Authors: Susan Krinard
including herself. He should have sensed
from the beginning that her paralysis was made up of denials and assumptions, not of a
ruined body. That was why he had kissed her the first time, goaded her to defy her
brother, allowed himself to get so close
When did you become so wise?
"If you can walk," he said, avoiding her question, "your injuries must be healed.”
"Healed." She breathed the word, exhaled it, savoring a taste she had not expected to
sample again. "Is it possible?”
"Your legs held you up. Your muscles must be weak and thin, but they work. Can you
feel them?”
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"Yes." Wonder in her eyes, she ran her hands down her body from waist to thigh. Her
nightdress molded to the shape beneath, and Morgan clenched his teeth. "I can. It
hurts.”
The pain must be great, but she bore it without complaint. Pride swelled his heart to
uncomfortable proportions. "I only know a little about such injuries, but I have seen men
who have not used arms or legs for many months, and they can get well if they do not
give up. It will continue to hurt, after so long. The wolf will help. It was the wolf that
healed you.”
She met his gaze. "But I
I haven't Changed in years.”
"Your body doesn't forget. Just as your muscles don't forget how to stand. They will
learn to walk and then run again." He stared into her eyes. "You are brave enough to do
it, Athena. You always have been.”
She pulled herself up to lean on the pillows, carefully flexing her knees. "But if all it
needed was courage, then why did it take me so many years to find it?”
Ask Ulysses, he wanted to tell her. He is the philosopher—he and Caitlin. "What were
you afraid of?" he asked.
"I—" She closed her eyes, and he could feel her traveling back over the years, to that
snowy mountainside long ago. "I don't know. I believed the doctors. I believed Niall.”
Niall. Morgan bit back a snarl. "He kept you in that chair.”
"No! No." She shook her head, refusing to hear anything against her brother. "Nothing is
that simple. He did everything for me.”
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"He did not understand the wolf," Morgan said. "Neither did you.”
The confusion in her eyes cleared, and a new energy coursed through her. Morgan
could see it, radiating from her body. "I believed the wolf was gone forever. I made
myself believe it." She looked at him in such a way that his throat closed up and he
couldn't have spoken had he wished to.
"It wasn't only the wolf inside me that made this happen," she said softly. "It wasn't a
miracle. It was you. Your inspiration, your belief in me
even your bullying. You were
an example I had never found anywhere else.”
He jumped to his feet. "You give me too much credit.”
"I don't think I do. You are so much more than you know, Morgan.”
"And you know nothing of me.”
"Then tell me." She leaned forward, deliberately working the muscles of her legs. "If you
have suffered
I want to help you as you have helped me. I owe you so much. Let me
repay at least a little.”
He started for the door, and stopped. Every nerve burned with conflicting urges. Run.
Stay. Avoid her at all costs. Take her. Possess her. Make her yours forever.
"There are many who care about you, Morgan," she said behind him. "You do not want
to owe anyone
and you don't want anyone owing you. Do you think I have not seen
that time and again in my work?”
"Among your charity cases?" he snapped. "Those who are too weak to survive on their
own, and too proud to admit it?”
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"The circus needed your help, and you gave it. You could have left, but you stayed. You
had no reason to encourage me, yet you did. I cannot understand you, Morgan
and
yet, somehow, I do.”
"You are a child.”
"I had a father who loved me, and a brother who protects me even when he is too
diligent. Perhaps I let myself be protected. But who protected you?”
"I don't need protection.”
She paused, and he thought he had driven her from the subject. But she was not
finished.
"You lost your family when you were young," she said. "But you have a new family now.
Caitlin, and Ulysses, everyone in the circus. They are all your friends. And Harry
regards you as a son.”
He couldn't bear it. The bit of conversation he had heard between her and Harry, when
he had left the bags by the door—that had been more than he wanted to know. And yet
he had envied their easy intimacy, the affection between parent and child. His last
conversation with Aaron Holt had been
best forgotten.
"What was your father like?" she asked.
He turned on her. "He was a dreamer, a wastrel, a man who could not care for his
family." He closed his eyes, seeing the haggard, agonized, pleading face that bore so
little resemblance to the man he had known in boyhood. "He left my mother
”
Too hard. Too much. "I went looking for him," he said. "To bring him home.”
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"Did you find him?”
She seemed to sense the enormity of what she asked, for her voice had grown very
small. He smiled brutally. "I found him.”
"You hated him," she whispered. "Oh, Morgan—”
Was that pity in her eyes, her voice? Was she reaching out, her fingers poised to stroke
his cheek, pat his hair as if he were a disconsolate child—one of her precious, pitiful
orphans?
He moved faster than human eyes could see and grasped her about the wrist.
"Don't pity me," he growled. "Don't you dare pity me.”
He crouched over her, his legs to either side of her hips, pinning her arms to the bed.
Athena understood, oh, yes, she knew—but she was calm, unafraid.
He did not want her fear. He wanted
he wanted
"Morgan—”
He silenced her once more with his lips.
Athena knew better than to show fear. The wolf was in Morgan's eyes, in his need, and
she knew she had pressed too quickly.
But she needed, too. She needed to understand him, and now—as he kissed her with a
harshness that swiftly transformed into a hungry caress—she realized she needed
something far more physical.
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The very physical desires she had denied herself, knowing that no man would be able
to satisfy them even should he wish to bother with a cripple. The entirely selfish
fulfillment that benefitted no one but herself.
Now she had begun to want—not dream, not wish, but actively seek what had not been
within her grasp until this moment.
That frightened her as Morgan himself could not. Her legs had begun to waken from
their long sleep, but she hadn't reckoned how every other part of her would so brilliantly
come alive at his touch.
It had happened before, with him, but not like this. His fingers tangled in her loosened
hair, fiercely holding her still as he kissed her with all the thoroughness she had
imagined in her waking dream downstairs.
But his anger, his seeming ferocity, was as much a facade as his ordinary human
shape. Even now his hold on her was tender as that of a she-wolf carrying her pup in
jaws that could crush bone.
His mouth formed her name against her lips, and he released her arms. She left them
where they were, though she felt far from passive. Her instinct was to reach for him and
pull him down, down, into herself.
But he must feel in control. She sensed that the way she sensed the crushing sorrows
of young, unwed mothers or the anger of men who could not find work to feed their
families. In such cases she knew how to respond—how to give, heal, mend—but now
she must find her way like one blind.
One blind who had just begun to see.
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Morgan nuzzled her ear, hot breath sizzling against the cool flesh at her hairline, and
did something indescribable with his tongue. She gave a brief cry of surprise. He kissed
her again, first on the lips and then on her forehead, her eyelids, her nose, her chin.
Each kiss was little more than a breath, yet charged with such potency that she could
not mistake it for anything like a brotherly salute.
No sooner had she recognized the utterly erotic nature of the caresses than he
surprised her again. His tongue swept down the angle of her jaw, from earlobe to chin. It
was as if he were sampling her before beginning his feast, a promise of more to come.
More than what had transpired in her bedroom, or even in her dream. It could go so
much further, if she dared let it. All she need do to stop it was tell him "no.”
He pressed his mouth to the underside of her jaw, where the pulse beat very fast, where
she was most defenseless. She bent her head back and closed her eyes. He nipped her
here, there
love-bites that she vaguely thought must be common among his kind.
Their kind.
Then he began to unbutton the top of her nightdress.
She held her breath. One button undone: he peeled back the two seams and kissed the
space between. One more: another kiss. The third button lay nestled in a valley of flesh.
The last ended just where her breasts pushed up so shamelessly against the sheer
linen.
Needles of sensation prickled in her belly and nipples. When he got below the buttons,
he wouldn't be doing what an importunate suitor might have done, if she had suitors.
She had no illusions about his intention.
Why? her much-abused common sense cried. Why here, now?
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Why not? Did you expect avowals of love, a slow and formal courtship that any normal
woman might prefer? Are you normal? Is he?
Might this not be your only chance to know what it is to be loved?
He laced his fingers through hers and pulled her arms above her head. He did not hold
her there. Instead, he let his hand slide down her body, grazing shoulder and breast and
hip without lingering, coming at last to rest on the juncture of her legs.
Her legs, which were no longer dead weights but strange appendages not yet sure how
they belonged to the rest of her. They would not yet obey her, but they could feel.
She felt the heat of his palm through the lawn of her gown. She felt him begin to slide
the fabric up her thighs, inch by inch, from the middle of her calf and higher. She felt the
draft of cool air lick at her bared skin as his tongue had licked at her ear and chin.
Then his hand was on her, nothing between.
He brought his face close to hers. His lungs worked like those of a man who had been
running many miles without rest. Her nostrils drew in scents that belonged only to him,
unique and intoxicating, wolf and human. Damp, heavy locks of his hair curled under
her jaw and into the cleft between her breasts.
"You feel so much for others," he whispered hoarsely in her ear. "But do you feel for
yourself, Athena?”
He moved his hand under the bunched cloth of her nightdress. His fingertip just
barely—or so she thought—brushed the small, tight curls at the tops of her thighs.
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She had read of electric shocks and had imagined what they must be like. But that was
scarcely an adequate comparison when he touched the most private place beneath that
downy shield.
He had asked if she felt for herself. No answer was necessary. Pleasure like pain
danced and burned with each small rotation of his finger, wringing gasps from deep in
her chest. Standing on her own feet, walking, running again
all that was nothing
compared to the ecstasy that reached into the very center of all she was or could ever
be.
Was this it, the thing women spoke of in veiled allusions and whispers when men were
safely out of hearing? The thing that made sharing a man's bed more than a duty and a
way of making children?
Morgan. He touched her again, and her voice lost its way somewhere between throat
and tongue.
To feel
to feel so gloriously was worth any price. To feel this at Morgan's hands, with
his body stretched out above her was a miracle she did not deserve.
But what did Morgan get for himself? He had started this to silence her—to prove
something to her, to himself, that he was master of his own fate and hardened against
any sentiment she could offer. Yet his attempt at mastery had become a giving—of