Page 100 of Why Broken Wings Fray

“Do you remember?” I whispered. “Do you remember what they looked like?”

Raegan looked at me, his hands soft against my waist. But it was what was in his eyes, the shaking to steady them, the moisture building along his water line. The heartbreak and the openness, all right there. And with each blink he made, he kept that expression on his face, never looking away from me.

“I do.”

That made me feel worse, somehow. My pity took to new heights as my head lolled to one side, my fingers still rolling over the bumpy flesh.

“Will you tell me?”

His brows pinched as they lifted. “Does it matter?”

“No,” I said, my voice quiet. “Not at all.”

We remained in that silence for a moment, the two of us staring at one another.

“There are days where I feel lost. There are days where I feel like a stranger in my own life, like none of it is real.”

He nodded, his face solemn. “I know that well.”

I crawled along his chest and placed a kiss to the scar of one of his ears. He let out a low, soft grunt as he turned into me. Then it was the other ear, my hands braced on the back of his head, his face nuzzling against me.

“There are days that I wish others were beside me, reminding me who I am,” I whispered against his scar.

He nodded once more. “I will remind you.”

“I know,” I admitted, finally pulling back and letting my hands follow. My pads roamed the peaks of his cheekbones, his eyes fluttering with every swipe of my skin against his. “And I wish to be the one that reminds you.”

He was back to staring at me. Staring, listening, and contemplating.

Raegan leaned forward, his hands sliding up my back to push me closer to him. With his eyes closed, his lips against my ear, he whispered his truth. He told me what his ears had once looked like. And all I could do was muffle a sob as a tear tracked my face. A tear for all that he had lost, for his mother and his wings, for his father and his ears. For what Raegan had endured and continued to mourn.

There was relief across his face as he leaned back again, placing one hand behind his head so that he had a better angle at which he could watch me.

“I have never liked being touched,” he murmured.

With a shy gasp, I retracted my hands from his body and made to move away. A low groan came from him as he set one hand on my back, keeping me close as he blinked slowly at me.

“Until you,” he continued. “The thought of others touching me makes me feel nauseous. But you…” The smile that took to his face was small and genuine as he continued to bore into me with his gaze. “Now that I have had a taste of your touch, Olivia, I fear I will become a madman if deprived of it.”

I couldn’t help but to giggle at his theatrics, and hearing me do so only made his smile stretch wider.

“You make me want to give it all up. You make me wish I was just a male, hand in hand with his female.”

I smiled as I shifted my focus to his wings, the long muscle of the one closest to me. Cautiously, watching him as I moved my hand towards it, I drew nearer. He shuddered when my fingers finally found the strong bone, the width that I hadn’t been prepared for.

“Then let it be so.”

Another shudder rippled through his body, followed by a gasped moan as I trailed my finger along the spine of his wing.

“But we are neither of those things, Ol — oh, stop that,” he groaned as I finished another drag of my finger along the sensitive surface. I felt him hardening with every second beneath me, a twitch against my thighs just as his body twitched with every torturous drag.

“You know, I was told that pixies can hold the human-size for as long as they like–”

“Olivia,” Raegan warned, low and guttural.

“Don’t Olivia me. Just hear me out,” I hummed, leaning against him and relishing in his natural heat. “What would it look like?”

His eyes, so sad yet so bright, widened. “What would what look like?”