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Way too close. I found my back bumping into the house wall as I naturally widened the space between us. “Ummm. Wound? Not what you’re thinking.”
“What am I thinking? You know these fights make me want to fuck.”
“Man. Does not meanIwant to.” I tended to dig in my heels when guys tried to push. “Take your shirt off, though, and that doesn’t mean you know what. I saw blood on it.”
For a second I wondered how far Val would go. We were in the middle of nowhere, and he wasn’t exactly normal...and neither was I. My eyes didn’t want to shut as I faced him off.
This was wrong, so wrong.
But he only turned around and pulled off his shirt, over his head. Up close, I could see the rip had been neat as if sliced by a sharp claw, and fully six inches long.
Bare skin and muscles. My throat tightened. The ripple as his shoulders settled...quite the view.
Okay, a little turned on. I huffed out a restrained breath. Getting turned on did not equal must-have-sex. “You do have a cut.”
Blood had dried in a wide circle where the shirt had stuck to his skin. He’d started it bleeding again, yet healing had already commenced. The cut over his spine was only deep at the very top. Was that bone? Couldn’t be.
“Dayum, Val. How can you not feel this?” I reached out but didn’t dare to touch. “This should be seen by a doctor.”
“Feels like a scratch.”
Then he twisted as if to see what I was doing. Momentarily the cut opened. That was bone down deep—the red-and-black bone of his vertebrae, and it seethed with a fire I’d seen before, in the nightmare stitching.
My stomach rolled as my senses spun.
White.
Bone should be white.
CHAPTER21
Zara
My fingers shookas I tried to jam the keys into the ignition. I’d sent him inside for water. I’d sent him inside so I could run.
Val shouldnotbe walking. How?
I squeezed shut my eyes, just for a second, as if resetting my vision would reset my world. Memories cascaded.
I, the Cucitrice, was kneeling over Val, knife raised to stab him. No, not him, not Val.
The Nightmare King.
His hand snapped onto me, the Cucitrice’s arm, to stop her/me.
I flinched, back hitting against the car seat as the ghost of his grip rekindled a flashback of pain and terror. Images started downloading, random scenes of destruction—bodies broken, bodies bleeding, bodies barely breathing. The living were the worst, unresponsive dolls that used to be his playthings.
All this time, centuries, the Cucitrice had chased him. A quest to stop the flood of evil the rift had opened onto the world.
And then she’d lost him.
F. U. C. K.
Val.
My stomach squeezed out its burning acid as I thought his name. Val and me were not the same—all I had was the Cucitrice’s memories, but Val...
I turned as he came back out of the house with the water, his gaze meeting mine through the car’s side window.
