Page 113 of Marked By Moonlight

“Do you want that or don’t you?” she demanded.

I dipped my chin. “Yes.” Then I corrected myself. “No.” Mina looked ready to punch me, so I hurried to clarify. “I mean, that would be nice, but all I really want is you. Everything else is a bonus.”

Her eyes warmed, and her clenched fists loosened. “That’s what I want too. You. So, the question is, how do we get there?”

Hunt down each of my enemies and kill themdidn’t seem like the appropriate answer, but it was all I had. I scoured my mind for something better.

“We…uh…get this deal closed for Gordon,” I tried.

She nodded. “Then what?”

I scratched my chin. “Then we figure out who sent that picture and why.”

Bingo,her eyes said.

“And then what?” she prompted.

“Well, it depends on who. Why. Where…”

She squeezed my hands. “That’s what I’m saying. One step at a time. But we do it together. You don’t get to make secret decisions for both of us.”

Now that she put it that way…

“This is where you tell me yes, you love me, you need me, you want me,” she whispered after a few tongue-tied seconds ticked by. “Where you sayI’m inorI’m out of here.”

“I’m in.”

Her eyes lit up. “Really?”

My brain caught up with my heart, and I nodded. “Really.” I took her hands and kissed them.

She didn’t just grin — she basked in the moment. “Oh.Reallyreally?”

I nodded. “Really really.”

Her grin grew, then faded. “Well, then. All we have to do now is finish this deal for Gordon, solve whatever problems are sure to arise at the last moment, vanquish any lurking enemies, and we’re done.”

I nodded slowly. Now she was seeing things from my perspective.

Which, now that I considered it, was a pretty gloomy perspective.

“One step at a time,” I whispered, dropping down beside her.

She rolled to her side, looking at me, then spooned up next to me. I wrapped my arms around her and closed my eyes, telling myself to live in the moment.

Which wasn’t all that hard to do with her rose-and-lilac scent filling my soul with carefree butterflies or with the heat radiating from her body. Heat that said,Come to me, my mate.

Slowly, I moved my hands over her sleep shirt. It was mine after all.

She hummed and snuggled closer.

I kissed her shoulder, then pulled off her scarf. And, wow. Her skin radiated in the darkness.

“Now, suppose I wanted to leave a moonlight mark on you,” she whispered as I nuzzled her skin. “How would I do that?”

I thought it over, then shrugged. “Let destiny guide you.”

She lay quietly, then wiggled her rear against my crotch. “Destiny says, you need to lose those layers.”