Page 64 of Wolf It Down, Knot Me Up

He shifts his seat in my direction, and I’m left checking him out, having zero control over how easily my body melts for him. White T-shirt stretched over his chest, jeans, and he’s sprawled across my chair with strong legs spread, and arms reclined on the armrests as though he’s sitting on a throne. With the black woods behind him and my inside light throwing hard shadows over the planes of his face, he comes across as danger hiding in the dark.

“I was starting to think you were avoiding us.” He cocks his head. “So I climbed up. Easier than it looks.”

I step out to peer over the railing, and it’s a real drop, my stomach swooping on his behalf. There’s a fat, old pine standing right beside the balcony, its lower branches thick and close, a staircase for anybody unhinged enough to trust it.

“You’re completely insane.” I face him again. “You could have snapped your neck on the way up.”

“Done worse climbs for worse reasons.”

“That’s not the reassurance you think it is.” I haul the second chair around to face him and drop into it. “And I wasn’t avoiding anybody. As if I could, honestly. Yesterday was… a lot. More happened in twenty-four hours than I’ve had time to process, and I needed some space to sort through the mess in my head before my anxiety did it for me.” I shrug, unsure of what else to say but the truth.

He reaches out and takes my hand. I read it as tenderness, the sweet, careful Roman I know, right up until his grip tightens and he pulls me straight out of my chair.

I gasp from the sudden movement and barely make it to my feet before he draws me toward him, catches me around the waist, and guides me down across his lap in one smooth motion. The whole world tilts, and now I’m sitting sideways on his lap, my legs draped over one side, the breath punched clean out of me.

“Roman!”

“Better.” His arms fold around me, one banded across my back, the other heavy over my bare thighs, caging me against him, and there’s nothing gentle about how easily he just moved me.

And now his face is a hand’s width from mine, and his scent floods over me, cinnamon and caramel. Every scrap of composure I clawed back across my long, careful, solitary day burns off in a single breath. Heat rolls through me from head to foot. This close, I stare at the stubble along his square jaw, the absurd length of his lashes, those lips calling me, and I want to press my mouth right there. Yep, I’m in enormous trouble.

“I missed you,” he whispers. “All day yesterday and last night, then all of today. It’s been genuinely painful not seeing you.” His hand moves slowly over my thigh, and my body responds embarrassingly fast, warmth spreading beneath his palm. “Wolf and Grayson are beside themselves too. You’ve got the whole cabin in ruins.”

“Oh, is that so?” My voice comes out breathless enough that his mouth spreads into a satisfied grin.

“It’s so.” And he just stares at me, his gaze dropping briefly to my lips before returning to my eyes. There’s something different in him tonight, darker, a heavier weight behind those eyes, something dominant and coiled. So much for a whole day spent trying to scrub him out of my system. “I have something for you.” He reaches into the jacket hung over the back of his chair and then holds out his palm.

In his hand sits a carved butterfly. Small, dark wood, and so intricate it stops the air in my chest, every vein in the wings scored fine, the body delicate, the antennae impossibly thin.

“Oh.” I lift it carefully off his palm, turning it in the light. “Oh, Roman, this is… How do you even make these? Look at the wings. They’re perfect. This is the most beautiful thing anyone’s ever…” I turn it over, and there’s a tiny R notched into the underside.

“Made it last night.” His fingers find the hem of my skirt and slip just underneath, and there goes the butterfly, the wings, the tiny R, all of it. My entire concentration narrows to four wandering fingers and the maddeningly calm man attached to them. “Couldn’t sleep, and I tried hard to keep my distance from you. Didn’t want to come off like a stalker.” He takes the butterfly from me. “Let me put it somewhere safe for now.” And he stuffs it back into the pocket of his jacket.

“Aha.” I shift on his lap and immediately regret it when his arm tightens around me. “Yeah. And instead you scaled the side of a building to sit on my balcony in the dark. Very non-stalker-ish.”

He chuckles, the sound rumbling through his chest into mine. “You felt the pull too. Don’t tell me you didn’t with us being apart.”

“I took two ice-cold showers last night,” I say, fighting down a grin.

His hand climbs higher up my thigh. “I see.”

“You have no idea.” I press my lips together, and his gaze drops to my mouth again. “I panicked a bit, if I’m being honest, because closing a bond that fast is a lot to carry all at once, and I needed a minute to remember how to breathe without one of you in the room scrambling my signal.”

Things go silent, the heavy kind where it feels as though any second he’ll throw me over his shoulder, scale down that tree, and steal me into the woods. As much as I’m not offended by the idea, I say, “So, you grew up in Brazil. What was it like?”

“Beautiful.” His accent thickens around the word, just enough to make me want to hear him say it again. “We lived in the north, near the Amazon. Our house backed right up to the forest, so I grew up in it. My father taught me to hunt, fish, read the land.” A smile touches his mouth. “There was a bend in the river where we used to sit at dusk and watch hundreds of birds come down to the water. I still remember how loud they were.”

There’s a warmth in his eyes, and I adore seeing him this way.

“That was home to me. The forest, my family, that river. I thought I’d spend my whole life there.” His smile fades a little. “Then my father died, and once I reached eighteen, I left for the city to find work. My mother and sister needed me.”

“That’s why you like it out here?” I ask. “In these woods?”

“It’s where I feel most like myself.” His hand lifts from my thigh to my chin and tips my face up until we’re eye to eye. “One day I’d love to settle in the woods. That calling from when I was a child is always there in my chest.”

“Oh, really? You’re basically Tarzan, then.” I hear it out loud and wince. “God. That was so stupid. Delete that.”

He laughs, head tipping back, and I get a full view of that strong throat, those corded muscles. I forget my own name for a second.