“You…you are still playing the game.”
“Aye, until you ladies are through.”
Okay, so that’s what she thought. He didn’t really mean he wanted to keep her for his own. She could play the game.
“Don’t come any closer,” she said, waving the sword at him. She suspected he wasn’t going to let that deter him.
“I like your determination, playfulness, and resourcefulness. Next time we bob for apples, I want you on my team.” He moved in closer.
She backed up, bumping into sacks of grain and barely catching herself before she fell on top of them.
“Did you come down here for some wine?” she asked, trying to get him back on task, which shouldn’t include stalking after her.
“Nay, lass. I had first lookout.” He drew closer.
“First…lookout?”
“Aye, you see, each of us has vowed to capture any pirate wench who approaches the keep. You were the first. I claim you.” He pressed into her space, forcing her to move her sword ineffectually to the side.
She laughed. “You are too funny, Grant, though I have to say I love your sense of humor.”
“I’m serious,” he said, his voice rough with need, his hands on her shoulders, caressing, endearing. He wasn’t playing now. No teasing light in his eyes. He was all business, his eyes dark with desire. “You can’t tease me by looking like you do, stealing my trunks in a way that’s tantamount to saying you have claimed me, lass, displaying them for the whole of Ian’s pack to see, and then say it is all pretend. You are not pretend. You are real. The way your heart beats when I am near, and mine beats just as rapidly, the way your scent changes, telling me you want me like I want you—this is real.”
She smiled up at him, unsure what to say. She was normally not tongue-tied. But around Grant like this, with his close proximity, the way his musky male wolf scent tantalized her, the way he looked at her as if she was sex in a risqué costume, her emotions swept her away. Yes, she’d been mated twice before, and those had been agreeable matings, but she hadn’t felt the same for them as she did for Grant. A raging torrent of emotions—of lust and longing and sexual arousal—unbalanced her, making her feel as though she needed a safety line. And someone to tell her if this kind of a relationship was healthy and would work out for a very long lupus garou’s lifetime.
Yet could she walk out on him today, give up on him and the castle, and turn over her inheritance to her cousins? Could she stay here a whole year and a day, and be just the owner of the castle, while he served as her manager? And get over the physical attraction to him that had her wanting so much more?
She knew she couldn’t. She’d thought about what Archibald had said, but she didn’t believe him. Grant’s grandfather and parents had been murdered. His people had worried that Grant and his brothers were next. Archibald had to have lied to attempt to cause dissention between her and Grant.
Her heart was beating like a she-wolf who was caught, tested, and forced to tell the truth. Yet she couldn’t say it. What if she was wrong about Grant and her being right for each other?
Or what if she was still fantasizing about them, and he was just playing with her—as part of the game?
“Why did you really leave this morning and come here?” he asked, his tone of voice gentle, coaxing, but he wouldn’t let her go, wouldn’t step back out of her space. He was forcing her to hear his own rapid heartbeat, the smell of his arousal, and the feel of his heated body.
“To see Julia.” That was true. She had to see her and bounce her thoughts off her friend as they had always done. How could Julia have mated Ian without talking it through with Colleen first? Yet she hadn’t wanted to talk to Julia with the other ladies present, and she hadn’t believed Grant would end up here, too.
“About?” Grant asked, his hands cupping her face, his thumbs caressing her cheeks, his gaze locked on hers, alpha to alpha.
You. Colleen took a deep breath. No, not about him. But about… “Us.”
“You and me?” he asked, his eyes misty with sexual craving.
“Yes, if you must know.”
He grinned. “Aye, lass. That was all I wanted to know.”
He leaned down to kiss her, but she stopped him, her hands on his shoulders. “That’s it? What if I was going to tell her that…well, that…”
“You were going to tell her that we have a need for each other that we can’t quench. A wolf’s need. You know how it is for our kind. We find the right one, and that’s it for us,” he said, serious as could be, still eyeing her with determination. He wasn’t going to back down.
“But…”
“Your other two mates were betas.”
She frowned up at him. He had been checking up on her?
“Aye, you adored them. You were saddened to see them go. You pined for years after each of them died. But what you had with them was not the same as what we have between us.”
“That’s what’s wrong,” she said, her hands slipping to his back, her eyes averting to his gloriously muscled chest.
“Nay, not wrong.” He lifted her chin and kissed her forehead. “You do not have the luxury of brushing me aside and saying that because I wasn’t like your other mates, I’m wrong for you. They were good for you when you needed them. But now you need…”
“You?” She couldn’t help sounding a trifle annoyed. He was so arrogant and, God, so appealing. He was right. He seemed to be just what she needed in her life, but she didn’t want him saying so. She was used to being in charge and deciding what she needed, no one else.
Even in the case of her prior mates, she had been the one to tell them she thought they should be together, not the other way around.
She took in another deep breath of him and considered his expression. He might be smiling at her in an interested way, all serious, but it was the way his heart was beating just as fast, the feel of his arousal pressed now against her, the way she wanted this more than she thought she should that made her hesitant.
“Aye, you need me. But not any more than I need you, lass,” he said, kissing one cheek with reverence, and then the other.
“You left me last night,” she accused. What if he pleasured her here, just like she wanted him to, then hurried off again, abandoning her, only this time among the bottles of wine?