The room changes before I see him. The air doesn’t shift, the temperature doesn’t drop…nothing I could point to. But it getssmaller, the way a room does when something large and very still comes into it. The part of me that learned in the facility to feel a person’s weight before their footfall goes quiet and alert.
I turn around.
The man I’ve seen twice in the corridors is standing three feet inside the door. I suck in a breath. I knew he was big, but up close it’s like looking up a cliff face.Bear,someone in the dormitory wing said two days ago.
Calm down.
He’s not doing anything threatening. He’s just there, taking up the space he takes up, with the stillness of something that doesn’t need to announce itself.
Before I know I’m doing it, I do the thing I’ve done since I was seven and my mother showed me how to use my power. I reach for the glamour and pull it close—don’t see me, look past me, I’m no one—the same practiced compression I’ve worn so long it fits like a second skin.
He looks at me.
Directly. The way you look at a person, not through them, not past them. Like the trick isn’t working.
I go very still. Stillness is what the glamour leans on. I know this. I also know the glamour doesn’t fail. Not on anyone. Not since I was a child still learning how to use it.
Except, apparently, on him.
“I’m looking for an airway kit,” he says. Low, unhurried. “Someone said they’re kept off the ops corridor.”
“Top shelf,” I say. “Left side, in the red case. You might need the—” I stop. Telling him he’ll need a ladder seems fairly redundant.
He goes to it. He doesn’t try to ease around me, doesn’t make himself smaller the way tall men sometimes do in close quarters. He moves where he needs to move, and I step toward the cart to make room.
Not enough room.
He’s close enough that I could have reached the same shelf. If I’d had the ladder.
He leans over me, his chest inches from my nose, and I catch myself pulling in a deep, heady breath.
Oh, my God.
He smells like…like sin. Rich. Earthy. Warm. Male. So damned male. Something shifts under my skin, and I know it’s my wolf, closer to the surface than she’s been in years. Paying attention. Her interest is strange to me. So is my own.
I drop my chin and fix my eyes on the button in the center of his chest. His very wide, very thick chest. In a soft denim shirt, faded and well-worn, molded to him. My face barely reaches the top of his ribs. And the urge to lean in and rest my cheek right there, over his heart, is suddenly overwhelming.
Because clearly I’ve lost my freaking mind.
He reaches the shelf without stretching, finds the case, opens it, checks it, closes it again. Steps back.
I pick up a clipboard and write a number. I don’t know what number. I don’t even know where the clipboard came from.
He doesn’t leave.
“You were here Tuesday,” he says.
Not a question. I look up from the board. He’s not looking at the case anymore. He’s looking at me, and it makes me want to squirm.
“I help out where I’m needed,” I say. Then, because I feel like I have to: “Um. I’m Grace.”
“Decker.”
Decker. Strong. Solid. It suits him.
I nod at the case. “You’ll want to sign it out at the equipment desk. First door past the corridor junction.”
“I know where it is.”
