His fingers lifted and circled my wrist. I flattened my hand so that it was pressed against his stomach. He held it there, still, even after I wiggled my fingers, letting him know I wasn’t done touching.

“A lone wolf. One that does whatever it takes to survive until it finds a pack that will accept him.” His words snaked around my heart. Loneliness and sadness were ringing loud and clear in every syllable.

I watched him thoughtfully and didn’t put up much of a fight when he used the hold he had on my wrist to pull me across his body so that I was straddling his thinly covered lap while he reclined with his back against the headboard. It had been forever since I had something hard and throbbing between my legs. And I was sure I’d never had anything there that was as impressive and as hot as what Wheeler was working with. I put both of my hands on the wolf and met the guarded look in his burning blue eyes with one of my own.

“Wolves mate for life.”

“Yes, they do.”

I shivered against him as his rough hand slid underneath the loose fabric of the thermal I’d been in all day. It was far from sexy bedroom wear, but if the erection I was starting to slowly grind on was any indication, it didn’t matter what I was wearing, because whatever it was worked for the man below me.

His breath hitched as I started a slow rocking back and forth on the ridged flesh that was rubbing right against my cleft. My thin cotton pants did little to keep the heat we were generating hidden and I could feel arousal, both mine and his, starting to make the fabric between us damp.

I curled a hand around the side of his neck, capturing that bird that lived there in my palm, and leaned forward so I could lightly touch my lips to his. All along I knew this was the kind of distraction I needed to keep the ugly things that wanted to destroy me far, far away. In the light, with this man and his colorful skin and kind eyes, I was a million miles away from anything that could hurt me. I was lost, always turning in circles, but with Wheeler, everywhere I ended up he was there waiting for me, setting me back on the right path. The path that involved his hands coasting up my ribs, tracing fine lines between all the bones. The route that had his hands gently cupping my breasts and his lips letting out a guttural sound when he found them bare and the tips stiff and hard in anticipation of his touch.

He swallowed my gasp as his rough fingers scraped across velvety-smooth skin. My nipples pulled into points so tight that they hurt until he touched them. His fingertips dragged across the sensitive skin and suddenly the press of lips wasn’t enough. His mouth moved on mine, hungry, hard, and heavy. Lips bruised, teeth gnashed, and moans mingled. One of his hands fell to my hip, slipped under the waistband of my pants, and dug into the soft skin that lived there. My body took no time to follow his subtle direction and soon I was moving across his throbbing cock in earnest. There were layers of clothing separating us, but I could feel him twitch and kick against my center. I shifted, wanting more, needing the contact to hit the spot that none of my previous lovers had seemed interested in taking advantage of.

I panted against his mouth, which was wet from my ravenous lips, and rested my forehead against his as I continued to move on him, desperately searching, urgently seeking. I cried out as his fingers circled one begging nipple and applied pressure. The pinch made me jerk on top of him and move even more frantically. My hands were pulling at his flesh and my mouth was pleading with him to do something, anything, to help me get where he had been taking me all along.

The fingers on my hip dug in and his voice rasped across my parted lips as he said my name. When I didn’t stop my hectic and uncoordinated grind, he kissed me hard and tugged on my aching nipple with enough force that I pulled back and let out a startled yelp.

“Honey, I know what you need but you gotta let me get my hands on you. You gotta remember that I’m here too.” The fingers on my hip pressed in again and I slowly started to still where I was perched on top of him.

I blinked at him slowly, trying to recall how I’d ended up on top of him, using him like he was some sort of battery-operated sex toy. I wanted to forget all the bad stuff so badly that I forgot to focus on the good stuff that was right in front of me.

“I don’t know what I’m doing.” My voice sounded small and shattered.

He gave me a narrow-eyed look and leaned forward so that he could place a biting kiss on my swollen lips. “You know exactly what you’re doing, you’re making yourself feel good because no one you were with before bothered to do it for you.” His eyes burned right through me and his words sent my entire world spinning out of the orbit it had always been in. “I’m not them. When we’re together, I’m going to make you feel good.” His dimples flashed. “So good. You have to trust me.”

We stared at each other, his hands on me, my hands on him, and I slowly nodded. I trusted him … it was myself I still had doubts about. “You can use your hands.”

His dimples dug into his cheeks even deeper as his smile tugged at his mouth. “And my mouth.”

I was going to shake my head because I wasn’t sure I was ready for the double assault to my most sensitive places but I didn’t get a chance to protest before his lips circled one pebbled peak that was clearly visible under the fabric of my shirt. His tongue lashed at the covered skin but I felt the lapping all the way through to my core. I tossed my head back and involuntarily moved across the still-hard erection trapped between my legs. His mouth tugged, pulled, suckled on one nipple until I had my hands in his hair and was pulling on it while muttering his name over and over again. I thought I was going to melt into a puddle on top of him when he turned his attention to the other pointed tip.

The hand he had on my hip urged me to find a rhythm I liked as I rode him furiously, all the sensation trapped between us because of our clothing. He was thick enough and big enough that he was hitting all the right spots, but I still felt a hollow, empty ache that was begging to be filled. I was close to something, right on the edge of the unknown and unfamiliar. I wanted to reach out and take it, to make whatever it was that was hovering just out of reach my own, but I didn’t know how to do it, so I wailed Wheeler’s name and asked him to help me find whatever it was I was looking for.

His teeth slashed in a wicked and knowing smile. I told him he could use his hands but he was waiting until I really wanted him to, until I needed his touch more than I needed my next breath. He was good, far better than any man I’d ever been with before. Not because he knew how and where to touch, but because he knew when to touch. He waited until there was no going back. He waited until I needed what he and only he could give me. He waited until I was ready.