Elder: Reckless Desires (Norseton Wolves #6) by Holley Trent Page B

hardest. They don’t know the whole truth, only that I got clawed.”
    “I think they’ll work out what happened on their own in time. They’ll put two and two together.”
    “And will pity me. Or worse, they’ll hate me for being so weak.”
    “Don’t talk like that around me. I don’t care if you really believe that shit you’re saying, but I don’t want to hear it. You’re not weak. At least, not in that way. Open your eyes.”
    She did. She looked up, past his flaring nostrils, to the narrowed slits of his eyes, the irises having taken on a yellowish glow that entranced her.
    “I want you to look at me when you’re standing in front of me. And I want you to like looking.”
    “I do.”
    “Yeah?” He traced the edges of her lips with his fingertip and sucked in a deep breath through his mouth. “You make a man question that with the way you’re always looking down.”
    “I’m a lesser wolf, and that’s what we do.”
    “There’s nothing lesser about you. Maybe you’ve been taught that for as long as you can remember. You’ll probably need half as long to be convinced otherwise, but I’m telling you now not to let anyone feel like you’re only good for one thing. You can do whatever you want. No one here is going to stop you. I’m not going to let anyone stop you.”
    “You?”
    “ Mm-hmm .” Another deep breath through his mouth. He leaned in and grazed his lips along the shell of her ear and lower, to her neck. Caresses became kisses. Kisses became licks.
    His tongue seared at the bend between her shoulder and neck.
    Her breath sped as his fangs grazed over the sensitive flesh, and her fingers dug into the meat of his back.
    Is he gonna…
    “No one’s coming to your rescue,” he said. His tongue replaced his teeth, and he licked some more, and then kissed across her ruined chest. “No one’s gonna save you from me, because they’re not so sure you need saving.”
    She wrung the fabric at the back of his shirt as she had been her own and pushed up onto her tiptoes.
    Bite me.
    “Do you mind?” he whispered. “That they’re leaving me to pursue you, unchaperoned?”
    “I’m—well, I guess I’m surprised they would, but them not interfering explains some things. I thought they didn’t care.”
    “They care. They’re just staying out of my way, seeing what’ll shake out of this before you get too comfortable.”
    “I haven’t yet gotten comfortable.”
    She’d be far more comfortable if he’d just bite her already—claim her and kill the suspense.
    Does he want me or not?
    “No. You’ve been awake for less than twelve hours. You haven’t had a chance to turn on your Wi-Fi, much less decide which wolves you need to run from.”
    “I don’t need to run from you. You just told me that.”
    “But I want you to believe me.”
    “I do.”
    “Why?”
    “I—”
    She clamped her lips and furrowed her brow, because she didn’t know why. She just believed him, and she was certain in that belief in a way she’d been with few other things in her life. She could count on one hand the number of certainties she kept in that special lockbox in her brain, and numbers one and two were Kevin and Darla. She’d loved them unconditionally from the moments they’d been born, and she didn’t have to wonder about that. She knew what love felt like. They’d taught her to trust her recognition of the feeling.
    In the same way she knew that she loved her kids, she knew Nixon was a safe bet. A noble wolf.
    She was the one who wasn’t a good bet.
    “I want to bite you, Esther. Your scent—I gotta be honest, honey. The scent’s turning my stomach, and it’s getting stronger.”
    She groaned and hid her face against his shoulder. Her odor— Michael’s odor—would only grow with her arousal. Nature’s perfect deterrent to the female wolf’s infidelity.
    But the protection wasn’t supposed to be for him.
    The scent was supposed to keep women safe from other wolves who would claim