I bite down on his shoulder to keep from crying out. My grip tightens on his cock and I stroke him through it, and a few strokes in he comes with me: a shudder that rolls from his shoulders into his hips, his free hand fisting in the small of my back, the hot pulse of him against my palm. He buries his face in the curve of my neck.The purr breaks open into something ragged, something I feel in my collarbones and the roots of my teeth.
We breathe.
My cheek against his shoulder. His forehead against my neck. The fire pops. The wind hits the north wall of the cabin and the logs shift under the snow.
He lifts his head. His eyes are open. Wet, rimmed red, the firelight catching in them. He looks at me like I'm a miracle he wasn't supposed to be allowed.
"Sha'li." Barely a whisper. The word dragged from a place so far down in him it doesn't sound like language. Like a man surfacing from a long way under water and remembering how to use his mouth.
My throat closes.
"I'm here." I cradle his face in both my palms. My thumbs find the wet at the corners of his eyes. "I'm right here, Garrett."
He cries.
Not sobbing. Silent tears, the kind that fall without permission. They track down his cheeks into the dark fur along his jaw, and his shoulders shake.
I wrap my arms around as much of him as I can reach. I pull his head to my chest. I hold him. I don't shush him. I don't tell him it's all right. I let him feel what it is to be held by a woman who is not afraid of what he is and is not trying to make him smaller to survive it.
His arms come around me. Careful. His palm at the back of my skull, cupping it like a thing he might break, andthe purr settles into something quieter now, barely there, a hum I wouldn't hear if my ear weren't pressed to his chest.
My cheek is wet against his hair.
He falls asleep against me. I stay still until his breathing evens out, his arms heavy around my waist, the purr fading to nothing.
Then I reach for my phone on the side table. The screen lights up the dark. I open my email, scroll past three unread messages from Mami, and find the one from the Houston recruiter I flagged last week. I read it twice. I don't reply. I set the phone face-down on the floor and press my cheek back against his hair.
I hold him tighter.
I don't pull away.
The fire burns down. The storm works at the north wall of the cabin and the snow stacks against the boards, and on the floor by the hearth I hold a seven-foot minotaur to my chest and I already know I'm in too deep to come back out.
Chapter 6
Garrett
She sleeps with her face against my chest, one arm thrown across me, her body draped over mine like a blanket that doesn't cover enough.
I haven't moved in four hours. My left arm went numb two hours ago. I don't care. I'd cut the arm off before I'd wake her.
The fire has burned down to a red glow behind the grate. Her breath hits the fur above my chest in a slow pulse I've been counting since the logs stopped popping. Her hair is everywhere. On my arm, my chest, caught in the fur along my collarbone. Every strand a point of warmth against my skin. No one has held me in the dark before. Not like this. In the pits they hosed us down after the fights, checked our wounds, ran their hands over the damage to assess what it would take to get us ring-ready again. I don't have a reference for this. Her face against my chest because she wants it there.
She's going to wake up. She's going to be kind about it. She felt sorry for me, and by the time Jess pulls into the clearing she'll have sorted last night into a box markedmistake.She'll find the right words. She's good at words.
She stirs, making a sound I have no name for, my arm tightens around her before I can stop it.
I ease her off me inch by inch. She mumbles, rolls into the warm shape I leave behind and pulls the quilt up to her chin. I stand over her in the grey dawn and the purr rises in my chest uninvited.
I make breakfast.
Eggs. Bacon. Bread in the iron. Coffee too strong, the way she likes it, grounds in the bottom of the cup. My hands aren't as steady as I want them to be. A man whose hands have held a skull together while a ring doctor stitched the scalp has no business shaking over scrambled eggs.
I set her plate at the end of the table. I stand at the counter with my own mug and I don't sit.
She wakes while I'm at the stove. I hear the quilt shift, the soft sound of her sitting up, and when I turn she's looking at me from the couch with the blanket pulled to her chin and wearing a smile on her face that I don't deserve. She doesn't look like a woman building a kind rejection. She looks like a woman who slept well.
She wraps the quilt around her shoulders and pads barefoot to the bathroom. The door clicks shut and then I hear the water run.
