He felt Megan coming and tried to compose himself but when he turned, she stood naked in the silvery light of the moon. “Would you like to run with me? The others have headed out on the other side of the property. Gabby is asleep andHiro is guarding her. It’s just you and me out here.”

“My God you’re beautiful.” He brushed his knuckles down her neck and she arched into his touch.

“What does your wolf look like, Shane? Will you show me? Share that with me? You can

say no. I’m sorry if I’m coming on so strong. The moon calls and my blood rushes with the tides. I want to feel it with you. So much it hurts to hold my wolf back. But say the word, say no and we can go back to our house.”

“I…”Herun . Wanted to feel the wildness course through him once again but the thought of losing his humanity stole his breath.

Her face fell and she nodded. “Come on, let’s go home.” She turned and walked away and he felt a gulf wider than the nearly twelve hundred miles between Seattle and Las Vegas open and it was his fault.

He was falling for Megan Warden. So hard he didn’t quite know how to process it. And yet, the issue of who and what he felt about it stood and he knew it. He just didn’t know how to deal with it.

So he showed her how he felt the only way he could. He loved every inch of her perfect, velvety skin. He showered attention on her body and through that, he hoped she felt what he did.

He loved the way she moved in the kitchen. Smooth, efficient, totally sure about what she’d do next.

“I love the way you do that,” he said, smiling. She turned and met his gaze.

“What? Peel potatoes? You’re easy.”

He stood and moved to her, needing to touch her. It’d stopped freaking him out, the need to be near her, the need to touch her, to smell her skin. It was part of what there was and he accepted it. Whether it was a werewolf thing or whatever, it was there and it was real and he was done trying to fight it.

She leaned back into him as he slid his hands over the curve of her shoulders, down her arms, encircling her waist and then back up to cup her br**sts.

“Let me love you,” he said against the warmth of her neck.

“It’s all I want.”

He felt the rush of her emotion through their link and it nearly knocked him over. No one had ever been so much to him, had ever connected to him the way she did. The intensity of it roared through him.

Sweeping an arm across the counter to clear it, he picked her up and set her on the edge.

Impatient, he made quick work of the frilly tank top she wore and her glorious br**sts were at eye level.

“So,” he murmured, licking across the curve of one and then over to the other.

She arched, her fingers sifting through his hair, her scent rising to his nose, drowning him in her and he surrendered, letting himself fall.

Her ni**les were hard against his tongue, her moans echoing through her chest.Hegive himself to her but he wasn’t good enough. She was strong. Sure. Self assured and confident and he didn’t know what the hell he was other than a fool for her. There in Seattle, what was he in comparison to the men she knew? Her grip tightened and she turned his head to her so she could see his face. “Do not do this to me. Give yourself to me, Shane. Stop holding back. I only want to love you. Can’t you feel that?”

“Let me give you what I can.”

He pushed her thighs apart and shoved the flimsy skirt she wore up, exposing her bare pu**y. God he loved that about her. The way she owned her sexuality so unashamedly. It was a way he felt they really connected, where he could totally be himself without holding back.

His thumbs slid through her wet flesh and she gasped as he manipulated her clit, squeezing just so slightly. He bent, tasting her belly as he moved down to her pu**y, her scent and the way she heated against his mouth drawing him to her.

He groaned when his tongue made contact with her, her taste zinging through his senses.

She tasted like the best thing ever and he couldn’t get enough. Long slow licks, just the

way she liked it and just the way he liked to give it to her, pulled her closer to climax.

He didn’t want it to end, wanted the quicksilver taste of her pleasure on his tongue, wanted the clutch of her fingers on his shoulders, the squirming against him as she pressed her pu**y into his face.

Her nails dug into the hard muscle of his shoulders through his T-shirt and the sound of the cotton giving way made his c**k even harder. The wildness of her, her strength and nature flavored her body, flowed into him like magic and for a very brief string of seconds, he what it meant to be a wolf. Accepted it as he danced fingers and tongue through her sex, drawing her closer to climax.

She cried out as she came, her body arching, stiffening, her emotion and pleasure flowing through the link and into the room around them. She was everything and more than he’d ever dreamed he’d possess but even as her orgasm began to die, he felt the space open up again.

He held her like she meant to him and yet, it was like she was in bed with a stranger.

When they had sex was the only time she felt truly connected to him and it wasn’t enough. She couldn’t settle for that, a piece of him that was only fleeting. She wanted him, all of him and he greedily held back. It made her tired. He made her ashamed, made her hold back when she share. She didn’t like it. And it made her deeply sad because the end was there and there wasn’t a thing she could do to make it better.

He’d been with her for three days and he’d avoided any talk of the joining ceremony. She hadn’t bothered to take him back to Lex and Nina’s and he hadn’t asked to go.