AllFreeNovel
Share Us
If Fenrir was here biting me, and I was lying down…
I sat bolt upright and looked at my surroundings. Back in the motel room, as I’d suspected. But how? The last thing I remembered was Seth using me as an amplifier for his power, and after that I was down for the count.
Cade stepped out of the bathroom, his jacket gone and his Henley sleeves pushed up to the elbows, giving me an uninterrupted view of his toned, tattooed forearms.
“You’re up.”
I ignored him, taking stock of the room and myself. My own jacket had been removed, as well as my boots and socks, but my pants and tank top were still in place. My hair was spilling down over my shoulders, so either I’d lost my ponytail holder in the events at the resort, or he’d taken it out for me.
The room itself was as disorderly as I’d left it, but I noticed Fen’s food dish had been refilled.
This might have been pure kindness, or it might have been to keep the fennec from annoying Cade to death by begging. Either way I was grateful to him for doing it. And for getting me here.
Cade was holding a washcloth, water dripping through his fingers onto the floor. He looked exhausted, and fine lines of worry had drawn his eyebrows into a deeper-than-usual scowl.
“What happened?” I tried to sit up, but my head screamed and my body felt as if it were being fueled by pure agony. Every gesture was torture, even speaking. My throat felt raw, each word like sandpaper scraping the inside of my lungs and throat. The best I could manage was to prop myself against the flat motel pillows, my head thumping lightly against the wooden headboard.
“How much do you remember?” he asked.
Without being invited, he approached the bed and sat next to me. The weight of his body made the mattress dip, and I leaned towards him as a result, my shoulder bumping his.
“I remember hitting the resort.”
A smirk toyed at the corner of his lips, then vanished. Only then did I spot the cuts on his cheek, throat, and over his eyebrow. They’d been cleaned and didn’t look too serious, but they were still fresh and raw.
Without stopping to think, I touched his face, my fingertips delicately grazing the red lines across his cheekbone. He flinched, and I froze in place, thinking he was about to pull away, but he merely sat there, his breath suddenly short, ragged. I traced the line of one cut, which was maybe two inches long and not too deep, and his eyes locked on mine, deep brown pools, the color of scotch on the rocks. Unlike with Seth, the intensity I saw in Cade’s expression didn’t frighten me.
Okay…maybe it did a little.
I continued to investigate the damage, gently inspecting a crimson nick on his temple. Then I spotted another wound, this one below his lip. He seemed to feel the weight of my gaze, because as I moved my hand once more, guided by something that defied logic or reasoning, he grabbed my wrist and eased it back down to the mattress. His grip was light but firm, telling me I was finished with my little exploration.
My cheeks warmed. What the hell had that been? One minute I was in agony, the next I was thinking of touching his mouth.
A mouth that was now turned downwards in its typical back off frown.
I must have taken a pretty serious knock to the head. That was the only way to explain it.
He inched closer, and my pulse sped up. I was almost never allowed the opportunity to be in such close proximity with a man. All attempts I’d made to date in my late teens and early twenties had been severely quashed by the higher-ups at the temple.
Clerics were meant to be virgins.
And failing that—which I had, spectacularly—we were to give the impression of a celibate life.
By the time I turned twenty-five I’d all but given up on finding someone, even a body to warm the space at my side for one night. It wasn’t worth the headache it caused back home. Inevitably there would be a BuzzFeed post or clickbait article about some guy’s evening with a Rain Chaser.
They never got tired of using jokes about “A spark between us.”
A night of barely decent sex didn’t balance out a five-hour lecture from Sido about the way my actions impacted Seth and his tithes.
So the celibate life it was.
Cade’s nearness and warmth and inescapable maleness were starting to make me dizzy. Did he have to be so big and have those tattoos and smell like leather and pine? Good gods, it wasn’t a fair thing to do to a lady with a concussion.
“Hold still.” Was it my imagination or did his voice sound a little tense?
His hand looped around the back of my neck, rough fingers tracing my birthmark. He tugged me towards him, and though he didn’t force the motion, the unspoken power of his arms made me go willingly. With his other hand he pushed my hair over my shoulder so it was all in front of me, leaving my neck and back exposed.
I concentrated on my breathing, focusing on his arms instead of his face, which I could not bring myself to look at, fearing the redness of my cheeks would give away all the dangerous paths my mind was wandering down.
