“Gods,” I whisper, the panic shooting straight from my spine to my teeth. “What are you?—?”
He smiles, and it’s the most honest smile I’ve ever seen on anyone. “You were making noises,” he says. “I thought you were dying.”
“I must have been dreaming,” I say, though I’m not entirely sure what I was doing. “I’m fine.”
He cocks his head. “You want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Is it about your grandparents hurting you again?”
“No.” Even though I hate it when I dream about them.
He shrugs and lies down beside me, so close I feel the heat rolling off his skin. His blanket is low on his body, and the sight of his naked shoulder and chest is so distracting I have to look away. “Maybe it’s not safe to sleep alone,” he murmurs. “That’s why wolves have packs.”
I consider telling him to go away, that I don’t need him, but I don’t have the energy. Instead, I stare at the black shape of the hedge and listen to the sound of his breathing. For a while, it’s a competition of who can out-breathe the other, who can pretend the hardest that nothing happened. We’re pretending we’re sleeping and not thinking about the other pressed against us naked. Or at least that’s what I imagine we’re doing.
“You know,” he says, after a long time, “you could have said yes.”
My whole body goes rigid. “Said yes to what?”
He props his head up with one hand. “To me. To fucking. To anything you want.”
He says it so matter-of-factly that I almost laugh.
“That’s not how it works,” I say. “I barely know you.”
“I know you,” he says, with a conviction that terrifies me. “I knew you the second I saw you. You want me as bad as I want you.”
He’s right, and he knows it.
I pull the blanket tighter, wrapping it around my shoulders like armor. “You’re not thinking with your head.”
He laughs, but it’s not mean. “Maybe. But you’re not scared of me. Not really. And you don’t hate me. You feel connected to me the same way I feel connected to you.”
That’s not true, but I’m too tired to fight him.
“I’m scared of all of you,” I whisper. “You’re monsters.”
“We’re not monsters. We’ve just made some mistakes when it comes to humans.”
“‘Mistakes’ is a strange way of saying you were sacrificing women just to get your powers back.”
“It’s more than that,” he says, but he doesn’t elaborate.
“Not to me.”
He closes the last inch between us, and suddenly his lips are at my ear. “It’ll drive me mad, sleeping next to you and pretending I don’t want you.”
I almost shudder. “Then don’t sleep next to me.”
There’s a grin in his voice. “That would be cruel in another way.”
“Then, it seems smarter for you to sleep somewhere else.”
He sighs. “Fine. I’ll keep my hands to myself. Promise.”
As if his promise is enough.
