She needed closure. He got that. She had an entire biological history with a man she never knew. How did one begin to mourn someone they never knew?
“I didn’t have to worry about him being buried without someone there. He had thirty people, at least, gathered from all over this strip of the Yukon, from Galena to Kaltag. Three people spoke about how giving he was, how he always made sure the people around him were taken care of. The last one, an older woman, said he often gave more than he had, just to make sure his friends were taken care of.”
Link raised his gaze to Nicole’s, braving her tears, but he shouldn’t have worried. She’d already blinked them back.
“If you’re marked up like Buck was, you should be proud of it. You bear the mark of a good man.”
Nicole let off a tiny heart-wrenching gasp as she pressed her palm to her cheek—the one with the birthmark. “He didn’t cover his birthmark up?”
“I don’t know for sure. My guess is no. He wouldn’t have a reason to. There was a picture of him at the funeral on display by his casket. He wore a fur hat and a sweater, but nothing to cover up his neck, and no one at the funeral mentioned it. Everyone was used to it. He was smiling in the picture, holding a line of fish at his side.”
“What did it look like? His mark?”
“Have you not seen a picture of him?”
She shook her head. “Not yet.”
Link leaned forward and brushed the soft skin just under her ear, then traced down her jaw, down the side of her neck, and just barely beneath the collar of her red sweater. “Like that,” he whispered.
Nicole leaned into his palm, and he couldn’t help himself. He cupped her cheek and brushed the pad of his thumb over the color there. So fucking beautiful. Even more so now that he knew part of her story. He’d been mistaken when he’d thought her a fragile human.
She’d come out here alone, to a harsh place she’d never known, just to connect with a part of her that had been hidden away. She bore the blisters on her hands, not of a weak woman, but of a woman who had hurt herself chopping wood, then gone back out time and time again and continued to work. Continued to persevere.
As she held his gaze and rubbed her cheek against his hand, it happened.
Silence.
Beautiful silence in his mind that hadn’t been there in so long. She’d given him a gift of which she would never know the value. For a minute, she’d calmed Wolf and helped Link feel like a normal man. Like he was worthy of touching her.
She couldn’t ever know what he was or about all the horrible things he’d done in the name of McCall, but here, for a second, he could pretend he was a good man like her father had been.
Desperate to cling to the quiet in his head, he leaned over the table and stopped an inch from her lips, hesitating in case this was too much for her. Nicole leaned into him, closing the space between them. Her mouth was so soft as it pressed against his, and as she gently sucked his bottom lip, the silence deepened. Link pushed his tongue gently past her lips to taste her. A kiss had never felt like this before. Like everything. Like the moment that changed his life. He was falling, and there was no stopping it now. No telling Wolf to move on, no telling himself to let her go. She was his. Ours.
He gripped the back of her neck gently and pulled her closer as he dipped his tongue against hers again, and then she did something that shot electricity through his middle. She let off this tiny, happy sound. He’d done that. Easing back, he rested his forehead on hers, then pecked her once more.
She had a distracted smile, and her eyes were hazy when she opened them. “Wow,” she whispered. Slowly, she reached up and pulled at his sunglasses.
Link froze, terrified she would see him, terrified she wouldn’t.
No! She’ll run.
Wolf was back, and he was right. He’d lost control of his eye color months ago, and if she saw the bright silver there, she would know he wasn’t right. That he wasn’t natural. Link gripped her wrist and stood the second she let his glasses go.
“I’m sorry,” Link growled out in the voice of his monster. He would have to leave now, but Wolf would punish him. He’d take his body for leaving her touch too early.
Wolf didn’t understand he was doing this for the good of them both. If she saw his face and how feral he looked, she would never touch them again. And right now, the thought of never having another moment of silence, punched him in the stomach and stole his breath away.
He strode out of the coffee shop and forced himself not to look back. He couldn’t witness the disappointment on her face through the window, so he climbed in his Bronco and skidded backward out of the parking space, then blasted down the main drag.
Why did you do that? Why did you leave her?
“Because she’ll forgive me for escaping much easier than she would forgive you for existing.”
Chapter Six