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“The teeth.” She brushed along my lower lip with her thumb. Parting my lips, she ran a fingertip along my canines, slowly and without any fear. “My gods, your teeth.” Her voice dropped to a throaty croon.

She took my face in both her hands and turned it toward the fire, looking at me, taking her time.

“The better to…” I stopped. Gods, I couldn’t say it. Not now, when our worlds were about to crash together and we might not survive the impact.

“What is it, Conan?” Her voice was a velvet croon. “You don’t have to hold anything back with me.”

Say it, my wolf insisted.

Fuck it.

What did we have to lose? We might not live another day to face the consequences.

I stared into her eyes, done denying the call of her. “The better to mark you.” My canines lengthened. With a growl, I added, “Make you mine.”

Her eyes widened, gleaming with anticipation, then she rushed to me.

We came together hard, mouths crashing.

Ruby buried her hands in my hair and pulled, and I lifted her off the floor. She wrapped her legs around me, and the edge of the table met the small of her back. Something fell off it, but neither of us looked. She dragged my shirt up over my head, and then her mouth was on my throat, kissing, licking. A sound rumbled from deep within my chest.

I carried her to the rug in front of the hearth and lowered her to it. The firelight glided over her, gold on her skin and red in her hair, as I rolled out the bedroll. She looked up at me with her lips swollen and her braid half undone, and for a moment I couldn’t move at all.

I reached for her braid and slowly released it. Her hair tumbled in soft waves over her shoulders. “Beautiful,” I murmured.

Eighteen years they’d spent turning her into a weapon to kill wolves. And here she was, reaching for me with open arms.

“Conan.” Her voice came out strangled. “Don’t you dare stop now.”

I didn’t intend to.

I eased her shirt up and over her head, slowly, letting my knuckles trail along her ribs, and she shivered even though the fire was warm. She wore nothing beneath it. Faint scars of her own crossed her skin, pale nicks along her forearms and one longer line across her ribs. The files had listed them. What a file couldn’t convey was how she’d feel beneath my palms, warm and alive, arching into me.

I kissed the scar on her ribs. She sucked in a breath.

Her scent rose around me, thicker now, sweeter, and my wolf pressed hard beneath my skin.

Ours, he rumbled, and I didn’t argue.

I worked my way down her body with my hands and mouth. Her collarbone. The soft swell of her breast, her nipple tightening against my tongue until she gasped and fisted her hand in my hair. The dip of her belly, where the muscles quivered under my lips. I unlaced her trousers and drew them down her legs, and then she lay bare before me, trembling slightly, all of her mine to worship and learn.

I pressed a kiss to the inside of her knee. Then higher, along the tender skin of her inner thigh, and higher still, until she was squirming beneath me.

“Conan,” she breathed out my name. “Please.”

I’d never heard her beg. I doubted anyone ever had. The sound went straight through me.

I parted her with my thumbs and tasted her.

She cried out, her hips lifting off the bedroll, and I held her there with one arm across her belly and took my time. She tasted like nothing I’d ever known, warm and sweet and wild. I explored every fold of her with slow strokes, learning what made her gasp and what made her swear, until I found the spot that made her do both at once. Then I stayed there.

Her fingers dug into my shoulders. Her breath came in short, broken pants. I slid one finger inside her, then another, curling them slowly, and she clenched around me, slick and hot and so tight I groaned against her.

She gasped. “Oh gods…” Her muscles clenched. “Conan, I’m⁠—”

She came apart on my tongue.

It tore through her in waves, her thighs clamping around my head, her back bowing, with whimpers breaking from her lips. I didn’t stop. I held her through all of it, drawing out every shudder, until she went limp and pushed weakly at my head with a breathless laugh.