I gasped. “Your face!”
“My face is fine.”
“You’re bleeding.” I struggled to free my wrists from the vice of his hands. He let go, and I hovered my fingertips over the strip of skin I’d removed. I didn’t think touching the cut would staunch the reddened flow, so I wiggled out from underneath him, and then once I was sitting up, I tugged the hem of my T-shirt up to the wound.
“Shoot. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He shut his eye as I applied pressure.
The blood reminded me of my father’s. Except there had been so much more in that forest.
I shuddered and shut my lids.
Large, warm hands clamped my cold cheeks. “Look at me.”
I did.
“It was a nightmare. You’re awake now. You’re safe.”
I pulled my bottom lip into my mouth as I lowered the fabric to peer at the torn flesh. The hairline cut was already sealing. “I didn’t get you anywhere else, did I?”
He smiled. “Not for lack of trying.” He sat back on his heels, his smile flickering as his gaze dropped to the inches of bare skin between the band of my black underwear and the bunched-up cotton T-shirt I was still holding.
I released the hem, and it fluttered back down.
Palming his cropped hair, August turned to get off the bed, but I reached out and caught his elbow.
“Can you stay with me? Please?” I felt incredibly childish for asking. “Just until I fall back asleep?”
Several seconds slipped by before he gave a nod so heavy it almost made me regret asking. I lay back down and tucked my hands underneath the pillow.
“I’ll try not to attack you again,” I said, pressing my cheek into the creased fabric that was damp with tears or sweat-perhaps both.
I watched as August attempted to get comfortable beside me. He didn’t venture under the comforter. His long legs ensconced in a pair of gray sweats spanned the entire length of the mattress.
“Did I steal your side of the bed?” I asked as he threw one of his arms over his head.
He was sprawled on his back, his T-shirt riding up, revealing taut brown skin dusted with a trail of dark hair. I snapped my eyes closed, but the image was already seared behind my retinas and was doing strange things to my stomach… And lower. I squeezed my thighs and flipped over.
“I usually take up the entire thing,” he said.
I slid to the edge of the mattress to make myself smaller.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to give you more space.”
And myself.
I needed more space.
He grunted. I didn’t flick him; I didn’t dare touch him. But he touched me. He dragged me back toward the center of the bed. Except his hands were nowhere near my body.
“How did you do that?” I asked, part enthralled, part freaked out. Controlling another person’s movements without touching them resided in a realm of magic I just couldn’t wrap my mind around. And yes, I know… I could transform into a werewolf.
“I pulled on the rope connecting us.”
My navel still pulsated. “Can you teach me how to do it?” Not that I’d have much use for the ability once I was gone…
“You have to focus your mind on that rope. Visualize it. For me it’s blue and shiny. Once you can see it, you contract your stomach, and it reels it in. That’s how I do it, anyway. Maybe for you it’s different.”
“Can I try?”He nodded.
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 an inch.
“I’m bigger and heavier than you.”
I tried again. Failed again. “Can you feel it at least?”
“Yes.” He smiled. “It tickles.”
“You can haul my body over several feet, but when I do it, it tickles? Damn. That’s unfair.”
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 breath caught.
“Does it sting?” I asked.
“I’m fine, Ness.” He dragged my hand away from his face.
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’d found.
“What are you thinking about?” His voice was a gravelly whisper.
“I was trying to remember which constellations I’d matched to your freckles.”
“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-“was Cassiopeia.”
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 he could.
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 flesh pebbled.
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 his palm.
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 was intimate.
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 his cheek.
“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,” he murmured.