She did not remember deciding to touch him. One moment her hand hovered over the black fur between his ears, and the next her fingers sank deep, and the wolf closed his eyes and shivered from nose to tail as though she had given him water after years in a desert.
“You can talk,” Ariana whispered. “In my head.”
Only to you. The voice was low, rough at the edges, unmistakably Kael’s. I did not know if it would work. I’m sorry. I’ll stop.
“Don’t you dare stop,” she said, and then heard herself and flushed to the roots of her hair. “I mean. Get out. Of my head. Please. And put on some pants.”
The wolf made a sound that, in anyone else, she would have called a laugh. When she finished a very careful study of the ceiling, Kael stood by the window, fully dressed and not quite meeting her gaze
