“Now tell me what happened to your clothes.”
“Tell me how you healed yourself.”
“Katya,” he warns.
“Aemon,” I throw right back at him, hands on hips for added effect.
“I told you. I don’t know. It’s just something I figured out when I was a kid. When I shift, it’s like my bones, skin, hair, whatever are physically changing, and I can control that change down to the tiniest detail. So, I focus on shifting my skin back together and it heals.” He throws his legs over the edge of the rock and stands, flashing me his backside as he reaches for the pants left on a nearby rock.
I let out a tiny squeak and whirl around. It flexed. Oh, my gods. Why is that so sexy? “It sounds like you understand how it works to me,” I say, trying to sound flippant, but the words come out all breathy instead.
I hear some scraping, then a soft chuckle. “You can turn around now.”
He’s laughing at me. I have half a mind to go over there and smack him atop the head. “Are you decent?”
“Define decent?”
I roll my eyes. “I’m sure you think you’re hilarious, but I’m not turning around until you promise me you have pants on.”
“I have pants on.”
Hesitantly, I turn back around. He does indeed have pants on, but they hang so low I can see his pubic hair peeking out from under the waistband. From the stupid grin on his face, he is fully aware of what he’s doing too. Fine. Two can play this game. “Laugh all you want, but I’d bet you’d feel differently if I was the one stripped naked in front of you.”
I swear that grin gets bigger. “Please, be my guest. It’s not like that dress is concealing much, anyway.”
My skin heats in embarrassment, which means I’m probably all red. Gods dammit, why can’t I ever get the upper hand with this man? I curl my hands into fists and give him the stink eye. “So, if I, say, knock all your teeth down your throat, can you grow those back?”
“You can try, but you’re more likely to break your thumb than do anything to me.”
I lift and rotate my right fist, inspecting it. My thumb is safely tucked under my fingers. “What are you talking about?”
That smug smile still firmly plastered on his face, Aemon crosses to me and takes my hand. He gently opens my fist and moves my thumb to the outside, then closes it again. “If you punch someone with your thumb tucked in like that, it’ll most likely break. You want your thumb on the outside of your fist, like this.” He lifts my hand to show it to me. His thumb absently brushes back andforth across my knuckles, and electricity sizzles between our skin. I snatch my hand away before he can get me any more discombobulated than I already am.
But the ghost of his touch lingers. I stretch and wiggle my fingers, trying to dispel the sensation, but it isn’t going away. “Noted.” I turn for the camp, but he stops me with a hand to my arm.
“You never told me what happened to your clothes or your wrist,” he says, nodding to my bandaged forearm.
I glance at him over my shoulder. “They’re blood fae. What do you think they did?”
His lips tighten, but he doesn’t make me elaborate, thank the gods. I still haven’t fully processed everything that just happened and I’m not going to do it with him. “They didn’t…” He lets the words hang there, like he’s afraid if he says what he’s thinking, it’ll make it real.
“No,” I say, and I’m honestly not sure whether that’s the truth or a lie. Raiden didn’t actually touch me anywhere except my arm but being forced to orgasm like that it front of him certainly felt like a violation. “No,” I repeat, but whether it’s for my benefit or Aemon’s, I can’t say. Then I shrug my arm free and head back into camp.
34
“Lean on me,” Katya says, tugging on my shoulder.
“If I lean any more of my weight on you, I’m going to knock you over.”
She rolls her eyes. “Well, unless you want everyone here to know about your magical-shifter healing powers, then you need to make it look somewhat believable.”
“It is believable.” I gesture to my bandaged torso. Katya did a truly horrific job wrapping Jael’s makeshift bandages around my chest and back, but she did think to wipe up the blood with them first, so it looks like I’m still bleeding into them. “People see what they expect to see, and nobody here expects me to heal myself.”
“No, but anyone who saw your back would be questioning your ability to walk right now. People don’t just get up and walk away from injuries like that."
“Fine.” I shift almost all my weight to her and her knees buckle.
She barely keeps her feet under her, while also somehow managing to deliver an elbow to my ribs. “Stop that.”
