Page 83 of Flames and Blood

That’s been true since the moment I set eyes on him, and it doesn’t get any less true at nine in the morning with the curtains taped shut.

I get up and check the tape again before I lie down.

I sleep badly, and when I wake, the strip of light along the bottom of the curtain is gone. He’s sitting on the end of the bed pulling his boots on.

“Ready?” he says. I nod, and we head out to the truck. We’ve settled into an easy rhythm now. I put my boots on the dash again, and he doesn’t tell me to move them.

We get onto the road, and he looks over his shoulder to check the lane is clear. I’m looking at his hands. They sit at the bottom of the wheel, loose, one thumb hooked over. Big hands. His wrists come out of his cuffs thick and hard. When he shifts gear, the tendons move under the skin. My dragon clearly has a thing for hands. Or I do. Both of us.

“All good?” he says, and I jolt, snatching my eyes back to the windshield. I must have made a sound because he’s frowning at me.

“Fine. Just tired.” I fake a yawn.

“Why don’t you sleep?” he says, focusing back on the road. “You didn’t rest well at the motel.”

“How do you know?”

“I heard you.”

“You can hear when you sleep?”

“I hear everything, all the time.” He aims another look at me. “Sit back. Close your eyes.”

The cab is small. It’s impossible not to brush against him occasionally. If I doze off now, I’ll probably wake up drooling against his shoulder.

“I’m good,” I say. “I’d rather talk to you. Tell me something useless.”

“Useless how?”

“Not the job. Or what might be behind us. Tell me what you actually like.”

He thinks about it.

“Maps,” he says. “Old ones. Before they got everything right. I like the parts where the mapmaker just wrote ‘here be worse country’ and left it blank.”

I grin. “That’s a very ‘you’ answer.”

“A ‘me’ answer?”

“You know. Offbeat. Quirky. You could’ve said you like bikes. Or guns.”

“I like bikes and guns too. But I prefer old maps.” He reaches back for the map on the seat behind him, and his shirt pulls tight across one shoulder while he twists. His hair brushes his collar. It’s thick, and longer than most men wear theirs, and it curls against his neck.

You’re staring again, dammit.

I look at the trees.

“Your turn. Ask me something useless.”

“What’s the worst meal you’ve ever eaten?” he asks.

“A council dinner when I was nineteen. Roast something, I never found out what, served under a sauce so thick you could stand a spoon up in it. I ate all of it because my grandmother was watching and would have known if I hadn’t.” I make a face just remembering it. “I threw up afterward and told everyone it was the wine.”

“Was it the wine?”

“It was absolutely the sauce.”

He laughs. It’s happening more and more often. I’ve started watching for it.