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I release her and step back before the temptation to kiss her again wins. Years of trying. Years of nothing. Then Nora walks into town, and my body behaves as though it’s been starving.

I turn and head for the door.

Behind me, she says quietly, “Hewit, look at me.”

I shouldn’t, but I do.

There’s no pity on her face, only heat and desire. “None of what you said makes me want you less.”

The wolf lunges as my hand closes around the doorknob. “That’s the problem.”

I leave before I find out what happens if she asks me to stay.

Chapter 10

Nora

Hewit leaves me leaning against my kitchen counter with swollen lips, shaky knees, and absolutely no idea what just happened to the sensible portion of my brain.

For several seconds, I stare at the closed door.

Then I touch my mouth. “Oh.”

That’s the only word that seems adequate.

I sink onto the kitchen chair and stay there while my pulse slowly remembers it isn’t supposed to be trying to escape through my throat.

I’ve been kissed before. Not recently, admittedly, but enough times to understand the basic mechanics. Mouths and hands and awkward noses. The occasional man who apparently learned everything he knew from an instructional video titled How to Locate a Woman's Tonsils with Your Tongue.

None of those kisses left me wondering whether my bones had shifted position.

Hewit’s did, and he barely touched me.

His hands were on my face, his body against mine, his mouth hard enough to make me forget every intelligent thought I had that morning—and beneath all of it was restraint. I felt it in the way he stopped himself from grabbing me when I pulled him closer, in the growl he swallowed too late, and how quickly he tore himself away when my hips moved against him.

He wanted more. So did I.

I press my palms to my hot cheeks. That realization should probably be more alarming, but it isn’t. What keeps replaying isn’t the kiss anyway. It’s the look on his face when he told me he hasn’t been with anyone since he changed.

Years. And then me.

I stand before I can start building theories out of things Hewit hasn’t actually told me. That’s exactly the sort of thing I promised myself I wouldn’t do.

So I finish hanging the curtains he fixed the rail for, make lunch I barely taste, answer two emails, and spend an embarrassingly long time wondering whether walking next door and demanding we pick up where we left off would qualify as assertive or deranged.

By six, I decide the distinction probably depends on whether I bring food, so I make pasta. Not seduction pasta because it has garlic in it. I portion some into a container, add two pieces of bread, and walk across the grass before I can reconsider.

Hewit’s truck is outside and his kitchen light is on.

I knock.

Nothing.

I knock again. “I can see the light, Hewit.”

Footsteps, then the door opens. He’s changed since this morning. Dark T-shirt, worn jeans, damp white hair pushed back from his forehead.

His gaze drops immediately to the container in my hands. “No.”