Chapter 36: The Wolf King: Chapter 36

I step back, giving Callum access to my chambers.

He closes the door softly behind him, and turns to face me.

The scent of the outdoors clings to him and his hair is ruffled and damp. I wonder if he’s been in the loch, even though the night is pitch black outside my window.

His face is serious, and something in his eyes seems lost. Nervous, even.

He runs a hand over the back of his neck, and releases a long breath.

“I’m so sorry.” His voice is rough. “The way I behaved earlier. . . I. . . I want you to know I’d never hurt you. Ever.”

His eyes bore into mine, and in them there is a silent plea that I believe him.

He’s standing so close that I could touch him. Goddess, I want to. Yet neither of us move. His hands remain firmly at his sides, his forearms corded, as though he’s making a concerted effort to show me he can behave like a gentleman.

A shameful part of me doesn’t want him to.

“I know that,” I whisper.

The air feels warm and tight. Stifling. I need to break this tension, somehow, before it breaks me.

“Did you get the message from your king?”

“Aye. He needs my help. I’ll have to ride out in the next couple of days to meet him.”

The tension thickens. I swallow.

I note how the moonlight reflects off his skin. “It’s a little late for a swim, isn’t it?”

He huffs a laugh. “Aye. A wee bit. I had some extra energy I needed to get out of my system.”

I think of the feeling that’s been crackling beneath my skin all evening. I think about what I was about to do before he knocked on the door.

“Did it work?”

His jaw tenses. “Not really.”

“And now you’ve come back.”

“I can’t keep away.”

There’s something so raw in his voice that my stomach jolts.

“I wanted to show you. . .” Tentatively, he puts his hand on my cheek. “I wanted to show you I can be gentle.”

I feel, again, as if I have swallowed the Northlands winds. That they’re billowing inside me, raging inside my chest, demanding I release them.

I force myself to remain steady, to not reveal the wildness that’s building inside me.

Even though I want that release.

Even though I want to scream and bite and tear into something. Into him. I want the storm that has been building for days—or perhaps since Callum first set foot into my bedchambers during the siege and threw me over his shoulder—to finally break.

From the way he is breathing, I wonder if Callum is containing something too. I’ve seen what he cages inside him—so different to the storm building in my chest, yet just as wild. I touch his chest, so I can feel his heart pounding. I wonder whether the beast within will stir.

“Show me, then,” I say.

His eyebrows raise. He smiles.

He cups my cheek. He brushes his lips against mine. True to his word, he is gentle, restrained.

Yet his kiss unleashes something violent within me.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time, Princess—”

My fists curl into his shirt, and I pull him back.

I catch the flicker of surprise in his eyes before his mouth clashes against mine.

One of his hands slides into my hair and he tilts my head back. He parts my lips with his tongue, and a low sound scrapes against his throat and vibrates through my core as he tastes me. His scent of woodsmoke and the mountains floods my nose, and I am burning and drowning in him at the same time.

A soft whimper escapes me.

“Fuck.” His voice is rough and raw against my lips.

He grabs my hips and pulls me closer, and I press myself into him—desperate to ease the ache that’s building.

His kiss deepens as he backs me into the wall and slides his thigh between my legs. I breathe in sharply at the spark of pleasure that ripples through me.

I grab him tighter, my knuckles pushing against the hard muscle beneath his shirt. His tongue moves in hot, deep strokes against mine and he tastes like pure heat. All I can think of is more.

My senses are heightened to everything—the grip of his fingers around my hips, the scrape of his stubble against my jaw, and the hardness of him. Wet heat pools at my core.

Is this what it is like to be a wolf? So attuned to every sensation.

It is overwhelming. Yet it is not enough.

I shift against his thigh and moan at the friction it causes. A low growl vibrates in his chest, and his grip tightens around my hips.

I still. I’ve gone too far. I’m out of control. I need to calm down. I need—

His kiss becomes more gentle. Urging. As if he’s coaxing me.

“Don’t stop.”

He presses a trail of kisses against my neck, leaving a line of fire that makes me whimper, then nips my earlobe with his teeth.

“I can handle it. Don’t stop.”

I see the wolf in his eyes.

His mouth is on mine again—his kiss deep and claiming. The ache between my legs builds and I cannot stop myself. I roll my hips, pressing against him, harder, faster. My breathing is shallow. I feel desperate. Wild. Feral.

I hook a hand around his neck, pulling his mouth even further into mine, meeting each deep stroke of his tongue with a thrust of my own. His fingers tighten and he growls.

The hard length of him is pressing against my hip.

I want to touch him, to coax more low, rough sounds from his lips. When I shift, and run my fingers down his chest, he presses himself closer to me—stopping me from slipping my hand between us.

“I can’t handle that,” he says, with a dark, breathy laugh.

He moves his hands down my back, pulling me to him. My nipples are sensitive against the thin material of my nightgown as they rub against his chest with each ragged breath. And I want more.

I rock against his thigh, the heat building, a flush spreading over my body.

Whatever was knocked loose in my chest when Callum hurled me over his shoulder back at the castle has escaped again. It rages inside me, primal and wild and free. I am no longer a princess, or a prisoner, or a statue. I am no longer trapped in a cage, or a castle. There are no chains nor wedding rings to bind me.

Callum groans against my lips as if he can sense the change in me.

There is something tightening inside me, burning, building.

And then it crashes over me. Callum thrusts his tongue roughly against mine, claiming my release as it surges through me. My knees buckle and he holds me, stopping me from falling, as my breath comes out hard and fast against his lips.

He growls, the sound as low and animal as I have ever heard it.

He curses under his breath.

And before I’m aware of what’s happening, he scoops me into his arms. My legs wrap around his waist, my core pressing against his hard torso. And then we’re on my single bed—the frame creaking with the weight of him—and he’s on top of me, his forearms on either side of my head as he hovers over my face.

His wolf eyes hold mine, as wild and feral as they were when we were in the forest. His jawline is hard, his biceps big and tensed—as though he is still holding back.

I touch his cheek, running my thumb over his swollen lips.

He rolls his hips once against me, those wild eyes never leaving my face, and I moan as his hard length presses against my core.

He growls again as he shifts down, peppering kisses down my jawline, my neck, my collarbone. His eyes glow in the darkness as he puts his mouth around my nipple and sucks hard through the fabric.

I cry out, my back arching off the bed.

His mouth is on mine again, hot and deep and claiming.

I sink my teeth into his bottom lip.

He growls, and grabs my wrist, pinning it roughly against the mattress. And the strength in him—Goddess, the strength in him! Exhilaration and raw heat surge through my body.

Then he stills.

Every muscle in his body tenses.

“Callum?” I whisper, my voice breathy and strange.

He sucks in a shaky breath. Then he lets out a half-laugh. “Perhaps I can’t control myself.”

He staggers back off the bed.

His breathing sounds pained. I’m not sure if it’s water from the loch or sweat that shines on his skin.

“Fuck.”

“What’s wrong?”

I sit up and he jerks back, his muscles twitching. His gaze snaps to the narrow window and the weak moonlight, then back to me.

“Callum?”

“I feel. . . I feel. . . strange.”

I slide off the bed and step toward him. “Callum, tell me what’s going on.”

“I feel. . . I feel like. . .” His hands clench in fists at his sides.

When he meets my gaze, he looks. . . wary.

“Callum. . . it’s okay,” I say softly, as though coaxing a wild animal.

I’m not sure what is wrong with him. Every muscle in his body is taut and strained. His biceps bulge against his shirt and his jaw is set. Perhaps that feeling of need that pulses through my body pulses through his too.

He told me before he wouldn’t let anyone touch me, himself included. Is that what he is worrying about? Touching me?

Or is he trying to hide the wolf inside him?

“I’m not afraid,” I tell him.

A vein pulses in his neck.

“I don’t feel. . .” he starts, shaking his head. “It’s not. . .”

“It’s okay,” I soothe.

I pad across the cold floorboards toward him, but when he growls, I still.

“Don’t,” he says, and there is power in his command. I freeze, my expression hardening.

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

He takes a deep breath. Then he turns to the door.

“What are you doing?” My voice is sharp as it cuts through the shadows.

“I must go.”

I feel like I’m being doused with ice-cold water. I have just shared something with him that I have shared with no man before. Something that is forbidden to me. And now he is just going to leave?

Something inside my chest shatters like glass, sharp and painful.

I swallow, then raise my chin—trying to look like a noble lady even though I’m wearing a nightgown and have just experienced something I shouldn’t have.

“Yes. You must,” I say. “It was inappropriate for you to come here at this hour. I am the princess of the Southlands, and I am betrothed to another man. You have taken too many liberties with me.”

His shoulders tense, and his face falls. “You’re right. I’m sorry, Princess.”

My heart breaks. I want him to fight for me, to tell me that he’s never giving me back to Sebastian.

But I put on my mask, and do not let him see.

His footsteps are hurried as he leaves, as though he cannot get away from me fast enough.

I stare at the closed door, my breathing ragged.

I want to scream. I want to tear through the forest and howl into the wind. Instead, I do what I always do, and swallow it. I swallow the feelings and the hurt and the rage. I let the darkness wrap around me, the shadows dousing the flames in my soul, until I am cold and empty.

Later, as I lie down on my pillows, and recall what happened, something occurs to me.

Callum was scared.

Tomorrow, I will find out why.