“Wolf feels like mine, too,” she admitted quietly.
Link clutched her wrists, held her in place against him as his lips crashed down onto hers. He pushed his tongue past her lips and tasted her, over and over until she was writhing against him. This wasn’t the careful first kiss they’d shared at the diner. It was possessive and needy. It didn’t question if they were taking things too fast, and she didn’t want him to. She wanted this, right here. She wanted to lose herself completely with a man who really saw her. Who cared about her because of her personality and didn’t look at her face like she was repulsive. She wanted a connection with Link that would bind them. He was good, strong, and being around him made her feel more like herself than ever.
Nicole bit his bottom lip and ran her hands up under the hem of his sweater, across the mounds of flexed abs that nearly buckled her knees. Desperate to see them, she pushed his shirt over his head and nipped at his chest before she eased back. “Link,” she whispered, shocked that a man who looked like him, with his defined chest and washboard abs, the sexy crease of muscle over his hipbones, and wide, muscular shoulders, would want anything to do with a displaced, birth-marked city-girl who had lost her crown the day her stepdad had denounced her.
He had tiny silver scars in threes and fours, barely noticeable, and selfishly, she hoped she was the only woman who had ever laid eyes upon them. She kissed them one by one, finishing with the one on his ribcage. When she looked back up into his eyes, they’d gone white as snow, and his chest heaved with every ragged breath he took.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he said in a voice she didn’t recognize. It was too gravelly to be completely human, but she didn’t mind that his animal was here, too. She wanted them both, all of Link, because his animal side helped to shape who he was, and dammit, she adored everything about him.
Nicole straightened and pulled her hair back in a band she kept around her wrist. Feeling proud of the way she looked for the first time in her life, she lifted her chin and pulled her sweater over her head so he could see the full extent of the mark. Defiant to the niggling insecurity that crept in like morning fog, she gritted her teeth and resisted the urge to jump under his sheets and turn off the lights like with the other two men she’d slept with.
Self-consciousness didn’t belong here in this moment. Not with Link looking at her as though she’d bewildered him. Not with him brushing his finger reverently down the red color on her shoulder and the dotted half-necklace that curved under her neck. Not with him parting his lips just enough to whisper, “Perfect.”
And she was gone, falling. She knew what she wanted, and she didn’t care if it was too soon or too fast. If Link was really going mad, their timeline wouldn’t be like other couples. They would have to live every moment to the fullest and make every second together count. If he was going to be put down someday, she would have to make memories like this one and hope they kept her warm for always.
With shaking fingers, she unsnapped the button of her thick winter pants, but Link shook his head. It looked like it hurt, and he made a pained noise in his throat.
“What’s wrong?”
“I want a pup.” A feral snarl filled the room, and Link shook his head hard and backed away a couple of steps.
“What?”
“Wolf wants to breed. You don’t want one of my pups in you, Nicole. Have to be safe. Safe. Can’t hurt you. No girl lives.” A soft whine filled the air. “No girl baby lives, and I won’t be here to help you get through it. Won’t be here to help you raise a McCall boy. Mad. Don’t want him going mad on you. Don’t want you hurt. Don’t want to break your heart. Break you.”
Nicole stood frozen over the admissions he had forced past his throat. Another layer of hurt Link bore as if it was no weight at all, another tragedy in his life. “Do you want a baby? A son? You, not Wolf.”
Link winced and dragged his gaze from the floor. He nodded once. “Doesn’t matter, though. Not if I won’t be here to hold him.”
“We won’t have a baby. I’m on birth control.”
Link’s look of blatant relief hurt in ways she couldn’t understand. Their future would be short and lacking. There would be no chance at more than this time they had right now. No chance at a family with the man she was falling hard for, but that had always been part of the dream. She’d wanted a man who really saw her, a good father to their children, and who would show them the attention and love that she had failed to garner growing up in a cold home. No man had ever tempted her like Link had been doing from the second she’d laid eyes on him, but he couldn’t give her what she wanted, and she was failing him in the same way.
“I wish I could save you,” she admitted through tightening vocal chords.