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“You’re lucky to be alive.”
“I try.” She was shutting down, dismissing him even as she moved up his body and kissed him. Her lips were more a seal than an enticement.
When she broke off, he said, “And the ankle?”
It was a good save. She rolled over beside him, stretching her leg straight up and pointing her toe at the ceiling so the red heart was visible inside her ankle. “My first. After a fight with Rand. I don’t remember what it was about. I was fifteen and Ben was still alive but too sick to take much notice of anything.”
He sat up, ran his hand from her hip bone across her concave belly then over her inside thigh, calf and ankle; he pressed a kiss to the ragged red heart. Her dad would be dead before she finished being much older. She’d said Jake had no idea how hard growing up had been for her. He felt lousy with how judgemental he’d been.
He dropped back to the pillow, rolling towards her and tracing his lips over the little constellation behind her ear. “And this one?”
“Just something I liked.”
So much she hid. “Rand has the same one on his chest.”
She glared at him.
“Hey, you’re the one who wanted all the shirts off.”
She blew out a breath. “The planet is Maggie, my mum, and the stars are Ben, Rand and I. We got them done when Ben died.”
If their point scoring game had still been live, with rules not fuelled by lust alone, Jake would’ve won a point for getting that story out of her. But the game had reached a new level where the play was more intense, and the stakes were about more than mere points. Now he played for trust and truth and some sense of where he might go with this woman.
He brought the inside of Rielle’s wrist to his mouth for a kiss. “And this one?” It was a strange stick figure. A straight line with an open pin head, dissected into thirds by two different types of lines, one straight, the other wavy.
“It’s an ancient alchemy symbol.”
“It’s a wolf.” He could see it now in the aerial view of a head, backbone and tail, the shorter back legs and the longer front legs and paws. “Why the wolf?”
“The wolf mythology is about good and evil, masculine and feminine, being wild and war-like and faithful and nurturing. Wolves are instinctive, strong and fierce. I got this when we started working professionally and it was so important we made it.”
Jake traced the line of the wolf’s back with his tongue. “The wolf is your totem.”
“My wolf is to me what your compass is to you.”
“And this one?” Where a ring would sit, where one did when she was Gym Girl; the entwined initials A and R were inked. Jake drew her middle finger into his mouth and sucked. “Who’s A?”
“I’m A. A for Arielle.”
He sat up fast and leaned over her, hands either side of her hips. “Arielle, your name is Arielle! It’s for you and Rand?”
She nodded, surprised at his delight. “What did you think?”
He flopped back on the pillow. “That A was someone special to you.”
He grunted when she elbowed him. “You can’t be jealous?”
He said, “I can if I want,” and laughed, dodging another elbow and catching the pillow she threw as she climbed out of bed, heading for the bathroom.
Jake folded his arms behind his head, stared at the winking fire detector in the ceiling. It flashed out a heartbeat, like it was alive, making it as close to a living witness as he could have for what he’d just learned. She was Arielle Mainline and she’d shown him the pieces of herself she could hide behind socks and watches, sweatbands, rings and hair.
He wondered what else she’d show him in time—if they had time. He counted off twenty beats of the red indicator light. He heard the shower water run, and smiled at the thought of joining her. He started his count again, made it to five before he got vaguely annoyed she wasn’t going to invite him in, and to ten before she stood in the doorway of the bathroom, naked, wet, wonderful.
/> “Something wrong with your compass, huh?”
As he scrambled out of the tumbled sheets, he figured maybe his compass was faulty; jammed up by the magnetic pull of a wolf woman who was inexplicably his true north.
36. Ghosts
