It didn't matter that he was the best kisser she'd ever had the pleasure of kissing.
Elise finished her coffee and came around the other side of the bed. She reached out to grab Cole's arm and then paused for a moment. Nico was staring at her hand like snakes might grow out of her fingers.
"I'm going to check his pulse," she said. She wasn't sure why she was explaining. She'd checked Cole's pulse a hundred times already, and it was always steady. But the tension was riding Nico high today, and she didn't want to add to it.
But she didn't wait for his permission. It was one thing to warn him about what she was going to do. It was another thing entirely to pretend that he got to control who she touched.
Cole's skin was feverishly warm, but his pulse was strong. She hoped that her magic had done a little bit to help last night, but she didn't see any signs of it other than the possibility of the fever coming back.
Was that a good sign? She was out of her depth.
She wished she had another healer with her, someone she could bounce ideas off of and ask questions of. She wondered why this pack didn't have a healer of their own.
Healers were one of the core members of both covens and packs. If you were forming one, that was basically a necessity. A pack without a healer was destined for injury and death and so was a coven.
Some things about supernatural life were the same, no matter what species. But because she was pretending to be a human, she couldn't ask, because a human would have no reason to think anything was amiss. Aside from the obvious.
"Do you think we could get him some broth?" she asked. "Maybe Jello. I'm concerned he hasn't had any calories."
Nico nodded, but he didn't get up. The rest of the morning went on like that, and they barely exchanged two words.
If anything was telling her the kiss was a mistake, it was that.
She didn't like this awkward Nico, this careful Nico. She wanted to clamp her hands on his face and tell him to chill out, that she had been the one to kiss him, and that she wasn't about to go and cry to someone about it. They were adults. It happened.
But she didn't say anything. Later in the morning, Javi came in, and Nico took off with a terse goodbye after Javi told him there was something he needed to deal with. Way to be vague.
A human really would be questioning the whole situation here, and Elise figured maybe she should start saying something because a lack of curiosity might give her away just as much as too much curiosity.
Rather than sit by Cole's side, Javi slunk down in the loveseat opposite the bed and played a game on his phone for a while. He kept a close eye on her but didn't mention anything about the drama from the day before.
Meanwhile, Elise tried to ease some of the broth that Nico had summoned, and she ended up spilling more down the side of Cole's cheek than in his mouth.
"I know there's such thing as a messy eater, but I didn't know that you could be a messy feeder," Javi said with a grin.
Elise rolled her eyes. "Doyouwant to try this?" she asked.
He hopped up from the loveseat. "Put me in, coach. I'm ready to play."
That made her smile. Elise showed Javi just how she had been trying to gently get fluid into Cole.
"Okay, maybe this is harder than it looks," Javi admitted after several minutes.
Elise laughed. In another life, she might have liked this guy. He was serious but knew how to laugh. And though the situation was dire, he wasn't letting himself sink into despair or beating himself up about her so-called escape attempt.
A person needed humor at times like this.
They gave up on feeding Cole after they had got about half a cup of soup into him. Javi took his seat on the loveseat again, while Elise slouched in the chair next to Cole's bed.
"Is it cool working at the zoo?" Javi asked. "Do you get to play with the penguins?"
"I work for the wildlife rescue," Elise said and was thankful that wasn't a lie. "We just have our center attached to the zoo."
"Wildlife rescue." He sounded intrigued. "So, what? You heal Bambi or something?"
"Sometimes," she replied, though the center hadn't worked on many does while she was there.
"Do you have a favorite animal?" he asked. "I like otters," he offered.
