Captive Of The Warg, (Wargs of the Outland #2)

Eye To Eye

The hours gathered like frost behind her eyelids, scraping each time she blinked. Reia's heavy lashes straggled down inch by inch. With all might and main she'd fought sleep, but finally her eyes drifted shut.

Just a second, she promised herself. Just so her eyes wouldn't bleed. But that one insidious moment yawned into the next, dragging her beneath a blur of unfathomable moments.

She had no idea what woke her—maybe nothing. But she shot out of sleep in a silent panic, her body tense but unmoving. The throbbing in her left ear proclaimed she'd lain on it for hours. But that wasn't why her mind had prodded her awake in panic.

Her eyes dilated like a scream as she took inventory of her body. Entwined in his! She was pressed against the wargrex. Nestled in the crook of his arm. She tried to slow her breathing, keeping as still as stone. But there was nothing to be done for the cauldron of bats set loose in her chest.

How long had she been asleep? Too long.

Sometime in the preceding hours, she'd cleaved to his warmth. And he was no longer in wolf skin. She didn't know why that should make a difference—his beast form ought to have terrified her more—but he seemed somehow more threatening without claws and a tail.

Her leg lay slung atop his firm thigh, her hand splayed over the hard sinews of his vast chest. Wait, where were his...trews?

She scrunched her face. Of course he was naked, he'd been in wolf form when she'd fallen asleep.

Thank Maeda his breathing was even, his heart beating a slumberous rhythm beneath her clammy palm. If she carefully extricated herself without waking him, she wouldn't have to bear the shame of him knowing she'd clung to him in sleep.

Her heart slammed against her ribs, her face feverish. The touch of him—the scent of pine and woodsmoke on his skin—stirred a swarm of bees under her flesh. It filled her head with an intoxicating hum.

Brow pinched, she lifted herself away from him, piecemeal, finger by finger, inch by inch. As she rolled to the other side, not daring to breathe, the soft hum in her blood ebbed to a blissful quiet. In an instant the cold shuddered over her, claiming her back, the furnace of his preternatural heat no longer protecting her from it.

Swallowing, she searched his face for any sign she'd woken him. But he slept on, the furrow between his eyes relaxed. In repose, it was an achingly beautiful face, devoid of austerity. Despite the shades of ash and smoke in his hair, his unlined face bespoke only youth and virility. The claw marks riven into the smooth muscles of his shoulders hinted at prowess.

She'd been around men her whole life. To her, a cock was nothing but messy flesh stuffed into trews. A misfit buried behind thick fur coats except to paint the snow yellow.

Yet this male roused in her what no other ever had. A deep, reluctant curiosity. In his presence, she felt disturbingly feminine. A foreign emotion.

She slid her tongue along her upper teeth. A tickle of awareness skittered into her belly, her muscles tensing. Yet the rise and fall of his chest continued, steady, undisturbed by the powerful thumps of her heartbeat.

Awake, his features were hewn by arrogance and disdain. His nose long and aggressive, his lips either curled with contempt or tight with anger. But now, ironically, he was even more threatening because he looked so different. So deceptively peaceful. His eyelids shielded her from that fierce yellow glare. Slumber made him human...except for the ears and the long canines hidden behind his resting lips.

With his eyes closed, she let her gaze fall to his mouth where it skimmed along his full, lower lip and his chiseled jaw. Then up his tapered ears, long and strange. But a second later she was right back to staring at his mouth again. Her fingers curled, prickling with the sudden need to touch him, to trace his profile the way she liked to trace unknown, dangerous herbs, committing all her curiosities to memory with pen and paper.