No.” Linc grew angry every time I suggested it. “I’m not leaving you, Sylvie. You’re my mate.”
“But your pack needs you!”
“So do you. At least you want me here.”
I shook my head. “I never said I want you.”
“You didn’t have to,” he said, stepping closer and running a finger along my cheek.
I shivered pleasantly at his touch, but I didn’t move into it. I didn’t retreat either. I was neutral. Mostly.
“You just keep fighting it. Refusing to accept that there’s a connection between us. One that’s irresistible, impossible to ignore. I can wait a little longer.”
I didn’t hear the last words. I was too busy pulling up my grandmother’s journal.
“Listen to this,” I said, reading aloud. “
To do that, you must find the guardian. They will be drawn to you-a partnership, a call impossible to ignore. Find the guardian, Vi-vi.”
I finished reading and looked up. Lincoln was staring at me, silent, watching. There was no surprise on his face.
“You’re the guardian. Aren’t you?” I asked.
Lincoln’s mouth curled up, speaking a million wicked intentions without a single word.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked. “You aren’t answering my question.”
He stepped forward. “You just admitted something I find much more interesting than that talk.”
“I did? What’s that?”
“You find the call of me impossible to ignore,” he rumbled quietly, his mismatched eyes twinkling with dueling flames. “You findme impossible to ignore.”
“Because you don’t shut up.” I tried to counter with some wit, but he wasn’t having it.
He shook his head, his eyes never leaving mine. “No, not this time, Vee. Not this time. You’re nervous. You’re scared. I understand that. I respect it. But you’re letting that hold you back. From me. Fromus.”
“I told you. The day I arrived here, I found out my ex had cheated on me. I’m notready for this.”
“Yes, you are,” he said, stepping firmly into my personal space, his wide-bodied, um, body, blocking out everything else around me.
My thoughts were scattering. Shattering into millions of incoherent stammerings that settled in my knees, robbing them of strength and coordination. I wobbled ever so slightly.
That was all Linc needed. His arm snaked around my back, his hand dropping to my rear, where his fingers spread wide and found a grip to hold me upright. By my ass.
He was grabbing my ass. Just like that.
Heat exploded from … from … from everywhere, all at once.
“You want me, just as badly as I want you,” he said, leaning in close to all but purr the words into my ear. “And, Vee?”
“Yes?”
“I want youbadly
,” he said, stoking the flames to a roaring fever pitch between my legs, a growing heat that was spreading its numbing touch through my body.
He wasn’t wrong. I did want him. From the moment I’d seen him in the forest, I’d been drawn to him in some manner. But logic said-
“I’m going to show you how much I want you. How much I need you,” Linc growled.
“Oh …”
You know what? Screw logic.
Sylvie
“I give,” I whispered, leaping into his arms, trusting.
Linc pulled me to him, my legs wrapping around his waist. He held me there, biceps taut and flexed without the faintest sign of a tremble. Another symbol of how strong he was.
But the most surprising part was when he didn’t immediately tear the breath from my lungs with the kiss I’d been expecting.
“You give?” he rumbled, his focus darting from one eye to another. “Just like that?”
I nodded. “Just like that. I’m done trying to adhere to logic, to what my brain says. It’s time I listen to the rest of me when it comes to you.”
He grinned. “Since you’re too polite to say that you’re dripping wet and needy, I have to assume you meant somewhere a little … higher.”
I playfully smacked the back of his head. “You want me to say I like you? That I’m listening to my heart and not my head. Is that it? Do you want to hear me say I care about you?”
He grunted in fake pain, but then quickly grew serious. “I’ve been open with you. Told you that I want you. That I crave being around you, being near you. I’ve meant that I want your body, and that I just wantyou. I haven’t shied away from that fact, Sylvie.”
“No,” I agreed. “You haven’t.”
“I still want you.” He meant that in all aspects. “But I don’t want just a part of you. If you want this, if you wantme
, it has to be for it all. Because that’s what I’m in it for, Sylvie. For all of you.”
I swallowed. This was not how I’d imagined it going after throwing away my restraints. I had thought it would be rough, and hard, and most of allimmediate. My body was throbbing with a need for that-an unmet, core-level need that still pulsed through my body like a siren, wave after wave of it.
“So,” he said when I didn’t immediately respond. “Is that what you want?”
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