Page 46 of Left Cold, Wolf Owned
I push through the door without waiting for him to hold it.
Inside, the fire has burned down to embers. The cabin is warm and dim, the last light coming through the window at a long angle. My body freezes in the center of the room and turn around before he's fully made it through the door.
"Don't close it yet," I tell him.
He stops. His hand is on the door frame. "What?"
"I need to say something, and I need to know you can't walk away from it." I cross my arms. "On the ridge. You were going to kiss me."
His features change. Not denial. He doesn't insult me with denial.
"And then you didn't," I continue. "And I've been walking behind you for twenty minutes watching you be perfectly composed about it, and I am—" I stop and search for the word. "I am not composed about it, Logan. I haven’t been composed about it for some time now, actually, and I need you to stop being careful with me for five minutes and tell me what is actually happening between us."
The silence that follows is different from all the others. This one has weight.
"You want the honest version," he says finally.
"I always want the honest version," I reply. "You of all people should know that by now."
He closes the door.
He doesn't move toward me yet—he stands there, one hand still on the door, steel-gray eyes steady on me—calm on the surface the way they always are and, underneath that, not calm at all.
"I feel something for you that I don't have a clean word for," he tells me, low and direct. "I have since the first night. And I haven't said anything because it wasn't mine to say until you were ready to hear it."
Something in my chest cracks open, only slightly.
"Why didn't you kiss me?" I press.
"Because you don't have the full picture yet," he replies. "And I don't want to be something that happens to you before you've had the chance to decide what you actually want."
I feast my eyes on him. The firelight is catching the angles of his face—the jaw, the ridge of his brow, the careful neutral that is costing him something to maintain—and I think about five years of someone making every decision for me and calling it consideration. I think about what it feels like to be waited for instead.
"What if I've decided?" I tell him.
His jaw tightens.
"I know I haven't been here long," I continue before he can answer. "I know everything is complicated. But I've spent five years in a relationship where every single thing was decided for me, and I know the difference now between someone taking something and someone waiting to be invited." I hold his gaze. "You've been waiting. I'm inviting."
He crosses the room.
He stops directly in front of me, close enough that I have to tilt my chin to hold his gaze, and he raises one hand and cupsthe side of my face with a gentleness that is somehow more undoing than anything forceful could ever be. His thumb traces my cheekbone, slow and deliberate, and I feel my breath go unsteady.
"I've been waiting," he confirms, the words coming out quieter than he probably intended, like something he's been holding for a while and has finally decided to set down. "A lot longer than you know."
Then he kisses me.
It starts carefully—one hand still cupping my face, the other finding my waist—and it is the softest, most intentional kiss I have ever been given, the kind that asks a question and waits for the answer in the same motion. I answer it by stepping into him, by pressing both hands flat against his chest and feeling the solid reality of him, the warmth through the flannel, and the steady beat of his heart underneath my palms.
Then I pull him closer, and careful becomes something else entirely.
His hand slides from my face into my hair—fingers curling into the chestnut waves with a grip that isn't gentle anymore, that is deliberate in a completely different way—and the other arm wraps around my lower back and pulls me flush against him, and I make a sound against his mouth that I don't try to manage. He responds to it immediately, a low sound in his throat that I feel more than hear, and the kiss deepens into something that is less a question and more a statement.
I pull back far enough to breathe.
"Logan," I manage to say.
"Yeah," he replies, voice rough, and his eyes are darker than usual, the careful composure entirely gone now, and I realize I've never seen him fully without it before, and it is, without qualification, the most attractive thing I've ever seen in my life.
