time in a century, he regretted the arrangement he’d made for his housekeeper to not return until the first morning after a full moon.
Sian should have fresh, soft linen for her tender skin. He licked his lips and savored a taste of her warmth on the air.
The ache of need still squeaked through his muscles. A craving nagged in his body that had never followed him through to a waning moon’s dawn. Not the need for blood, or the wish for the savage hunt in the starlit night, but another primeval hunger. Lust. He covered her with the sheet, the quilt, too, until she appeared comfortable. “Sian,” he whispered.
“What?”
“I’ll sleep apart from you tonight,” he said. Palms up, he took a pace back from the bed.
“Oh, why?” She sat up, her eyes wide.
“Because I understand the power of this. I have no wish to harm you more. We’ll wait a day or two before we share the bed again. Tonight would be a mistake.”
Her glassy gaze searched his. She blinked, breaking his eye contact. “I know,” she whispered.
“Remember, you are more important to me than anything in the world.” He turned toward the door, ignoring the little catch in her breath, though it tore at his heart. Her ripe fragrance lured him too much, made him want her with a savage need, a hunger no woman might understand. A she-wolf would, but Sian wasn’t yet a she-wolf. She’d not enjoy coupling with him as though she were. He closed the bedroom door behind him and strode down the corridor.
A sudden flash of memory hit. The reason for the solid painful muscles, protesting every movement he made despite his soak in a hot bath, thumped between his eyes. For three and a half days in wolf form, he’d wanted to mate, had lusted for her. Somehow, he’d held the savage need under control—just. The pinpoint vision of the moment sent a fiery flash to his groin so his cock twitched.
Confined for the time of the full moon in the small room with the cage, he had found her fragrant, sensual lure tortuous. When she had crouched on her knees to peer at him, all he’d wanted had lain beyond those solid bars. In the hope of gaining surcease, he’d reached through to grab her, scoring her forearm with a thick black claw. He’d sucked in a powerful blast of her scent as she had cried out.
Another inch would have made her his.
He’d have held her close enough to tear off the garments she’d worn and taken her. His damned wolf body would have reveled in the cure for his painful need. The beast had no conscience to trouble it.
He gripped the rail at the top of the stairs, could see nothing in the evening’s gloom but the vision of her sleek, pale beauty, the silken flesh of her parted thighs, the springing auburn curls, the juicy heat lodged within that promised bliss. A fresh hot spasm throbbed in his groin. His body demanded he find fulfillment. How he had wanted her. He still did. She was ripe to mate, ready to breed. He could taste her in the air. His seed would fill her. Their cubs would be bold, clever, bright, and sleek.
“No!” Kicking off the rattan shoes, he dashed down the stairs, along the corridor to the drawing room where he opened the secret doorway below the window. He ducked through and dragged in a breath as he ran along the terrace overlooking the lake. An icy thin slime of frost met his feet. He skidded, regained his balance, then pelted down the path. He raced onto the spikes of grass that yielded with the heat of his tread. Down the slope, into the night, he bounded in an effort to escape the pain. The frigid air cooled his ardor, exorcising the lust from his body with every breath he inhaled.
A fragile, starlit lattice of ice stilled any movement on the lake’s surface. He hurried across the causeway to the pagoda.
Each step on the boards of the jetty crackled and crunched, snapping the delicate icy crust from the walkway. Inside, in the gloom, he huddled in his robe on the day bed where he and Sian had first made love in the flesh, what seemed like so long ago. Though the search for peace drove him here, her scent still lingered to tease his senses. Memories of peeling her from her cashmere business trousers stoked the embers of his desire. He tried and failed to close off the recollection of her pleasure cries. Tonight they powered through his body as they had that day, charging his desire, tormenting his senses so he ached with a terrible longing.
Fearing he’d not be able to control his brutal need for her, he sought solace. Though he’d learned years ago self-satisfaction was a poor substitute for a woman, it proved one-step better than none at all. Tonight, he fought to achieve release. Only with her image in his mind, and with the lust of the beast rampant, did he reach orgasm.
It shouldn’t be this way.
He clutched a cushion as the moonlight diminished. A thin gray line defined the horizon. When the wedge of light, banishing the waning moon, spread wider, pale gold and pink hues smeared the sky to pronounce dawn’s arrival, no matter his darkest desires. He blinked gritty eyes, but found, at last, some semblance of peace.
Chapter 2
After her careful one-armed shower, Sian undid the dressing to check her wound. A nasty, red heat burned along her forearm. The bright slice mark, about three inches long, throbbed. The pain hadn’t decreased in the night. She squirted another layer of antiseptic onto the tender skin. If her arm showed no improvement by lunchtime, she’d have to make an appointment with the doctor. This scratch hurt more than her palms had done when Franklyn had shoved her down into the road at the beginning of the month. She didn’t recall her hands ever blazing this hot, not even after Magnus took the gravel lumps out with tweezers.
She rewrapped the current injury, making sure the bandage didn’t press too tight on the fresh piece of gauze overlaying the wound. The last thing she wanted to do was make a fuss and pile another layer of guilt on Magnus. He bore quite enough as it was. She pulled on her robe before she walked back through to the bedroom.
The neat side of the bed where Magnus should have slept screamed his loss.
Where is he?
She’d checked the guest suite before she took a shower. The room offered no sign of him. He wouldn’t have used any of the other unaired bedrooms. Perhaps in the kitchen? The household staff wouldn’t appear until about eight-thirty this morning, so until then they had to look after themselves. Hopeful she’d find him downstairs, she descended the stairs to the kitchen.
No Magnus. Not even an empty cup to show he’d been there at all.
She made coffee and decided to take it upstairs to drink in their bedroom before she got dressed. The silver coffee pot held enough for three or four cupfuls. In the hope Magnus might join her, she put an extra cup on the tray.
Her period, the cause of the problem between Magnus-wolf and her, had thankfully almost finished. The last three nights spent observing him in the cage had obliterated any sentimental ideas she might have had about the creature Magnus always referred to as “the beast.”
In wolf-form, he lived in the animal’s reality. She quaked at the memory of him sniffing, inhaling the air, his howls and snarls, along with the powerful pawing at the ground despite his chained limbs. Most frightening of all—the incredible compelling eye contact. The image of golden wolf eyes would haunt her. If not for the restraints and the cage, she’d have run for her life.
He would have caught her in the same way he had done on the beach in their first dream together. A sprint along the sand should have been easy since she still had the speed she developed in high school, but in that dream it wasn’t enough. The essence of
