone right for me?”

“Do I need to?” I smile over at him as I gather my practice items. “You’re Alpha of the Albion Pack.”

“True.” He gets to his feet and slowly advances on me. “But I never for one moment questioned whether I would be Alpha, which seemed proof that my self-confidence is impenetrable. And yet, it appears that isn’t entirely true. Because I still cannot believe I have won you.”

He kneels in front of me, reaches for my chin, and lifts it into a slow, delicious kiss. When it breaks, he holds my face there, eyes looking into mine.

“Yesterday, you gave me an incredible gift,” he says. “You admitted how you feel about me, despite the fact it frightened you. We have that in common. Pride and the terror of giving anyone the ability to hurt us. We’re constantly on guard against attack, knowing that we’ve made choices that could bring that attack at any moment, from any direction, and we accept that, because we’ve locked down the part of ourselves that can truly be hurt.”

His thumb runs over my lips so softly I barely feel it.

“I didn’t have a chance yesterday to thank you,” he says, “for opening that part of yourself to me. To say that I understand what it means, because it’s just as hard—excruciatingly hard—for me to do the same. To say I want you. Desperately want you to stay with me, and desperately want to give you a life that is worthy of you.”

I shake my head. “You don’t need—”

“I want to do it. To lay the crown of Alpha at your feet and hope you’ll take it. I need a proper Pack to offer you first, and I want to be sure you understand that I’d never expect that to be your entire world. You can rule alongside me without severing any part of yourself, any part of your own ambition.”

He inhales. “And that is a very long-winded way of getting to what I want to say. What I should have already said, but I needed the right moment to do it, so it cannot possibly be misinterpreted as anything but the most sincere declaration.”

His lips move until they’re brushing mine. “I love you, Cordelia.”

He kisses me before I can reply, and it’s a long enough kiss, ardent enough, deep enough, that I know he doesn’t want me to reply. He’s making absolutely certain there’s no awkward silence I might feel the need to fill. Making sure I don’t reply automatically, even if I want to, and that’s not really about me but about him. Because if I say the words, he can look back and decide they weren’t real, even though they would be.

When the kiss breaks, he scoops me up and carries me into the bedroom. He lays me down on the bed and then pulls the drapes and lights a candle on the side table. I ignite another with a spell.

“We do make a good team, don’t we,” he says as we light them, one by one.

“The best,” I say. “Although, to be honest, I’m only helping because there are a lot of candles and it’ll take you far too long to get back to bed.”

“Blame Julius.”

“Oh, so I can’t credit Julius with the existence of the candles, but I can blame him for the preponderance of them.”

“Precisely.”

I let him light the last two. The spell might be very small, but I can still feel it emptying the dregs of my power. When he’s done, the room seems to dance with firelight, and I watch him as he approaches the bed, the light and shadow playing over him.

“Take off your shirt,” I say.

He lifts one brow. “Is that what you’d like to play? Not that I’m arguing. I simply want to be sure I know what the game is.”

“No game,” I say softly. “Not today. I phrased that poorly. Please remove your shirt so I can get a better look at you before you’re in bed.”

He peels it off so slowly that I move two candles to watch, the flames dancing over his chest, one inch at a time revealed as I sigh in pleasure.

“I love the way you look at me,” he says as he lets the shirt drop.

“I love to look at you.”

One corner of his mouth quirks. “Which does nothing for my ego, I’ll warn you.”

“I don’t care. If not admiring you is the only way to keep your ego in check, then I’ll just have to risk inflating it.”

He lets out a slow breath. “You are altogether too much for me.”

I rise to run my fingers down his chest. “No, I think I’m exactly enough for you.” I reach back for a candle and hold it by his chest as I touch him, exploring.