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He got a partly dry saddle pad from his horse and made sure I was comfortable on the cave floor, while he set about getting the fire going. He didn’t say a single word to me, but kept glancing at me and looking away. He had always been difficult for me to read, but never more difficult than now.
His temper had, for so long, seemed to be constantly simmering right below the surface. He’d always seemed ready to explode. And so now, this softer side of him took some getting used to. I wasn’t sure I could trust it.
But I hoped I could.
Once he placed the last dry log on the fire and dusted off his hands, I asked, “How did you find me?”
He turned to me, the flickering flames showing the hard edge of his jaw, the rich dark lines of his beautiful eyelashes.
“You don’t want to know.”
My heart sank. Perhaps the anger wasn’t so far away after all. But I’d dipped my toes into the pool of his kindness, and I couldn’t help myself.
“Yes, I do. I want to know everything about you.” The words tumbled out and the flash of embarrassment warmed my cheeks.
He growled a little. Again, impossible for me to read. He turned to me, tightening his eyes slightly, as if assessing if I could handle whatever he was about to say.
I raised my eyebrows and waited patiently and silently. Now was no time to push him. And I was too exhausted to even contemplate it, anyway.
“I knew you couldn’t have gotten far. I know your paths. Sometimes I keep an eye on you and I knew you’d been to this cave before. With the storm, I tried to think like you. Where would you go.”
He’s been watching me. That, at least, explained how he’d been able to help me so quickly the previous day with the highwaymen.
“But also,” he added before I could ask another question, “I can feel you.” He glanced away. Embarrassed, even ashamed.
“You can…what?” I cocked my head to the side.
He took a deep breath, staring into the flames.
“I can feel you. Sense you. Whatever the fuck you want to call it.” He nudged an errant log back into the fire and turned to me once again. “You know, like you and your fox.”
I stifled a laugh. “You think we’re bonded?”
“Is it really such a surprise?”
I still wasn’t entirely sure that I understood any of this. For so long, I thought that all he wanted was to avoid me. But now that I looked back, there were so many moments when I’d enter a room to find his gaze already waiting for me. Like he could feel me coming long before he could see me or hear me. And it didn’t really sound so crazy.
There was book knowledge and there was gut knowledge. New knowledge and ancient knowing. They weren’t the same, not at all. The deer who bolted from me without seeing me; the falcon who can find its prey in darkness. Such things made sense to me, even if I was at a loss to explain them with words.
The bond between myself and Falroy would be called magic by most. But there it was, nonetheless.
And when I thought about it, I felt the same. Yes, I could sense when he was near or far. It wasn’t quite like my bond with Falroy, but it was similar.
“Like sailors who can find true north, even at night,” I suggested.
He widened his eyes at me, and suddenly I realized I must have said something that he found deeply profound. He didn’t speak, though. Instead, he nodded curtly, staring me in the eye the whole time.
A sudden chill made me shiver. Even though I tried to hide it, he saw it. He took a few steps toward me and signaled for me to stand up. With my arms wrapped tight around myself, I uncurled from my ball on the saddle pad and rose before him. With me barefoot and him still in his boots, he was even taller than I expected. He towered over me, and his muscular body blotted out the shimmer of the flames.
In one smooth gesture, he pulled his shirt over his head by the collar and tossed it aside. Then he peeled my damp tunic off of me, being surprisingly gentle and careful not to let it catch my hair as he pulled it over my head. Instinctively, I covered my nakedness but he didn’t seem interested in my bare breasts. Using his boot, he scooted the saddle pad a little closer to the flames and then offered me his hand.
“Sit,” he said, “facing the fire.”
I did just as he said. That instinctive need to obey him, to do as he asked, made following his instructions easy. I didn’t think; I didn’t argue; I let him tell me what to do and I did it. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. As I sat down, I slid my eyes over his sculpted pecs, the beautiful ridges of his abs, as well as the bulge between his legs and the muscles of his meaty thighs, so easy to see under his wet pants. I wondered if all this time, I was being willfully blind to his beauty; if I’d looked at him with these eyes all that time, I’d have driven myself mad with wanting.
