I nodded. I looked at Simon, who was leaning his cheek against Tessa's knee, looking utterly destroyed and completely at peace.
"Pack," I agreed.
Tessa made a small sound, snuggling deeper into the pile of our bodies. She didn't pull away. She didn't hide. She just breathed us in.
"Don't stop," she whispered to the darkness behind her eyelids. "Don't stop touching me."
"Never," I rumbled, settling my weight next to her, draping my heavy arm over her waist, locking her in.
EIGHTEEN
Simon
Daniel’s vow hung in the air, heavy and vibrating with that subterranean honesty that made him dangerous.Never.
Tessa slumped against him, her eyes fluttering shut, surrendering to the weight of the mountain. She looked wrecked. Beautifully, tragically wrecked. Her hair was a dark nimbus on the rug, her lips swollen from Daniel’s mouth, her skin flushed the color of a bruised peach.
But she wasn't done.
I could see it. I was the one who noticed the details, the twitch of her fingers against Daniel’s flannel shirt, the way her breath still hitched in a jagged, unsatisfied rhythm, the shallow flutter of her pulse at the base of her throat. Daniel had grounded her. Anders had stabilized her structure. But the fire was still eating her alive from the inside out.
She was hiding in the dark behind her eyelids. She was trying to retreat back into the void because the light was too much.
"No," I whispered. My voice sounded rough, scraping like charcoal on paper. "She’s retreating," I said, looking down at them. "She’s closing her eyes. She’s trying to disappear again."
Daniel looked at me, his hazel eyes dark with a drug-like haze of pheromones, but he nodded. He felt it too. The withdrawal into the shell.
"Get her up," I commanded.
It was the first time I had ever given an order to the pack. Usually, I was the one following Anders’ logistics or drafting behind Daniel’s social shielding. But this was visual. This was perception. This wasmydomain.
"Simon?" Tessa murmured, peeling one eye open. It was glassy, unfocused.
"Up," I said, reaching out for her.
I didn't offer a hand to hold. I grabbed her upper arms, my grip firm, my thumbs pressing into the soft muscle. I hauled her out of the warm, safe nest Daniel and Anders had built.
"Simon, wait," Anders warned from the floor, sitting up. "Her blood pressure?—"
"Is fine," I snapped. "Daniel grounded the wire. Now I need to turn on the light."
I pulled Tessa to her feet. She stumbled, her legs jelly, slick with the fluids of her own heat and our worship. She fell against me, and the impact knocked the wind out of me. Blackberries and brine crashed into burnt sugar and graphite.
"Open your eyes," I hissed into her ear, wrapping my arm around her waist to keep her vertical. "We aren't staying in the dark."
I started walking her toward the hallway.
"Where are we going?" she gasped, stumbling along with me, her hip bumping my thigh. "Simon, I can't. My legs..."
"Your legs are fine," I lied. "Walk."
I marched her past the living room, past the safe shadows of the firelight, and into the long, architectural corridor that connected the living space to the bedrooms.
In her bedroom there was a full length mirror and I walked her right up to it until her toes almost touched the base.
"Look," I ordered.
I stood behind her. I was lean and wiry where Daniel was massive, dark and messy where Anders was polished. I looked like a shadow clinging to her back. My hands, stained black with ink and charcoal, forever marked by my obsession with her, splayed across her pale stomach.
