Page 46 of Alpha's Rejected Warrior
Too much. That was too much.
I’m not known for pouring my heart out beside moonlit ponds to women who have the legal authority to execute me. I keep my expression neutral as I speak, watching for Rhiannon to politely withdraw.
Instead, she looks at me. Really looks. The way she does when she’s deciding what to do with every piece of information at once. Then, she says my name.
“Ethan.”
Just that. Quiet and certain, like a door clicking shut on everything outside this moment.
I read everything in the way she says it. The softness she’d never show in the light of day, the acknowledgment of everything unspoken between us. Every reasonable thoughtabout consequences and self-preservation exits my brain in orderly fashion.
I cup the side of her neck, my thumb settling against her pulse. It races against my skin, betraying her composed expression. I lean in slowly, giving her every opportunity to pull back.
She doesn’t.
The kiss is unhurried. Her lips meld with mine. The pond is quiet around us as moonlight filters through the canopy. I kiss her like the forest and the sky have agreed to protect us from the rest of the world for this one night.
The kiss deepens. Her lips part and my tongue slides against hers. Rhiannon catches my lower lip between her teeth, not gently. The contrast between my patience and her edginess builds a slow burn that tightens my chest and settles low in my stomach.
When we separate for air, I rest my forehead against hers.
“Are you sure you want this?” My tone is quiet but direct. I need to know if she’ll call this a mistake like last time.
Rhiannon’s answer isn’t words.
She rises, closes the distance between us, and pulls me up by the front of my shirt. Her mouth finds mine before I’m fully standing. Her lips are certain, deliberate, seemingly saying,Silly question. Stop asking questions.
I get the message.
She peels my shirt upward after unhooking it from my trousers and pushes it up my torso inch by inch before letting it drop onto the ground. Her palms press flat against my chest, fingers spread wide.
She’s not exploring. She’s memorizing, applying the same focus she uses to study a patrol route. She runs her hands outward from my sternum, over my ribs, and up to my shoulders.
Her fingers glide over the scars on my arms and slow down.
She follows the longest one with her fingertip, a thin, pale ridge along my forearm I’d stopped noticing years ago. Then, she lowers her head and presses her lips to it.
She moves to the next one. And the next. Her mouth is patient and warm against each scar as she works her way across my arms without looking up, giving me an unprecedented kind of attention. Nobody has ever touched those marks and made me feel like anything other than damaged.
One of my hands cradles the back of her head, holding on but not directing.
Don’t you dare.My throat tightens. My vision blurs, and I stare up through the canopy at unfamiliar stars and try to think about literally anything else. Training tactics. Sandwich construction. The structural integrity of dungeon cells.
It works. Barely.
When she lifts her face, I can’t help but reach for the laces of her tunic. My hands are steadier than they should be. I work the laces loose, fold the fabric back, and peel it down her arms.
Then, I stop.
Moonlight carves her figure in silver — the athletic lines of her stomach, the swell of her breasts, the scatter of freckles across her collarbone that I already know extend all the way down.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” I say it the way I’d report that the sun rises in the east. Observation. Fact.
Her expression shifts, throat working, lips pressing tight for one unguarded second. She heard the truth in my voice.
The rest of our clothing comes off with less ceremony. Boots hit the grass. Pants are unlaced, pushed down, and stepped out of until there’s nothing between us but the night air.
Rank is stripped away. Species is irrelevant. Summit politics and pack laws and the twelve reasons this is too complicated, allof that is gone. It’s just her and me and the sound of water gently lapping against the shore.
