“How do you feel,” Tobias asked, quiet and calm in the face of her defensive posturing. Leaving that small yet impassible gap between them, his fingers ran a slow path down the length of her arm to her knuckles. Thumb brushing over the bony ridges, nothing more than the overwhelming aura of him invaded.
“Fine.” Response flat and lifeless, she felt anything but. Instead she readied herself for yet another battle, gritting her teeth until her jaw ached as she waited for his next move.
“All right.” He slid free of the tangle of their limbs and the bed sheets, ignoring the way Quinn’s head snapped to the side to stare in slack mouthed surprise. Scrubbing a rough hand through his hair as he went, Tobias padded into the bathroom. A nudge of his heel swung the door most of the way shut.
Quinn sat up, clutching the blankets to her throat as the sounds of him starting his day drifted through the cracked door. As the shower cranked on, she expected him to return and drag her from the warm cocoon that no longer felt comforting, but he didn’t appear.
Minutes passed with Quinn refusing to leave the imagined safety. Her hands worried at the rumpled bedding, fussing with a soft fold here, a fluffy valley made crisp and sharp as pale grays watched the cracked door.
As the distinct hum of his electric razor pierced through her resolve, Quinn slipped from the bed. A cautious thief on stolen time, she scurried on tiptoe to the closet with breath held. Half an ear listening for the man, Quinn rooted through drawers and hangers, grabbing the necessities to be gone long before he finished.
The bathroom door swung open, bright light cutting through the dimness to reveal Quinn bent over, wriggling her way into a pair of underwear. Deer in the headlights slow, her head turned to see his backlit form. Errant rivulets of water trailed down his chest and abdomen, soaking into the towel slung low on his hips that was a bare breath away from tumbling to the floor.
Heart lurching with something that Quinn refused to believe was anything but panic, she tipped her chin up to stare back at his bland gaze, each letting a single brow slide up to translate a wealth of emotions neither spoke of.
“It’s chilly out. You should wear something warmer,” Tobias said as he came out of the dense cloud of steam. Following the chilling tendrils of foggy air, he gestured at the room he’d vacated, spoiling Quinn’s plan to escape unnoticed. “All yours.”
Taking a breath to argue, Quinn realized she couldn’t. Not as if she could say that no, she didn’t want to brush her teeth or even pee without looking like a complete idiot. Tugging the light shirt over her head, body at least somewhat hidden, she edged past him. Wary of some trick, it wasn’t until the door was shut firm behind her that Quinn tried to relax a little.
An entire twenty minutes, give or take, where he hadn’t pawed at her, hadn’t grabbed her and made her go where he wanted.
She was confused, to say the least, but a glimmer of hope dared to rear its ugly head. That somehow this could change, be something different, grew from a faint spark to a steady flame, warming her through as she sidled up to the sink.
The unease dissipated like the condensation on the mirror while Quinn brushed her teeth. By the time she finished, there was a lightness to her step. Something she hadn’t known in so long that it felt alien and wondrous. Breezing her way back into the bedroom, she tripped over turbulent air as she came face to face with Tobias perched on the end of the bed. Head tipped to the side, he watched her. The hard lines of his features were neutral, and his gaze remained unfathomable. Everything about his body was unreadable.
Yet under the rapid time of her own thumping heartbeat was his.
It was not quiet or steady. It tripped and fumbled, racing along as his nose flared on a long inhale. Taking her scent in from feet away, it was somehow as intimate as if he spread her to sniff where she grew hot and slick.
Clearing her throat hard as heat seared the tips of her ears, Quinn fumbled with the clothing she’d left laid out on the bed. The skirt and socks twisted and tangled as she dragged them on, all the while a predator’s deep green gaze focused only on her.
“You need something warmer.” Disappearing into the closet, Tobias returned with a fluffy, delicate sweater dangling from two fingers.
“How do you know? Manage to sneak outside and take some weather readings, Mr. Meteorologist?”
Instead of taking the bait, Tobias waggled his cellphone at her with something close to a smirk tugging at his lips. He knew the reason for her ruffled feathers, why she lashed out with bared claws hidden behind the jagged snark. The deep green of his eyes was warming, becoming a conflagration that did little to settle Quinn’s frayed nerves.
There was no use trying to pick apart the threads of whose thoughts belonged where. A steadying breath filled her lungs with air saturated in his scent as Quinn eased the sweater from his fingers. Refusing to show anymore discomfort, she slid the decadent softness over her head and tugged the hem into place.
Marching past him, she waited for some show of force and dominance to restore order to his little world. The delicate touch of his fingers over the back of her hand were not expected. At all. It surprised her enough to stop as the rough calluses of his fingertips mapped the small bones of her wrist, tickling the sensitive skin where her pulse raced in a maddening response.
“Will you try to eat breakfast with us?”
“Yes.”
“No argument for that one?”
“I don’t have a choice,” Quinn said with a snort, eyes rolling towards the ceiling as his chest rose in an unmistakable show of alpha satisfaction. That wouldn’t do at all. Smile saccharine as her chin cut to the side, batting her lashes at him with the syrupy sweet voice once employed on Wicked’s floors, she brought him down a peg. “Adam throws a fit if I don’t at least pretend I’m eating. Elise is still following his lead.”
“He’s most interested in his mother’s wellbeing.”
Smooth as silk, his voice didn’t hint at the turbulent rumble of emotion that shot through her senses. A flash of jealousy that anyone would supersede his request, with guilt darkening its heels that he would be threatened by his own son. Yet he was jealous of the love and attention she showered Adam in and never showed even a hint of to him. Not unless he forced it, made her his little willing doll.
Now it was his turn to clear his throat, aware that far more than he intended passed between them. This thing joining them was strangled down to a trickle, but it remained as wide open as any raging river to two people rather uncomfortable with the idea of sharing anything. Two poker players sitting in a mirrored room, it seemed they had no choice.
Turning away, Quinn made it all the way to the stairs before she realized he was beside her. Not just that, but her hand was curled within Tobias’ bulky mitt of a palm, fingers threaded through his. A hint of the sensations that had followed her into wakefulness seemed to coalesce between them, and the longer she held on to him, the warmer her skin became until Quinn felt flush and giddy.
It wasn’t just her either.
