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"He didn't smell like you."

Magnus' jaw tightened by one degree. His frown looked to me as if he found this enormously satisfying.

I pushed off the wall. Stepped toward him. Closed the gap between us until I was close enough that I had to tilt my head back to hold his gaze. I turned my face into the curve of his jaw, my nose at the line of his jugular, and inhaled slowly, the way I had wanted to since the moment the elevator doors closed.

Cedar. Heat. "Hmmm," I sighed against his throat.

Magnus hit the emergency stop. The elevator shuddered to a halt between floors.

His hands found my face before the shudder stopped; both of them cupping my jaw with a sureness that had no hesitation in it. I was inside his cage again. I felt at home.

His hands moved from my face into my hair. My locs slid between his fingers. He palmed my nape, tilting my head back to change the angle. Then he was kissing me.

CHAPTER TWENTY

MAGNUS

Imeant to stop.

That is the truth I will carry for the rest of my life. That when I hit the emergency stop and took her face in my hands, I had a plan. The plan had an endpoint. The endpoint was somewhere in the next thirty seconds where I would find the discipline that had been the organizing principle of my entire adult life.

The plan lasted approximately as long as it took for her to make that sound.

Not a moan. Just a small, involuntary catch of breath when I deepened the kiss. The sound of a woman whose body had just confirmed something her mind had been arguing about. She collapsed into me like a live wire that zapped me from my sternum to my spine and took every plan I had with it.

I kissed her until I couldn't remember what I had been planning to stop for. Still didn't remember.

Nell tasted like wine and my mother's cooking. Two of my favorite things in one bite.

Fuck, do not bite this woman. That much I did remember. Though the reason was hazy.

My hands moved through her locs. The silk of them slid between my fingers. My wolf made a sound that was not a growl and not a purr. Something in between that I had no previous experience with.

I wanted to drown in her.

That was the thought that arrived fully formed and refused to be managed. Not I want her in the timed and containable way that I'd had every woman since I was sixteen after I had to break my first girlfriend's heart. I wanted to submerge myself in Nell. I wanted to stay under where there was no surface to swim back to. I wanted to be inside her scent and her warmth and the sound of her breathing, and I wanted to stay there. I wanted to press my face into her hair and roll in her the way my wolf had rolled in the sheets back in the guest room and in the cabin.

I pulled back from the kiss just enough to breathe. My forehead rested against hers. My hands were still in her hair. She looked up at me. Her pupils were blown wide. Her lips parted. The amber light of the elevator caught the brown of her skin. I understood with useless clarity that I was not going to be satisfied by one time.

I was going to think about this woman for the rest of my life.

I was going to meet Rosalind Lobo in a matter of days. Marry her in a matter of months. I wasn't going to be faithful to her. Physically, yes, because Blackwood men were faithful. And because I had said I would. But I was going to think about Nell Odhiambo for every year of our marriage, which would be for the rest of my life.

I had already cheated on the wife I hadn't given vows to yet. Not with my hands, not with my body. But with this; with the way I was holding Nell's face right now. With the way I was memorizing each of her hundreds of locked tendrils radiating from her scalp. With the knowledge that this woman had already moved into a room inside me that was going to be hers whether I furnished it or not.

Petronella Odhiambo was going to haunt me.

No, that's not true.

Ghosts are unwanted. I wanted the vision of Nell to stay crystal clear in my mind. I was going to worship the thought of this woman. I was going to kneel at the altar of the memory of what I was about to do to her. I would make me a cheating husband.

That knowledge did not make me stop.

My hands moved from her face to the hem of her shirt. My fingers slid underneath the silk to find the warmth of her lower back. She made a sound against my mouth.

Not the catch of breath from before. It was a sound that meant yes, keep going in a language that required no translation. I walked her back two steps until her shoulders met the elevator wall.

My fingers found the button of her jeans. I undid the button. The zip. Her breath came out in a rush. Her head fell back against the wall. I watched her face as I slid my hand past the fabric of her underwear, past the warm, soft skin below, through the short curls, and found her.