“Hawke.” It was a moan, her fingers in his hair.
“You don’t need these, do you?” Her jeans and panties were torn into fragments moments later, his hand cupping her with heated possessiveness as he kissed the life out of her.
“Off.” She pulled at the sides of his shirt, heard a button ping to the floor.
He refused to help her, more interested in playing with her slick flesh, in teasing and tormenting the breasts he’d bared by cutting her bra with a claw. But Sienna had claws of her own. Putting her lips to his ear, she said, “I want to rub my breasts against your chest.”
She was on her back on the bed with breathtaking speed, a naked Hawke above her moments later. He snapped his teeth at her. Laughing, she did the same. And then she pulled him down and did exactly as she’d demanded.
Her wolf let her play, played with her, and it wasn’t until they were lying on the rug in front of the fireplace—Hawke dressed in a pair of jeans barely buttoned, her in his shirt—nibbling at a tray of food that Sienna plucked out the key she wore around her neck. “What does this open?”
Rolling to his feet, he went out to the vehicle to return with a small metal box that he placed beside her before resuming his previous position. Knowing the wolf wouldn’t give her a clue, she slid in the key and unlocked the box. Lined with blue velvet, it was empty.
Strange how she understood. “For the memories we’ll make.” Her throat grew thick, and though she knew there was a chance his answer would break her heart, she had to ask the question she hadn’t dared to until this moment. “How did we mate?” Had the events on the battlefield pushed him into it? Did he regret it? She couldn’t speak those fears aloud, but they lived in her heart, bleak and painful.
HAWKE glanced up at Sienna and knew that he held the balance of power, that what he said next would affect the remainder of their life together in the most profound of ways. He could answer her question without giving anything away, without tilting that balance. Or he could make another choice, one that took them beyond lovers, beyond mates, and to a true alpha pair.
“You were right,” he said and saw a storm of emotion in those extraordinary cardinal eyes.
It would’ve been easy for her to smile, to accept the admission at face value, but that wasn’t who Sienna was. “About what?” she asked, watching him with an expression that had turned a little guarded.
His wolf wasn’t surprised. Sienna had her own scars, and it would take time for those to fade. Hawke was okay with that—because he was planning to be there for the long haul, ready to battle any nightmare that dared touch her. “About the mating bond.” Rising up into a sitting position, he braced one elbow over a drawn up knee. “It wasn’t the wolf holding me back.
“When Rissa died,” he said, giving Sienna this last secret corner of his heart, “it was like having a part of me ripped out. I didn’t speak for a month, didn’t do anything but sit by her grave.” Boy and wolf, they’d both kept hoping that if he wished hard enough, Rissa would come back. “It took me a long time to accept that she was gone, that the only thing I had of her was the hole she’d left inside me.”
Sienna moved close enough to curve her hand around the calf of the leg he’d raised, her eyes inky black. But she didn’t interrupt, this woman who understood him in ways he wasn’t sure he understood himself, who’d forced him to face the cold, hard truth of the lies he’d told himself over the years. That didn’t make it any simpler to rip the scab off this wound—hell, he was alpha for a reason. Vulnerability wasn’t a sensation he enjoyed.
It made his next words rough, almost harsh. “It was easier to believe that my shot at mating died with Rissa than to risk that kind of pain again.” Thrusting his hand into her hair, he shook his head. “Except I never had a prayer when it came to you. You’re in my every breath and every thought, intertwined so deep inside me that love’s not a strong enough word—you have my devotion, your name branded on my soul, my wolf yours to command. A hundred years? It’ll never be enough. I want eternity.”
Tears, slow and quiet, ran down Sienna’s cheeks.
He wasn’t finished. “You have the power to tear me to pieces, to wound me so deep and true that I’ll never recover. What Rissa’s death did to the boy I was? You have the ability to do a thousand times worse to the man I’ve become. Some part of me knew that was a possibility from the instant you walked into my life—so I tried to keep you at arm’s length even as I demanded everything you had. I was a coward.”