Page 65 of Flames and Blood

“Does that hurt?”

“No.”

“Then what was that?”

“Nothing. Keep going.” I keep looking at my hands. “How did we get out?” I ask, because I need something to say. “The wall was shut.”

“The man who runs that valley opened it himself. He sent men out to hunt for us, and the gate has to open to let them out. We were waiting beside it when it did.”

“Renwick,” I say.

He looks up from my hand.

“That’s his name?”

“That’s what he told me to call him.”

He nods once and goes back to the wrapping.

“And where are we now?”

“A rented house, a long way from that valley. Nobody knows it exists but the three of us and a man I pay in cash.”

Two questions, two answers. He wraps my palm back up, neat, and ties it off. He sets my hand down in my lap.

“Did I talk? Coming out. I remember talking.”

“You talked.”

“What did I say?”

“Enough that I made Kent promise not to repeat any of it.”

He reaches down beside the chair and comes up with a plate that’s been sitting there the whole time. Bread, cheese, cold meat, an apple cut in quarters.

“Eat. You’ve had nothing solid in days.”

“You kept a plate ready?”

“You’re a dragon. I’m told you’re always hungry.”

“Who told you that?”

“You did. On the drive out. Twice.”

God. I must have been totally out of it.

I eat. I eat all of it, fast, with my wrapped hands. He watches me do it. The apple is the first fruit I’ve tasted in over a year, and I close my eyes on the last piece. When I open them, he’s looking somewhere else, giving me that much room.

I laugh before I decide to. At nothing. At the plate. It comes out rusty. His eyes come up from my hands to my face and stay there. Neither of us says anything, and it goes on longer than it should.

He really has a very good mouth.

That’s when the heat arrives. And there’s no sedative left in my system to help me ignore it.

It rolls up through me from low in my belly. My skin goes tight and too warm everywhere at once. The room is suddenly small in a way it wasn’t a minute ago. I shift on the edge of the bed. I can’t find a way to sit that my body agrees with.

And I can’t stop looking at him.