Page 38 of The Wolf and the Wildflower
For too long, he had been deprived, and here was a source before him that he wished to gorge and glut upon. The desire felt ruthless and implacable, uncaring of the will of others, yet he did not shun it. “I want you to touch me whenever I want, Wildflower.”
She laughed, the sound quick and startled. “Spoken like a duke.”
The words were chiding, teasing almost, but the curious hunger in her gaze surely mirrored what rose inside him. It felt unstoppable and unquenchable. “Do you agree?”
An unknown expression flickered in her gaze. “I am undecided.”
It is not a rejection. Good enough for now.
He clenched his hands again, fighting against the nearly overwhelming need to just touch her. To run his hands down her arms, to feel her hands against his chest and back.
“May I touch you?” he asked when everything inside him urged him to ruthlessly take. He did not understand it and it felt like a concept he had long forgotten, but he gentled the primal cravings and asked again, “May I touch you, Wildflower?”
If she denied him, he would damn well walk away.
Her throat worked on a tight swallow. “Is the need imperative?”
“It feels like a desperate hunger. I do not like it.”
A small smile touched her mouth. “Yet you chase the feeling?”
“Yes.”
Her head canted slightly. “Why?”
James carefully thought about it. “It is new and different.”
Her gaze searched his before she nodded. James was considerably surprised and pleased. What would it feel like to touch another’s skin after so long?
“Go ahead,” she whispered, as if she sensed the clash of needs rising within him.
James hardly cared that his hands shook as he lifted them to her face. Right before he touched her cheek, he clenched his fingers into a tight fist. He had not allowed the touch of another for a long time, nor had he reciprocated. This need felt alien to him, and he briefly wondered at the ease of doing so with this creature. Was it because in touching her or allowing her to touch him, there was no expectation of normalcy?
James did not have the answer, but he had not been able to allow any touches from his family or give any in return since stepping back into civilization. He unclenched his fingers with a force of will he’d not expected to need to exert, not when he wanted to feel this connection with such visceral intensity.
A shaky breath escaped Southby, and though her eyes urged him on, her lips did not move. James gently cupped her cheeks. Softness and heat. Those impressions crowded his awareness, and an unfamiliar sensation prickled beneath his fingertips.
It felt like pleasure…
He teased a too-rough thumb over the elegant softness of her cheek, and her eyes went so wide that James thought she might faint. It occurred to him that Jules Southby might have never been caressed by another in such an intimate fashion. A possessive satisfaction hummed deep inside, briefly shocking James.
“You are soft, like the petal on a flower.”
A quick scowl marred her loveliness. “I am tough like rawhide.”
He did his best to hide his amusement. “Perhaps you are both. Beautiful yet filled with unbreakable resilience. Wildflowers depend only on the rain and the sun from heaven. They can be invincible and very independent.”Wildflower. “A wildflower lived with me in a cave.”
She peered up at him from beneath incredibly long lashes. “How long did you live in a cave?”
“Months, hiding from the relentless fury of the winter wind. That wildflower was alone, too. It was the only splash of vibrancy in the unrelenting cold and darkness.”
He drifted his fingers down to the supple hollowness of her throat.You remind me of it.
“There are some psychologists who believe living without the touch of others is an impossible feat,” she said, lifting her fingers back to his face.
James leaned into that soft, almost hesitant caress. The muscle tensed beneath the tip of her fingers and reacting with instinct, he darted his hand to loosely capture that single digit. “Do not remove your hands.”
“I won’t,” she whispered, those tips feathering over to his brow.
