Page 234 of These Tears

However, Elle’s remark sends me back to this morning: Elias brushing past me merely to press his mouth to my neck, his hand finding the small of my back whenever I crossed the kitchen, his fingers catching mine beside the range.

He kissed me while checking the fire and again while I fed George, just in case the demon-cockerel mistook me for unclaimed territory. Even when Elias did not touch me, he watched from the woodpile or the doorway, as though every breath I took belonged in his inventory.

Clingy.

That’s one term for it.

Severely possessive, armed with formidable buttocks and showing no interest in rehabilitation, is more accurate.

The truly worrying part, though, is the warmth that moves through me whenever his hand finds mine or his lips claim me.

I’m sure a part of me that once catalogued every warning is now probably screaming. But I’ve been pushed away for so long that my body relaxes every time his hand finds me, every time his eyes hunt for me across a room.

Sanity is overrated.

‘Nun’s tit – it’s cold,’ he murmurs huskily as he approaches us, rubbing his gloved hands. He begins to lower his mouth to mine, remembering halfway that the two women are watching, and stops with his breath at my cheek.

Public affection, it seems, remains one language he has not mastered.

‘Ready?’

Am I ready to do the thing he has been threatening since he uncovered Ron’s name on my hip?

No.

Inga is already taking her mother’s groceries from my hands, giving me a small smile as she looks between us.

‘Have fun, you two.’

I return the smile because it’s easier than justifying how much heavy lifting fun is doing here.

Elias has not brought me into town for coffee, shopping, or a romantic stroll beneath judgmental dead men carved in stone. We are here because my ex-fiancé’s name remains inked into my skin, and the man who is realistically not my fiancé has arranged to remove it from the rest of me.

The girls turn to leave us. A hard pull catches low in my abdomen so suddenly I almost dart after them. Then Elias’ arm snakes firmly around my waist and starts guiding me down the road.

‘I don’t think I should be doing this today,’ I say as my fingers worry at the lining of my coat pocket. ‘I don’t even know what I want over it.’

He glances left and right like a man about to commit a crime. ‘We’re doing it today.’

My fingers freeze at the pocket’s edge. There’s enough of the old, possessive command in his tone to set my spine straight.

‘I’m not spending another night looking at his name on you,’ he mumbles.

There it is – not the old Elias taking the choice away. It’s a different kind of darkness, possessive enough to make my nerves pull taut, but held back by the line he has finally learnt not to cross.

Sort of.

My claws sharpen briefly at his tone.

Then his hand tightens at my waist, his thumb pressing into my coat as if I were something he has no intention of losing.

And every fibre of me leans into it.

‘I’ll pick something you’ll want,’ he says.

My legs root to the ground. My mouth opens in horror as I glare at him where he stops a few feet from me.

‘You’re not picking my tattoo.’