Ella reached down and unlaced his boots. Once she managed to get them off, she stripped away his wet socks and flung them against the back window. His feet were cadaverous in color, so he wiggled his toes to get some blood down there. She put a pair of her dry socks on him, which tested the tight fabric and stretched it to the point of no return.
He chuckled at the pink and black stripes. “I feel like Santa’s elf. Wait till you see the hat I bought.”
She glanced up at him at the tail end of his remark. “What?”
Sometimes he forgot she was deaf and couldn’t tell when he was speaking to her or himself. Not everything said is meant to be heard.
After putting his boots back on, Simon pulled her close against him and touched her hand. “We need to leave before someone notices I left my keys in the ignition.”
She looked down at her dress and black stockings. “I dressed up for a party, not walking in snow.”
“You mean to say you didn’t heed your own advice?” He bit his lip to conceal a smile and rummaged through her bag in search of clothes for layering. “What all do you have in here?”
Her eyes went wide in horror, and she tried to wrench it away.
Simon lifted a sexy red nightie and blinked in surprise.
She snatched it from him and stuffed it back in the bag.
Normally that’s where he’d slip in a snarky comment, but Simon was gobsmacked. That wasn’t the kind of outfit a woman wore when she had sleep on her mind. They’d never been sexually intimate. He and Ella were cut from the same cloth, and she needed time before she was ready for that kind of closeness. But they’d shared light, which connected them on a level that was safe and equally satisfying, if not more. Had Ella planned on consummating something between them tonight? If so, that was going to be an awkward scene with Adam three feet away.
Deciding this was no time for discussing lingerie and sexcapades, he handed her a pair of stockings and a red sweater. “Put all this on. And these slipper socks.”
“I won’t be able to get my feet in my shoes,” she said, eyeing the thick material.
Simon lifted his hip and removed his dagger, slicing holes in the ends of the socks. “Wear them on your arms.” Then he stared at her beautiful ginger hair, which was braided back. Her ears were bright red, so he removed his jacket and stripped off his T-shirt, handing it to her. “Tie this around your head.”
She looked at him wide-eyed. “You’ll freeze!”
Simon chuckled. “This is child’s play compared to what I’ve seen, love. Do you have any bags in the trunk?”
She shook her head, so they exited the vehicle. Simon put his jacket back on and hooked the strap of her bag over his shoulder as he scanned the area to make sure they were alone. Before leaving, Simon memorized the cab driver’s vehicle number and decided he’d pay him a visit later on to thank him for abandoning a young woman and leaving her to the elements. He held her against him as they retraced his steps back to the car. The walk was easier this time since he’d carved a path, but the air was so thin and frosty that it hurt to breathe.
It was an arduous walk, and Ella began to struggle as the snow deepened. She was seven inches shorter than him, but she never once complained or asked to stop and rest.
A flutter of dim energy touched his skin more than once. At first he blew it off, but the third time it happened, it was accompanied by a sound he couldn’t discern. Simon gripped his dagger and whirled around with lightning speed, only to be confronted by… no one.
Except that in the distance, a shadow was fast approaching like ripples of water. Simon lowered his eyes and squinted.
A little brown-and-black scrapper of a dog was bounding through the snow. When he noticed Simon had turned to look at him, he stopped in his tracks. The puppy howled and then whimpered but kept his distance. It wasn’t a wolf, so it couldn’t have been a Shifter. Just some mutt.
Ella hadn’t seen it. She was bent over, adjusting the stockings on her legs.
Every so often during their walk, Simon glanced over his shoulder and noticed the animal still following them. Barely. It struggled whenever it reached a deep wall of snow.
Tenacious little bugger.
Finally he spotted his GTO up ahead. There was a light dusting of snow on the roof, but nothing that would stall their drive home. When he looked back again, the puppy was nowhere to be seen.
Simon tapped Ella on the shoulder. “Warm up the engine.”
She read his lips and then eagerly hopped in the car.
Simon stalked back the way they came, each step a regretful one.
“What the bloody hell is wrong with you? Since when did you grow a heart that bleeds for puppies? Next thing you know, you’ll be helping old ladies across the street and donating to the Girl Scouts.”
The least he could do was put the mutt in the backseat of someone’s car or on a porch step away from the snowy street. It was likely to get squashed beneath a snowplow. Simon’s boots noisily crunched on the snow, so he stopped for a moment when he thought he heard something.
