His fairy.
And if he does that, calls me by the name he’s given me, how can I ever leave?
How can I ever stop my heart from flip-flopping in my chest when I crane my neck to look up at him, at his tall form?
I shake my head. “No.”
“What part ofyou should go nowdon’t you understand? I’m –”
“I brought first aid. For your injuries.” I speak over him.
“I don’t need your fucking first aid.”
I knew he’d say that.
So I say something else that I wanted to say. “I’m sorry.”
“What?”
“For what Ledger said.” I take a step closer to him, to his heat, to his violently breathing chest. “He provoked you and he shouldn’t have done that. You were leaving.”
He stares down at me for a moment. “Yeah well, he wasn’t lying, was he?”
I raise my hand to touch his jaw where he was pressing his now discarded hoodie. But he grabs my wrist to stop me. “And I’m sorry about your dad. I don’t know the why or the how or any of that stuff. But Tempest shared a little bit of it with me and –”
“Tempest should keep her mouth shut,” he says with clenched teeth and his thumb mashing into my pulse.
Even so, I’m not deterred. “I-I’m here though.”
“You’re here for what?”
“If you ever want to talk about it.”
Reed goes silent for a second as if he can’t believe I said that. As if it hasn’t occurred to him thatanybodywould say that. “You want me to talk about it.”
“Yes.” I throw him a reassuring nod. “Talking helps.”
Again, he goes silent for a few seconds before he replies, “Yeah, no. Talking isn’t what I had in mind. So, you should really call yourself a cab and leave.”
He lets go of my wrist then, ready to dismiss me.
But he doesn’t know that with nothing stopping me, I have free rein.
I have free rein to get even closer to him, free rein to put my hand on his body.
His chest.
Smooth and muscled and hard under his cotton t-shirt. Radiating heat.
As soon as I touch him though, he stops breathing. His chest ceases all motion and he lowers his eyes to look at my hand on his body.
“What is it then?” I whisper and he looks up, his wolf eyes flashing. “What’s on your mind?”
The anger in him, the agitation, is palpable and when he resumes breathing, he becomes even scarier somehow.
It’s like touching a wild animal, petting his hard, lethal body.
But I’m not afraid.
