Legendary Beast. Barbara J. Hancock
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impersonal. She could also feel him fail each time he brushed his hand against hers. He leaned into her as if he was freezing and she was the flame.
She tried to keep the image of the white wolf in her mind, but even though she’d sketched the monster a thousand times, she failed. Lev Romanov was intimidating. He was tall and broad and as lean as any hungry hunter could be. But he didn’t act like a predator. Oh, he noticed her every move. He sensed every time she reacted to his touch. But he didn’t exploit her weakness.
Not even when, God forgive her, she’d hoped that he would.
He had held her from behind, and she’d felt every inch of his hard body against hers, including his obvious reaction to holding the small of her back to him.
Then he had stepped away.
She had quaked like a leaf afterward. Perhaps he had thought she had overexerted herself. He had ended their practice. He’d headed back to the horses. She’d been left to mull over the impossible: the white wolf she’d been told to distrust had refused to devour willing prey.
They were being followed. As the forest darkened around them, Lev could detect the scent of wolves on the breeze. He was well used to wild wolves. He’d run with them for over a hundred years. They naturally bowed down to his giant white-wolf form. In his supernatural body, he was easily the apex predator of the mountain. Volkhvy power might be evil, but it had given him the power he’d needed to survive when Vasilisa cursed Bronwal.
Now his ability to shift was gone.
For whatever reason, he couldn’t set the white wolf free. It was as if his human body was unwilling to risk disappearing for another hundred years or more. He was drenched with sweat by the time the sun set, but he was still a man. He’d asked Madeline to ride in front when he first scented the wolves. She hadn’t looked back at him since then. If she had, she might have drawn the ruby sword from the scabbard at her knee. She would have seen his tension. She would have anticipated the arrival of the white wolf she feared.
Now she might have to draw her sword to fend off natural wolves instead.
“We’ll stop here for the night,” Lev said. He directed his horse toward the side of the trail, where a large spruce had fallen following a heavy snowstorm several months before. The branches were still filled with green needles, although they were dry and rustled with a sharp skeletal rush when the wind blew through them. He liked the fallen tree because it would form a barrier wall between the shadows of the forest and the open trail. It would be a line of defense against any wolves that might come from the trees. They would camp against it, and he could build a large fire between the massive trunk and the trail.
“We should keep going. I have flashlights in my pack,” Madeline said. She’d turned her horse around, but she didn’t dismount.
“We’re being followed by a pack of wolves. A sizable one. If they choose to attack, it will be under the cover of darkness. We need a fire and a defensible position,” Lev said.
Madeline didn’t argue further. She jumped off her horse and led the animal to where Lev had dismounted. The white gelding seemed ghostly, and Madeline’s face was indistinct in the shadows, even to his eyes—and his vision was enhanced by the wolf that lived beneath his skin.
“We’ll need to keep the horses near the fire, which means they’ll have to be near me. They won’t like it, but it can’t be helped,” Lev said.
“They’re not as skittish as they were. The dun hasn’t reared once today,” Madeline said.
“The wolves will have them prancing if they come much closer,” Lev said. He raised his nose into the air and breathed in to try to gauge the position of the pack. Madeline watched him with wary eyes. She dreaded his shift. He lowered his nose and met her serious gaze. He stepped toward her without thinking. One pace and then two, stopping only a foot away from where she had frozen at his advance.
Once Madeline’s eyes had shimmered with ruby highlights. Now they were dark and brown. Lev reached and placed one crooked finger under her chin. Gently, with the slightest pressure, he urged her face to tilt upward so he could get a better look at her eyes. It was a mistake to touch her. It was a mistake to get too close. Because no matter how close he got, it would never be close enough. “I’ve told you I can’t shift, Maddy. Be wary of the wolves that stalk us, but don’t be afraid of me.”
“You are the wolf. I see him in your eyes. I see him in the way you move. So quick. So graceful. Your intensity is his intensity. You aren’t afraid of the wolves. You’re as ready for their challenge as the white wolf would be,” Madeline whispered.
She didn’t pull away. She didn’t move back. Her willingness to stay close to him even though she saw him as the white wolf seared him to his core. She was right. He was ready for the wolves’ challenge. It was her he couldn’t face. Or the memory of what they had been to each other. Not now, when empty desire rose in affection’s place. He wouldn’t take advantage of her attraction for him. He wouldn’t indulge the pull between them. Not even after centuries of being apart.
He looked at her lips as he made the decision not to taste them again for what she would perceive as the first time. They parted beneath his attention as she breathed a soft gasp of awareness. He wasn’t ashamed of the tremble in his hand on her skin or how it betrayed the amount of control he had to use not to dip down and suck on her full, sweet lower lip.
“Bring your sword with you and bed down by the fire. I’m going to find our stalkers and ascertain their intent,” Lev said. In truth, he simply needed to run away. From the soft flick of Madeline’s tongue as she moistened her unkissed mouth, and from his desire to lick her lips himself. He would be a fool to try to sleep beside her, enveloped by the fire’s heat.
He was the one who dropped his hand. Stepped back from her upturned face. Turned away.
Madeline went for her sword while he gathered the necessary kindling. With the modern lighter from his pack, it took no time to start a fire. It was roaring by the time Madeline returned with her sword and a roll of padded bedding.
“Keep the fire going through the night. I’ll find the wolves and keep an eye on their movements until sunrise,” Lev said. He saw a dawning wisdom in the depths of her eyes as he turned away. She knew he was avoiding being near her. He had confessed it with his touch on her chin and with his eyes on her mouth.
“I need your help to save my son,” Madeline said.
“I’ll be back in the morning,” Lev said. “We will save our son together.”
She didn’t remember Lev’s kiss of the past, but there was nothing wrong with her imagination. He was an intense man. His touch stayed on her skin long after he’d disappeared into the forest shadows. The heat he’d left on her face transferred itself to the mouth he hadn’t touched with anything other than his gaze.
The white wolf was a monster—that was a truth she knew from her sketches and her vivid memories of the stormy cliff. And she wanted the monster’s kiss. She ached to remember what it had been like to press her lips to Lev Romanov’s mouth. She must have been far bolder than she was now. Far less cautious and afraid. Her heart pounded in her chest, and her breath came fast as she merely imagined what it would have been like earlier if she had narrowed the gap between them herself. She’d wanted to. She’d wanted to claim the only softness on his hard, scarred face. His lips were indulgent in an otherwise forbidding mien. They begged for kisses even as everything else warned her away.
Kissing him would be a mistake. It was wrong to even imagine flicking her tongue into his mouth and tasting him...again. The idea that she already had, that they had been mates once upon a time, was driving her crazy. Her body told her they would be good together, because it already knew they were.
That the white wolf was the one with enough control to walk away made