“I need my hands free.”
For a long moment, he just stares at me,intome.
My throat bobs.
A chill prickles along my flesh, pebbled, before a shudder strikes down my spine.
“Belt.”
That is his answer.
His lips twitch, almost curling around that one, coldly uttered word.
It takes my mind a moment to chug through the fog—and understand.
First, he wants my belt.
The colour drains out of my face.
He knows.
He knows what the radio is.
He must.
The CB is all I have there, just fastened to my belt, hanging with the weight of a lump of metal and plastic, pulling it down at the side.
I cut my gaze down to it, shimmering in the torchlight, and my mouth twists before I fumble with the buckle.
I don’t let it fall to the forest floor. It’s the most valuable thing I own. I won’t risk it, so I hand it to him, gentle.
My pinned hands outstretched, the black chunk of radio dangles from a grotty old suede belt.
His hand snatches out like a blur of mist.
The weight vanishes from my fingers.
He isn’t so careful with the radio.
He releases it—and it thuds to the frosty foliage at his boots.
My jaw tenses.
I force back the sudden ugly sensation rising in me—a feeling I’m all too familiar with—and I hold out my wrists.
The warrior takes a single step towards me.
That cold burn of his eyes is scraping over my face, a stare with intention, afuck around find outmessage I have no problem translating.
I hide from it.
My gaze drops to the workings of his fingers on the tether, swift and practiced, until the rope is loosened… and the relief that rushes over the flesh of my wrists is almost painful.
I draw my hands back to my midsection and it’s a sudden scramble of my fingers trying to grip both of my wrists at one, to add pressure to the sudden heat rushing through them.
The sleeves of my jacket slip back into place, fast to conceal the damage that the tether has done to my skin. But I can feel it alright. Hot and scraped and burning and thrumming.
I’m cringed against it, the moments ticking by under his close stare, and I just hold my hands to my middle.
