He knew my name without being told. Sat beside me on this bed and said ‘You’re not a monster,’with the calm certainty of someone who had run the calculation and chosen the outcome deliberately.
No pity.
No softness.
Authority.
My hunger shifts again.
It loosens its grip on my throat and drifts lower, warmer, coiling in places that have nothing to do with survival and everything to do with friction, proximity and the memory of being held by a body built to overpower and protect in equal measure.
I picture his hands on my waist.
Not restraining.
Holding.
My breath catches.
This is deeply unhelpful.
I’m sitting in the firelight of a cabin at the edge of the known world with a half-empty container of cow’s blood, a supernatural identity crisis, and instead of spiraling exclusively about eternal damnation, I’m replaying the way his forearm flexed when he reached for me.
I notice things now.
The width of his shoulders. The way his shirt pulls across his back. The controlled way he moves, a predator contained within his skin.
The hunger isn’t gone.
It’s redirected.
And that might be worse.
Because blood is simple.
This isn’t.
Charlotte Harris,I think, staring into the fire while my pulse stutters in a rhythm that has nothing to do with thirst.You are in so much trouble.
The fire crackles its cheerful indifference.
The hunger settles to a low, persistent hum.
And somewhere in the next room, Rogue breathes in the dark, steady, patient, and unaware that I’ve been tracking the structure of everything he is. I stare at the ceiling and decide I need considerably more cow’s blood and considerably less proximity to that ridiculously attractive man until I have significantly better control of myself than I currently do.
This is what passes for a plan, given the circumstances.
It’s not a great plan.
But it’s theonlyone I’ve got.
And now that my hunger is tempered a little, and I feel slightly more human, if I can even say that anymore, I need to get out of these bloodstained clothes and wash all this blood off me.
Creeping to the door, I slowly pop it open and sneak across the hall to the bathroom. As I close the door behind me to finally have a shower, I turn to see fresh towels folded on the counter and a pile of clothes beside them.
His clothes.
I don’t know how I know before I even touch them, some combination of size, scent, and the way they’re folded with more care than anyone folds their own laundry. A soft gray T-shirt that looks like it’ll swallow me. Flannel pants with a drawstring I’ll have to pull tight to keep them on my hips. And a hoodie, dark and worn soft, that carries his scent in a way I can smell from three feet away—warm earth, leather, and something feral underneath that has no business making my throat go tight the way it does.
