Page 51

I studied her. "Beautiful."

Her fingers pressed against my chest.

"That sounded dangerously sincere."

"It was."

"You're supposed to be trying to arrest me."

"At present I'm trying to remember how to breathe."

She laughed softly, but her hand remained where it was, and the sound did something altogether unreasonable to the last of my discipline.

The smile went out of her face slowly, and not because anything was wrong. It went because we had both run out of jokes at the same moment, and what was underneath them had nowhere left to hide.

She was close enough that the heat coming off her reached me through the cold air of that room, and her mouth was perhaps a hand's breadth from mine.

I lifted my hand toward her cheek and stopped it an inch short.

She looked at my hand, hanging there in the space between us.

"What's stopping you, Sheriff?"

My gaze dropped to her mouth and stayed there a moment before I made it come back up.

"Several things."

"Name one."

"You're not entirely yourself right now."

Her whole body went rigid. "Don't tell me what I am."

"I'm not."

"Then what are you doing?"

"Making certain that when you decide you want me," I said, "it's because you chose me."

"And if I already have?" she asked.

My breath caught. It was barely more than a whisper, but I heard every word.

"Then tell me when neither of us has to wonder whether your heat is speaking for you."

Her gaze sharpened. "You think I can't tell the difference?"

"I think you can. I want you to know that I trust your answer enough to wait for it."

She looked at my mouth again, and I had to curl my fingers into the bedding to keep from reaching for her. Waiting had never felt so much like surrender.

The silence after that was the longest of my life.

I watched the anger go out of her face and something far more dangerous come in behind it, which was understanding. She had expected me to take. Every instinct in her had been braced for it since the moment she realized what I was and what she was becoming, and she had been standing there waiting to find out which kind of Alpha I would turn out to be.

She stepped back and tied off my bandage without another word, and her hands were not entirely steady.

The storm came over the ridge at dusk, all at once, thunder shaking down through the valley and rain hammering the thatch hard enough to drown conversation. She went around the cabin closing shutters, and when she reached the broken one at the north wall and had to fight it, I got up to help her.