The air shifted, plucking the little hairs awake on her arms. Rowan felt Thrax move to stand directly behind her. She was looking at his bed but not really seeing it, all her attention focused on the wall of muscle behind her.

A shiver of something other than fear leaped up her spine as he touched her. His fingers drifted up along her back to her shoulders. With light tugs, he began unfastening the ties on her shift, his calloused fingers scattering goosebumps wherever they moved.

Her eyes drifted closed and her mouth parted. It wasn't just her flesh reacting powerfully. Her heart was thundering in her breast, as loud as any storm Brek could summon to the sky. She didn't know what to do with her hands or how to act. This was unchartered terrain, and he was overwhelming her with his gentle, intoxicating touches.

The shift began to slip off one shoulder. When the ties over her other shoulder came loose, she clutched the shift to her breasts to keep it from pooling at her feet. "Why are you being so...kind?" she whispered.

Her voice seemed to dispel whatever strange magic was burgeoning between them because he sighed loudly. His hands fell away. "Would you rather I treat you like a stranger?"

She still couldn't face him. Though his hands had left her, he hadn't moved away, she could feel his heat like a towering brazier. Her tongue darted out and she turned slightly. "We are strangers, Thrax."

"Would you have us remain so?" he murmured.

She needed to stop being a coward and face him. His voice was guarded and low, so she couldn't tell how he was feeling or what he was thinking. Not that his expressions were ever revealing, but she wanted a hint. His gaze would give her that. Swallowing, she turned around and raised her eyes to his. She was relieved to see no anger, yet all the more nervous to see his eyes lit with an equally powerful emotion. Desire.

The mating bracelet jangled as she tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "Most days you act as though you hate me."

"I don't hate you, Rowan." His jaw flared. "It's just..."

"What?" She clutched her shift tighter across her chest. "You find my humanity woeful? My ignorance of the outland appalling? What?"

His mouth hardened. "I was going to say that it's a trial to be kind to someone who professes to hate me."

Her brows knit together. She wanted to deny it, but by doing so, she'd be weakening the wall she was trying to keep between them. It was her only defense against him.

"The only time you don't seem to hate me," he said, his gaze dropping to her mouth, "is when I'm kissing you."

He was making her lightheaded. "Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Kiss me."

He smiled. "You sound frightened."

"Yes," she breathed. But then his words sank in and her eyes widened. "No, I mean..."

He gently reached over to remove a sprig of lavender from her unbound hair. He studied it a moment, twisting it between thumb and forefinger. "You might like it, you know."

Her pulse skipped. That was the problem, she liked his kisses far too much. But she couldn't tell him that. Even now, she could hear the perilous chink of her crumbling defenses.

"I won't bite unless you want me to." Thrax dragged the lavender softly down her throat. "Or are you afraid of what comes after I kiss you?" He leaned in and she closed her eyes as his breath skimmed along her neck. "A warg between your thighs is not all that different to a man, you've nothing to fear."

She winced, her gaze popping wide. When he pulled back to look at her, he was still grinning but there was an edge of hardness in his gaze.

"You're...nothing like a man." Even if his eyes weren't feral yellow, her rapid heartbeat warned her he was nothing human.

His fangs flashed behind his smirk. "No."

Was he agreeing? She couldn't think straight. "And I've known you only a few days." Which was to say she knew almost nothing about him.

"Not true." He fingered the loose ties on her shift playfully. "You don't remember, do you?"

"Remember what?"

"The day I first came to West Gate." He left her side and moved over to sit on the bed. The action was no less intimidating than having him stand right beside her. Sitting on the bed, naked and powerful as he was, he seemed even more threatening to her womanhood. "You were very young. I don't wonder at your not remembering that brief encounter. But I suspected who you were to me, even then."

"When was this?" She shook her head, moving closer.

"It was shortly after your father's death."

She barely recalled her father's face. As for the days following his funeral, well, she recalled nothing much at all except the agony of loss. "It doesn't matter, we're still strangers." Worse than a stranger, really. There was nothing between them but harsh encounters. Two stolen kisses made no difference, or so she told herself.

With a keen look, he watched her, perhaps noting each thought as it flitted across her face. "You're right, nothing groundbreaking happened that day. Except that I saw you, and I knew you were mine."

A feeble memory yawned in the back of her mind, but it was too dusty and opaque a window into her girlhood. She remembered only an impression. Three men as tall as mountains. Their faces were lost in time. To her child's mind, they'd been fearsome and fascinating. Nurse had shooed her away with threats of the wargs eating the two girls for supper if they didn't listen to her. From there, her imagination had turned them into horned beasts with frothing fangs and red eyes.

Thrax was nothing like what her younger mind had conjured up. "Yours?" Her mouth flattened. "You thought that of a child?"

"Yes," he grimaced, "an infant in my eyes. And I couldn't escape the realization fast enough." He had the grace to look disgusted.

Her gaze narrowed as she considered his unlined face. He looked no older than a score and five years. Though she remembered little of that first encounter, she did recall all three wargs being men full grown. "How old are you?"

"Old by your estimation, but young for a wargrex."

She pursed her lips, thoroughly unsatisfied.

His eyes softened to a warm yellow. "Young and strong enough to protect my mate. Old enough to discipline her when she vexes me." She balked at that which only made him chuckle. His ivory fangs gleamed in the darkness, her warg vision making them eerie. "Min skani, relax, I was teasing you."

Said the wolf to the doe...

"Is it not enough that I wish to start anew? That this night be a night of new beginnings?" It was clear his mood was bent on things other than talking. The evidence was there, hard to ignore, in the shadows of her periphery. Though she staunchly avoided looking directly between his muscled thighs, it was impossible to avoid just how powerfully erect he was. Soon he would know she'd lied. "Come here," he said, his mouth quirking slightly.

It felt like she was wading through sinking mud as she approached him. She kept her fists tight on her shift to keep her hands from trembling. When she was standing within reach of him, he leaned in and pulled her closer. She was now standing between his thighs, a hair's breadth from his erection. She almost wished the night sight would go away.

"Why are your teeth so sharp?" His fangs seemed longer to her. How did they even fit in his mouth?

"Because I'm starving," he growled.

Her breath caught, her woman's intuition knowing exactly which hunger he referred to.

"Don't look so scared," he murmured, his palms skimming up the backs of her thighs, "it's not your first time after all."

Her knees loosened. "It is my first time...with you."

"Then I'll try to keep the wolf at bay."

She sucked in her breath as he pulled her onto his lap, her thighs straddling his hips, her sex flush against his smooth, steely length. Face to face, flesh to flesh, her body trembled under his erotic stare. Her right hand gripped his bicep as his eyes locked her in place. The shift dropped low on that side, catching on her taut breast. The mating impulse struck with bolts of heat and fury. Like an injection of bold red wine straight to the brain, it instantly dulled her panic.

It'd never been like this before. Never this intense between them. Maybe it was the new moon, or maybe it was all the flesh in contact. Either way, the time for talking was at an end. And they both knew it. The joining of blood had only been a prelude to the joining of bodies.

His hand cradled the back of her neck, his other hand splayed on her upper thigh. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears like thunder, flooding her in warmth. With just the lightest pressure, he closed the distance between their lips.

This kiss was as gentle and soft as the others had been crushing. Her eyes were wide with wonder, lost in the dominant glow of his. With infinite and deliberate strokes, he stirred a wicked turbulence to life. It hummed through her mouth, setting off ripples of drugging heat. All he did for long moments was brush his mouth against hers, coaxing hers to open. Unable to resist, she opened for him.

It was all he needed. All he'd been waiting for. Suddenly he was kissing her harder, claiming her with his tongue as his hand slid down her spine, firing ripples along her flesh.

She barely noticed her shift falling away. She hardly felt the fireless night sighing its cold breath over her bare back. The heat in her veins was drugging. In that moment, she felt like a goddess. She was Nixra, he was Mantor, and the night was theirs alone.