I test the temperature with my hand, adjust it once, then set her down carefully on the shower bench beneath the spray.
This is when the wild kitten I met in the forest resurfaces.
She twists violently in my grip, palms slamming against my chest as she tries to shove me back. I catch her wrists, but she wrenches one free, and her nails rake down the right side of my face. I feel the sting immediately, sharp and hot, followed by the slow warmth of blood.
I clamp a firmer hold around her and force her beneath the spray. Water splashes against tile and skin as she shrieks, the sound echoing in the enclosed space. I cage her to me. She lunges for my face with her own teeth snapping. I jerk my head aside just in time, barely avoiding her bite before those pearly whites close on my jaw.
She freezes for a fraction of a second, eyes locking on my face.
Even trembling, even furious, she is arresting. We are too much alike for our own good. Mirrors angled wrong. Magnets fighting their own polarity. I sense the deep connection, but it is stilted and off balance. Though I cannot name why. Not yet. I just… There is something more at play here.
Maybe it’s that she’s the storm and I’m the unmovable mountain standing in her path. Or our purposes clash. There’s no knowing. And I’ll achieve no answers as riled as she is. Because there is nothing fragile about her rage. As this thought forms, water slicks her hair to her temples, pale strands clinging to flushed cheeks and high, sharp cheekbones. I catalog all this, and her roughened ethereal beauty in seconds as our bodies rest against one another.
Her pupils flare. Her breath stutters.
I can only imagine what she’s seeing—the skin of my cheek knitting itself back together. A small glimpse of what my body is capable of, which is mending itself from any injury. Even the most gruesome.
I tighten my grip and force her back beneath the spray. Water cascades down her shoulders, dampening her clothing that is now clinging to the shape of her collarbone. The water, too, traces and highlights the tension in the cords of her neck.
“Calm down,” I grit out, though it is not calm I feel. My body is responding in ways it hasn’t for some time. “I’m trying to warm you up. You’re an icicle.”
“I’m fine,” she bites back, her teeth chattering despite the fire in her eyes. Her body trembles against mine, but her chin remains lifted, defiant. Even shivering, she refuses to shrink. And that refusal—that damn refusal does something to me.
“No, you’re not.”
“You said I’d break. I didn’t.”
Her voice wavers only slightly, more from cold than weakness, but her gaze never leaves mine. There is a challenge in it. Accusation. A need to win at whatever cost, something she can not even reason out rationally in her mind.
“Is that the stupid point you're trying to prove?” I snap. “Brilliant strategy. Starve and freeze yourself to death to show me how strong you are.”
She minutely jerks her head back, affronted. “Stupid? You’re the one who put me down there.”
Frustration barrels through me. “Yes, with all the luxuries that many other prisoners would accept with open arms.”
“It was still a prison.”
“You stole my bloody horse.”
She has no retort for that. A deadly glare is all she graces me with. A look that says she’d light me on fire at the soonest opportunity. The fierceness there, even with her hair plastered to the sides of her face and her lashes bunched together and full of water droplets—Heaven’s Gate, she’s still the most fascinating thing I’ve beheld in quite some time. A paradox of light and dark, hate and vulnerability lies here in my arms.
“Fine,” I press, though my voice is lower now. “You didn’t break. What does that prove? Nothing. You tortured yourself for no apparent reason. In my book, that qualifies as stupidity.”
The headbutt comes fast. She telegraphs it just enough that I manage to jerk back, and her forehead grazes my jaw instead of cracking into it. A growl rips from my chest as I shove her against the tile. The impact echoes through the shower, water splashing around us.
My hand slides to her throat. Not crushing. Not yet.
But firm.
The volcano bubbling up inside me needs an outlet, a target to focus on and pour out all of these emotions she’s stirred up within me.
Her pulse flutters wildly beneath my palm, heat finally beginning to return to her skin under the spray. She glares up at me, breath ragged, lips parted.
The pressure inside me surges, hot and violent and dangerously close to exploding.
“Bastard,” she forces out, the word warped beneath my tightening grip.
“Say that again.” It’s growled, not voiced.
