Crashing into the trembling void
Stretching my hand to you
Losing myself to frigid regret
Is this fragile love
A way
To say
Good-bye

His lips tasted cool and sharp, peppermint, winter, but his hands, soft on the back of my neck, promised long days and summer and forever.

I could have screamed, but I didn't. I could have fought, but I didn't. I just lay there and let it happen, wathcing the winter-white sky go gray above me. One wolf prodded his nose into my hand and agianst my cheek, casting a shadow along my face. His yellow eyes looked into mine as the other wolves moved me this way and that. I held onto those eyes for as long as I could. Yellow. And, up close, flecked brillantly with every shade of gold and hazel. I didn't want him to look away, and he didn't. I wanted to reach out and grab a hold of his ruff, but my hands stayed curled to my chest, my arms frozen to my body. I couldn't remember what it felt like to be warm. Then he was gone, without him, the other wolves closed in, too close, sufficating. Something seemed too flutter in my chest. There was no sun; there was no light. I was dying. I couldn't remember what the sky looked like. But I didn't die, I was lost in a sea of cold, and then I was reborn into a sea of warmth. I remember this: his yellow eyes. I thought I would never see them again.

When he kissed me, his lips soft and careful, it was all the thrill of our first kiss and all the practiced familiarity of the accumulated memory of all our kisses.

...He kissed me again, farther up my neck, and I pushed him back against the wall.

My mind searched for the logical thought, a rational life raft before I drowned in wanting to hiss him. I managed, "We've only met a few days ago. We don't know each other."

Luke released me. "How long does it take to know someone?"

I didn't know. "A month? A few months?" It sounded stupid to quantify it, especially when I didn't want to believe my own reasoning. But I couldn't just go kissing someone I knew nothing about-- it went against everything I'd ever been told. So why was it so hard to say no?

He took my fingers, playing with them in between his own. "I'll wait." He looked so good in the half-light under the trees, his light eyes nearly glowing against his shadowed skin. It was useless.

"I don't want you to." I whispered the words, and before I'd even finished saying them, his mouth was on mine and I was melting under his lips.

his yellow eyes gazed at me possessively -- I wondered if he realized that the way he looked at me was far more intimate than copping a feel could ever be.