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“Don’t,” I warn weakly.
“I have said nothing.”
“You’re thinkin’ loudly.”
His eyes brighten. “Now you complain?”
I huff, but there’s no heat in it. My hand is still on his chest. His heart is still beating under my palm. I slide my fingers slightly, following one of the dark markings down toward his ribs, and he watches the movement like it is dangerous.
Everything feels fragile and enormous at once. I died and came back changed, then he carried me home. We should probably be discussing practical concerns, like what the hell I’m going to tell my family, whether my eyes glow now, and how I’m supposed to handle a ranger shift if the forest keeps trying to communicate meaningful emotions through moss.
Instead, Onyx’s thumb brushes the side of my throat, just above the mark, and the want that moves through me is quiet at first… then not so quiet.
His nostrils flare.
I swallow. “I’m alive.”
“Yes,” he says, voice thick.
“I need to feel that.”
His hand stills, and the seriousness in his face deepens, desire pulled sharply under concern. “Pain?”
“Some,” I admit. “Not there. Not like that. But I’m not askin’ you to do anythin’ that hurts me.”
“Then what?”
The question is careful, but our bond isn’t. It warms and opens, and I know he can feel what I mean before I say it. Kissing. Touching. Skin. The slow return to my body after leaving it behind. Not rushing past what happened, not trying to bury terror under want, but letting want prove something too. That we’re both here, and my body belongs to me again—changed or not—and I can choose what happens inside it.
I lean closer, and his gaze drops to my mouth. “I want you to kiss me,” I say.
The breath leaves him like I have touched a wound, only this one heals. He lifts his hand to my face and stops there, waiting. Still asking, even after everything. Especially after everything. I cover his fingers with mine and press his palm against my cheek.
“Kiss me, Wildheart.”
He kisses me so softly at first, it almost hurts more than hunger would have. His mouth meets mine with reverence, with fear, with a restraint that trembles because the memory of my lifeless body is still too close behind his eyes.
I kiss him back until he believes me and his shoulders lower. Until the bond warms enough that the den seems to breathe around us. Until my hand slips into his hair and his quiet sound breaks against my mouth, half relief, half need.
The second kiss is deeper. His lips part mine, and the taste of him spreads through me, rain and blood and Labrador tea and life. My new senses catch everything at once: the heat of his skin under my palm, the salt at the corner of his mouth, the faint mineral trace of Aestrata’s hollow still clinging to both of us, the way his breath stutters when I press closer.
I shift into his lap slowly, awkwardly, careful of my side and his wounds, and his hands go to my hips at once to help, to steady, never to force. The position makes the bond flare. His eyes open against mine, startled by my choice even now.
I smile because I can feel his wonder. I can feel the forest in him, the man in the forest, and the mate who still doesn’t understand that all his shapes are beautiful to me.
“Lucas,” he whispers.
I rest my forehead against his, breathing him in with lungs that died and came back changed enough to know the truth better than before.
“Yeah,” I whisper back. “I’m here.”
48
Onyx
“I’m here,” he whispers again, because he felt me break the first time he said it. He knows I need the repetition, even if needing it leaves me ashamed. “I’m here, Wildheart.”
Wildheart.
