“I pulled on the rope connectingus.”
My navel still pulsated. “Can you teach me how to do it?” Not that I’d have much use for the ability once I wasgone. . .
“You have to focus your mind on that rope. Visualize it. For me it’s blue and shiny. Once you canseeit, you contract your stomach, and it reels it in. That’s how I do it, anyway. Maybe for you it’sdifferent.”
“Can Itry?”
Henodded.
My brow puckered as I concentrated. I saw the rope. It wasn’t blue but it was shiny. I wrapped my mind around it and sucked in my stomach. I felt a tightening, but August’s body didn’t even budge aninch.
“I’m bigger and heavier thanyou.”
I tried again. Failed again. “Can you feel it atleast?”
“Yes.” He smiled. “Ittickles.”
“You can haul my body over several feet, but when I do it, it tickles? Damn. That’sunfair.”
He turned up the force of his smile but winced when it tugged on the flesh I’d clawed. I reached out and ran my thumb over the cut, and his breathcaught.
“Does it sting?” Iasked.
“I’m fine, Ness.” He dragged my hand away from hisface.
Our heads were so close I could see the shape of each one of his freckles. I remembered trying to map out constellations on his skin when I was a kid. I remembered succeeding, although I didn’t remember the names of the ones I’dfound.
“What are you thinking about?” His voice was a gravellywhisper.
“I was trying to remember which constellations I’d matched to yourfreckles.”
“Cassiopeia. You were convinced this”—he took the index finger of the hand he was still holding, set the tip of it on his injured cheek, and dragged it down, then straight, then down again, and finally up—“wasCassiopeia.”
His warm breaths hit my nose, and yet it was my stomach that felt warmer, not my face. I dropped my eyes to his mouth, wondering what it would feel like to kiss him. His breathing hitched as though he could read my train of thoughts, as though he could sense it through our link. Perhaps hecould.
I slid the finger he still gripped out of his hold and glided the tip across the hard plane of his cheek, over the dark stubble of his jaw, down the side of his strong neck. I watched my index’s path as I traced the edge of his body, as my finger rounded his broad shoulder and dipped along his carved bicep. When my finger met bare skin, his fleshpebbled.
I kept waiting for him to put a stop to my exploration. I kept waiting for him to ask me what had gotten into me, but he stayed silent, allowing me access to his sinful form. I outlined the sharp edge of his elbow, then drew a straight line down the inside of his forearm, where the skin was the softest, stopping when I reached the center of hispalm.
Only then did I dare look up into those mossy eyes that had enchanted me my entire childhood. His pupils pulsed, devoured his irises. I inched closer to him until my lips were aligned with the trail of dried blood on his cheek. I pressed my mouth to his skin and darted my tongue out to lick away the coppery smear. Never in a million years would I have imagined licking August’s face. Perhaps in fur, but not in skin. In fur, the act would’ve been deemed playful, affectionate. In skin, it wasintimate.
August, who’d lain perfectly still, finally stirred to life. The hand I was still touching clamped over mine, cocooning my fingers, and his other hand snaked underneath my head and threaded through my hair. Gently, he tugged on it to unfasten my mouth from hischeek.
“Ness . . . ” My name felt like a gust of night wind, the sort that made fir needles shiver and sway. “If you kiss me, then you can’t leave,” hemurmured.
It took me a moment to make sense of his words. “Whynot?”
“Because you can’t feed a starving man, then take away his food.” If his voice hadn’t been so low and raucous, I might’ve poked fun at him for that metaphor, but his timbre told me he wasserious.
“You’ll find better food,” I finally said, heart fluttering the gray cotton that had coiled around mytorso.
The fingers cupping the back of my head relaxed, slid to the nape of my neck, then back up. “Howlong?”
I thought he was asking me how long I was planning on staying, and I said until themorning.
“No, Ness. How long have you felt this way aboutme?”
Oh.
