Page 59 of A Lady’s Guide to Werewolves

With her tongue.

Alas.

She was as bad as Granny. She forced a smile. “Couldn’t sleep either?”

He shook his head. He wasn’t even carrying a candle she could stare at instead of the soft pelt of hair over the thick padding of flesh of his torso. Wolves must see better in the dark than a witch did, which made sense. “Lady Sorcha?”

“Yes?”

“Why is there a hedgehog in your pocket?”

“Didn’t you know, Lord Coventry? It’s all the fashion in Mayfair.” She settled the hedgehog on a cushion, where he curled up and went to sleep.

“Why couldn’t you sleep?” Aidan asked. “Is it Brutus? Or the fire?” His Scottish brogue deepened. Roughened. “The curse is gone, and I promise you, no one will ever get that close to you again.”

The unexpected feral bite to his tone, somehow soft and yet implacable at the same time, made her shiver. She might have whimpered under different circumstances. Ones where he saw her as a woman and not a duty.

“There,” he said, grimly. “You shivered. You are afraid of me.”

“Oh, honestly,” she muttered. “Not this again.”

Aidan blinked, confused. Even the wolf in his eyes blinked. “Pardon?”

“You are going to make me say it out loud, aren’t you?” She huffed. “I am not afraid of you. I just want to kiss you again. You great, rock-headed cabbage.”

He blinked again. She could hardly blame him. While she was quite certain ladies threw themselves at him all of the time, she was also absolutely positive they did not call him names while doing so. Even if he was terribly frustrating.

Oblivious.

Adorable.

“I know it didn’t mean anything,” Sorcha rushed to assure him, even though the words felt like thorns in her mouth. It had meant something to her. “So it’s my turn to apologize. But kissing you was the only way I could think of to hasten along the curse breaking. There was no reason for you to carry that pain alone. You didn’t steal a cursed heirloom, after all.”

“And you want to kiss me again,” he stated so mildly that he may as well have been asking about the weather. Think we’ll have sun? Bit rainy lately, isn’t it?

She crossed her arms mutinously. “I am sure it will pass, so you needn’t worry. Like a craving for oranges.” Why hadn’t it passed yet? Far too many things had happened in a short period of time. That must be it.

“A craving for oranges,” he repeated.

“I am perfectly aware that you do not care to repeat the experience. I was trying not to make you uncomfortable. You needn’t remind me about the terms of our betrothal.” She would be mortified if he did. Murderous.

“I do not want to kiss you.”

“That’s what I just said!” Apparently she was fully capable of wanting to kiss someone and shove their head into the nearest body of water at the same time.

“Let us be very clear, Lady Sorcha. I was not making a statement,” Aidan said with the kind of calmness that stirred the hairs on the back of her neck. “I was merely making sure that I heard you correctly.”

“Well, you did.” She looked away. She couldn’t stand to see the pity, the well-mannered forbearance. The curator or the earl with his manners. Not when she had seen the wolf, once. “Now can we change the subject, please?”

He gripped her chin, turning her back to face him. “Oh, I don’t think so.”

Everything about him changed, a near imperceptible shift that may as well have charged the air between them with lightning. His stance, the golden flash of his eyes.

She felt pinned, gloriously still in a way she rarely felt. As if there were nowhere else to be, no loaves of bread to be baked, no animals for her paper birds to find. Just this moment, in a quiet stone room with the light of a single candle. Just the anticipation frothing through her veins, the throb of his teeth marks on her neck. The gilded hunger in his gaze.

He lowered his head slowly, all of that quiet purpose focused entirely on her.

It was a heady, intoxicating thing. It made her breath catch before his mouth had even touched hers.