Page 100 of Veil of Blood and Bone

Wren’s shadows sink beneath his skin, and he wedges himself at my side, getting comfortable on the couch.

Wait. He’s not...he doesn’t want to fuck?

“There isn’t enough room,” I say.

He proves me wrong by settling on his back, hauling me to his chest in the same movement. “It’s perfect, monster.” He yawns widely. “Absolutely perfect.”

My attention falls to his throat and the hummingbird pulse there. My orgasm paints everything with a hazy film of lust, a strange combination of fulfillment and desire.

I glance along the protrusion of his collarbone and every visible inch of his skin. There’s safety in his touch. As though this was an aftercare I didn’t know I needed.

His fingers trail lazy circles through my hair to soothe me.

“It feels different this time,” he says. “We have no idea why. It scares me.”

I rest my cheek to the rise and fall of his chest. “You don’t strike me as the kind of man who flinches easily.”

“See? You do know me. You’re right. But things are progressing at a faster rate this cycle. I'm not sure why. I’m only grateful to be here to experience it.”

“Yes, it’s good to be alive.”

“It’s good to be here with you.”

There’s comfort in the familiar even if it’s an unhappy hellscape. I’ve told myself the same thing all my life.

Today, the bitterness lifting in the wake of those words fills my mouth with an awful but normal taste. “You don’t know me.”

Wren chuckles, and the sound rumbles through me. “I beg to differ.”

“You think because you got me off, that makes us buddies?”

“I think it makes us more than buddies. I think it’s my way of showing you how well I know the contours of your body. How well you respond to me.”

This is a man who hides his darkness deep inside of him, behind thick armor of jocular wit and a smile designed to captivate and win over anyone.

I don’t remember what he wants me to remember. Only the scent of drying, rotten flowers, old, stale coffee, and a cold feeling in my head I can’t shake free.

“That doesn’t mean you know me or what I’ve experienced. You don’t know how much I love Reese's peanut butter cups. Or how I failed my driver’s test twice before I actually passed,” I say.

He doesn’t know how many nights I waited for Audra to fall asleep before allowing myself to cry for our mother’s loss.

He’s silent for a long stretch of time. His hands have stopped moving over my skin, but his cock is still hard as stone. Wren seems content to ignore it, to hold me despite the pain of blue balls and no completion.

“Maybe I don’t,” he admits. “But I know how much it terrifies you.”

“What?” I bite out.

“To actually get what you want. To have someone take care of you for a change because truthfully, you don’t know if they are going to stay.”

My stomach has hollowed out.

My blood crying for coffee and something to fill the empty pit and my inner monologue is nothing but a bullshit monotony of thoughts convincing me this isn’t real.

People don’t stay in my life. They never have. Only Audra is here because she can’t leave. She has to have someone to take care of her, and I’m the person.

I’m always the one.

Then Wren resumes the soothing circles along my temple. “You don’t have to worry about it, monster. None of us are going anywhere. None of us are going to leave you again.”