“I’m done,” he announced, dropping the paintbrush. “Come back down.”
“Truce?”
“Truce,” he confirmed.
Leaning forward, I dropped my own paintbrush over the ledge. It landed with a smack in the hard-packed dirt.
Climbing to my feet, I grimaced. “I’m not cleaning those.”
“I’ll buy new ones,” he replied. “Wait, don’t?—”
But I was already falling through the air. My feet hit the dirt, and I dug my toes in, knees bent to soften the landing, and my arms outstretched in case I’d overcompensated on the trajectory. It hadn’t happened since I was fourteen, but there was always a risk, and I didn’t feel like getting a face full of dirt.
Chapter 8
Daniel
My heart was in my throat as my mate jumped barefoot off the loft in the barn, her tangled hair flowing like a ribbon behind her. The moment her feet touched the ground, I moved forward on instinct, pulling her against me.
She knew what she was doing—she’d made that clear by the way she’d easily used the different pieces of furniture like a staircase—but it only took one small miscalculation to land wrong when jumping off something so high. Humans were so fucking fragile.
“You’re barefoot,” I reminded her, breathing in the scent of her hair.
“You’re wearing a gray shirt,” she replied.
I pulled back to look at her.
“I thought we were stating the obvious. You’ve got a beard. My shirt is the color of baby poop. You?—”
“Very funny,” I shot back as she pulled away.
“I’ve been running barefoot over this property since I could walk,” she informed me, leading me out of the barn. “We should clean up the paint.”
“I’ll grab the brushes.” Spinning on my heel, I walked back and grabbed the filthy brushes off the dirt floor. I’d wash them so we wouldn’t have to throw them away.
When I made my way back to her, she grabbed my empty hand like she’d done it a million times before and towed me toward the front of the house. I couldn’t figure Rosemary Whitlock out.
Half the time, I felt her glaring at me like she was going to stab me, and half the time she treated me like we were an old mated couple. She’d leaned into the mating heat like it was the most natural thing in the world, nothing to be nervous about, but she’d also put up some kind of wall between us. It was like she was giving the appearance of letting me in, but only to a point.
I looked down at her bare toes.
“Anything could be on the ground out here,” I chastised her. “Especially in the barn.”
Rosemary just shrugged. “I’m up to date on my tetanus vaccine. Stepping on something sharp isn’t going to kill me.”
“Maybe not, but it’ll hurt like hell.”
I couldn’t read her expression as she glanced at me.
“My brother lost one of his toes by dropping an axe on it,” I told her, struggling to push past whatever the weird look was.
“Oh,” she breathed, her eyes widening. “Gnarly.”
“It wasn’t pretty.”
“And Vampires don’t regrow shit,” she pointed out, like I was unaware of that fact.
“Neither do humans.”
