Read Healed: True Mates Book 3 (Wolf Shifter) (A Craggstone Paranormal Romance) for Free Online Page A

eyes, and they had roamed all over his chest, drinking in the sight of the tightly packed muscle stretched over his chest, the broad arch of his shoulders, and the rippled effect of his abs as they bunched and flexed with every movement. My wolf was pawing inside of me, wanting to reach out and touch.
    I desperately seized on something that had been bothering me ever since he had shown me his back.
    “What is that across your shoulders?”
    “It’s nothing.”
    “It must mean something. Fancy writing like that, it looks like a piece of art…” I shuffled around him, lightly tracing the intricate calligraphy with a finger.
    Tarq froze under my touch, his chest ceasing to rise and fall.
    My finger froze on a downward stroke.
    “It’s just some Latin. A phrase, or something.”
    I continued outlining the letters, watching how they shifted and twitched with every small movement he made. “You must know what it means, or you wouldn’t have got it.”
    “Maybe one day I’ll tell you,” he said abruptly, jumping to his feet. I think I’d better shift now, fast track the healing. I need to be in top form for when he tries again.”
    “You think he will?” The thought distracted me, and it was only when I heard the sound of denim sliding against skin that I realized what had just happened.
    Tarq was naked. And standing right in front of me.
     
     
    ***
    Amanda
    I didn’t know where to look. I’d seen Tarq naked before, like I’d seen most of the pack stripped down, ready to shift. But this time felt different. Whether it was the intimacy of the room, or the fact that I knew Tarq believed us to be mates…I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I couldn’t tear my gaze away from his toned physique, my eyes traveling down his chest, past his rippling six pack, and coming to a shuddering halt at his groin.
    “Like what you see, babe?” Outwardly, he sounded amused, but the hoarseness in his voice betrayed him.
    I gulped, then closed my eyes, seeing as they were refusing to obey my command and look away. But it was as if the image had burned into me, the long length of him, thick and promising.
    “I don’t see anything,” I tried to snap, but it came out a croaking whisper.
    My body was betraying me, reacting to him on the most primal level, my breasts tightening, my pussy throbbing with need. Maybe it was because it had been so long since I’d been with a man. I wracked my brain, trying to remember the last time. Nobody knew that James and I hadn’t slept together, he’d claimed old fashioned values, insisting on courting until mating. I think, deep down, he had known it wasn’t right between us. Before James…I drew a blank. Which might explain things.
    Not for the first time, I wished that Tarq wasn’t so insistent on making this between us into something big, something important. That he’d ruined any possibility of a fling.
    No matter what he said, or tried to prove, it was just physical attraction between us. It had to be. Nothing else. My hand crept up and fingered the smooth metal of the locket that hung heavy between my breasts.
    I focused on picturing the photo trapped inside, one old and faded with time. This time, the image wavered, blurry and indistinct, but it was still enough to stop me.
    Lent me the strength to stop my traitorous body from throwing itself at the man in front of me.
     
     
    ***
    Tarq
    She crouched on the floor in front of me, her eyes squeezed tight, a frown wrinkling her brow and puckering her lips.
    I hadn’t been thinking when I’d stripped. After all, it was natural to be naked around other shifters. All right, maybe I’d been a little aware of what I was doing, I admitted to myself. But the way she had looked at me had been worth it. Like she wanted to eat me alive, something I would give anything for to actually happen.
    Now, she was lost in thought, her fingers playing with what looked to be an old locket nestled between her breasts.
    Man, what I would give to be that