Page 84 of Blood and Trouble

I am still running, trying to fill the shape of absence.

I lost myself in his words as he spoke, imagining a younger Poe in foster care, carrying the assumption that everyone would leave him eventually. I saw him transitioning alone, terrified and scared of what was happening. I envisioned him heartbroken and rejected after he called off the relationship with Lycan. I could see how someone might call his work dark or question whether Poe was really okay after reading it, but I didn’t. It endeared him to me. It made me want to wrap my arms around him and hold him until all that pain inside washed away.

“That’s beautiful,” I said. “You’re incredibly talented.”

He half grinned and closed the journal, tossing it aside. “It’s just scribbles. It’s more like a diary than it is anything worthwhile.”

“I loved it,” I said. “Thank you for sharing it with me.”

“Yeah, you’re welcome.” He grabbed his whiskey and took another deep drink. “Now your turn.”

I hummed as I thought. He’d just given me something vulnerable, something that he’d probably never shared with anyone else. What could I say in return? What was I most afraid of?

“I don’t think I want to go home,” I said, surprising myself as the words came out.

He widened his eyes and bent a knee, resting his head on top of it. “Really? Why not?”

“I wasn’t the same person when I left,” I admitted. “I didn’t let myself do things like this. I was always in control. Always the image of perfection. People have certain expectations of me.”

“Your family?”

I sipped my drink and relaxed as the warmth settled in my gut. “Yeah, some of them. Mostly the people I work with. I walk into boardrooms, and everyone already has a preconceived idea of what they’re going to get…who I am…what I do.”

“Fuck them,” he said, but I was already on a roll, and I didn’t realize how much I needed to say the next part until I was saying it.

“Mostly, I’m afraid of myself. I’ve learned so much since I’ve been gone. I’ve done so much. I can’t go back to who I used to be. And out here…with you…with Lycan…I’m just…”

“Free,” he finished for me.

I took a drink to hide the sob racing up the back of my throat, threatening to pull me under the more I thought about it. Would we go back to our previous roles in Montana? Would they get back together and leave me in the past? Would I return to the repressed, lonely woman I’d been when I left? A part of me felt like if I didn’t return, I wouldn’t have to face those what-ifs. That potential future would never happen if I just stayed right here.

“I get it,” he said. “If it makes you feel any better, you’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever met.”

I playfully shoved his shoulder and sipped my whiskey. “Don’t flatter me.”

“I mean it.” He brushed his palm against my cheek, forcing me to look at him. “You’re amazing, Ava. No one can put you in any box you’ve outgrown, not even yourself.”

Somewhere in the conversation, our bodies had shifted, scooted closer together. His face was millimeters from mine, his forehead pressed lightly to my temple. The heat of his whiskey-scented breath coasted over my lips, and my focus dropped to his mouth.

It seemed inevitable. Unavoidable. Whatever started the moment he walked into my hotel suite in Copenhagen had mutated, grown more powerful, bringing us to this one point of collision.

I couldn’t stop myself.

I tilted my head forward and pressed my mouth to his in a soft, tender embrace. He gasped, inhaling deeply, but then he grabbed the back of my neck and pulled me closer. I licked his lips, begging for entrance, and he opened so sweetly for me. Our tongues brushed against each other, and a wicked current shot down my spine to my cunt, clenching around nothing.

I set my whiskey down on the side and pushed to my knees, cupping his jaw as I deepened the kiss. He shifted back and lowered his leg to make room for me in his lap, which I greedily took. My heart pounded as I straddled him, bending my knees on either side of his hips, settling on his thighs.

God, he smelled so good, like pine and man and outside, and it echoed through the darkest parts of me, igniting a neediness that wanted to devour every inch of him.

He coasted his hands up my body to my throat, brushing his thumbs behind my ears, tucking his fingers into my hair. In the space between me pawing at his shirt and the breathy moan that poured over my lips, he pulled back and looked at me with hazy, dilated pupils.

“We shouldn’t,” he murmured.

“I know,” I replied, leaning in to take his mouth again.

He wrapped his arms around my torso, tugging me closer. My cunt brushed up against the growing bulge in his jeans, evidence of just how much he wanted this, even if it was bad and wrong. And the way my panties stuck to my cunt indicated I couldn’t stop it. I ached to have him inside me. Perhaps I had wanted this from the first time I saw him. After we shifted, my wolf had known something the human couldn’t identify, but sitting there so close to him, I started to understand what that was.

Poe and I were two jagged edges that fit together, two fragmented pieces of broken glass. Sharp and rough and imperfect, but together, almost made whole.