I’d been walking a tightrope for days, with each step getting closer and closer to falling.
It wasn’t just that Lucas was touching me now at almost every opportunity. The few times I woke up in time to bid him goodbye before he left for a day of tending to animals, he pulled me into a long hug. If he finished work early enough, he visited me at Island Books despite Hamish’s ire and pressed his shoulder into mine as I totted up the day’s takings. He tangled our ankles together each night as we ate dinner at the small table and he sat close on the sofa as we worked through my puzzle collection.
I couldn’t be perilously close to toppling into feeling anything other than friendship for Lucas because he touched me; everyone did that now. Louisa had made us late to work twice this week after she didn’t want to let me go, Errol popped into the shop between sailings to bury me in his arms, Bonnie grumbled into my scarf about how terrible it was to be mayor, and Callum visited the village most days to tuck me under his arm.
None of their touches had the same effect that Lucas’s did.
Because Lucas was also kind. And patient. And accepting. And gentle. And so very beautiful.
He seemed to delight in everything about me. No matter what combination of jumper and scarf I wore, he said it was the perfect match. He liked the blush that rose so easily to my cheeks and thought I’d made the right decision coming to work at Island Books. He liked my meals, loved my puzzles, fawned over my cat.
If I wasn’t a werewolf, it would have been all too easy to get the wrong impression, to assume his constant affection translated into attraction.
But I was a werewolf. Which was why allowing myself to fall for him would be a terrible idea.
It wasn’t conscious, my scenting Lucas, but at no point when his arm was slung around my shoulders or when my nose pressed into his neck or when his fingers laced with mine did his scent deviate from warm and solid and unrelentingly platonic.
He looked at me and never saw anything more than a friend.
I told myself that this is what I’d wanted. I’d invited Aster’s straight bestie to live with me so that I could befriend him and ease the loneliness I’d become too used to lugging around.
I hadn’t expected Lucas to be so wonderful though, so awkwardly kind and unthoughtfully gentle.
He’d left the cottage early this morning. It was Sunday, his day off from his various vet duties, and Aster had demanded Lucas spend the day with him examining flowers around the island. Lucas told me, a tight grimace on his face, that Aster was also planning to share about every one of his and Callum’s sexual escapades since he’d come back to the island.
I’d listened to Lucas clatter around the kitchen while I’d lazed in bed, the cottage quiet as his pen worked across paper. I couldn’t decide which I liked more, the mornings when Lucaspulled me into a sleepy hug before he left or those when I stumbled downstairs to another of his notes.
I hadn’t risen to say goodbye. Something in me felt raw, too likely to crack open if I pressed into his earthy warmth and was battered by more of his calm regard.
I’d wanted his friendship, had sought it desperately, but it was becoming harder and harder to deny that I craved more.
Romantic relationships had been one of my many failings before I came to the island. A lot of people wanted me, something I’d been able to figure out even before my nose became a super-powered attraction detecting machine, but it was only for my looks. The sex had been good, but there was nothing else to it. None of my partners wanted to chat about their favourite books. I didn’t attempt to interest them in a puzzle.
I hadn’t even had to try to make space for Lucas in my life. He fitted right in. Although I hadn’t had any luck with the people I’d tried to connect with romantically in the past, I thought I might have had a fighting chance with Lucas.
If he ever looked at me and saw anything other than a friend.
I pressed back into my mattress, blankets whispering over my bare skin. Another part of the reason I’d let Lucas leave without a face-to-face goodbye was that the arousal that had been shimmering in me since the night before hadn’t abated. As soon as he closed the back door, I’d shucked out of my pyjamas and snuggled naked under my blankets.
Lucas had no idea what his words and actions did to me. He was clueless. Yet that didn’t stop me yearning for him.
Yesterday evening, we’d finished a puzzle of a vase of flowers together. I’d leant forward to place the puzzle board on the coffee table and when I’d sat back, Lucas had slumped sideways. His head rested on my lap, his hands curling under my thigh.
He’d been halfway through a story about his and Aster’s attempts to learn to drive and hadn’t skipped a word as he snuggled his face further into my lap. It seemed natural – if I ignored all the other places it could go – for one of my hands to rest on Lucas’s hair.
He’d made a soft sound, almost like a purr, as my fingers threaded through the thick strands.
Lucas’s hair wasn’t like mine. It was darker, wilder. Where my hair fell across my forehead in delicate waves and curls, his was a mass of dark tangles.
I didn’t expect it to be soft. My fingertips passed across his scalp, unhindered by knots. Apparently, Lucas’s hair only looked matted. The opposite of Kat, who at first glance seemed domesticated but was, on closer inspection, a vicious beast.
Once I started playing with Lucas’s hair, I didn’t want to stop. If the encouraging murmurs he made between tales of Aster’s driving escapades were anything to go by, neither did he. We stayed up later than we would usually, my fingers drifting endlessly through his untamed mane.
I wasn’t Lucas’s person, not romantically, but he seemed to like me for now. He saw me in a way no one else did.
I couldn’t deny it to myself any more, not after I’d spent hours with his head in my lap and my heart thumping loud. I wanted to be his person in every way. I wanted it badly.
If I was honest, I’d leapt off the tightrope as soon as he stepped from the boat and mistook me for Callum.
