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There’s no fucking way I’m letting her go. Not when seeing her in danger triggered a full transformation for the first time ever, and not when she smells so good that it’s the only thing keeping me going right now. But I don’t mention that.
I don’t want to scare her.
Even if it was alittlefun.
?
We’re inside when I start to really get my bearings again, an oil lamp flickering in the corner. Charlotte has thrown a blanket over my waist, but sits beside me, so close that she can touch me. In fact…sheistouching me, her hands on my abs. At first I think the gesture is intimate, but then I feel the pinprick of a needle piercing my skin and I wince.
Ah—she’s giving me stitches.
I grimace and groan, my body tensing . Charlotte’s eye’s flick up to me, her lips set in a firm line.
“You’re up,” she says. “I was hoping you’d stay unconscious while I did this.”
“Yeah…I heal fast,” I say, shaking my head. “Chances are good I don’t even need the stitches. You can stop now.”
“Don’t think so,” she says. “We don’t have time to sit around and wait for you to heal, especially if you’re going to help me get to Austin.”
I quirk my eyebrow, focusing on her sweet scent and not on the searing pain of the needle piercing through my skin, tugging the thread through. “So now I’m helping you get to Austin?” I ask. “What happened to ‘I never want to see you again’?”
“You were useful back there,” she shrugs. “And if you insist on staying with me, and we’re going the same direction anyway, it doesn’t make much sense for us to part ways.”
The animal inside me likes that. I like the idea of protecting her, of warding off anyone who wants to hurt her. My wolf growls possessively, telling me that this girl belongs to me.
And now I know her name.
“Okay…Charlotte,” I say with a grin.
“On that note,” she says, glaring at me. “Youcannotjump on me like that. I don’t know what that was, but I won’t let it happen again. I have a knife, and I will stab you.”
Ah—so this is calculus. She knows I’ll chase her no matter what, at this point, and she’s using that against me, finding a way to mitigate risk. I feel something foreign in my chest at that fact.
Guilt?
I don’t want her to be afraid of me.
I want her to like me.
“I wasn’t going to hurt you,” I say.
She snorts. “You made that obvious. You mostly seemed interested in sniffing me.”
“Well, I haven’t made any secret of the fact that you smell goddamn delicious,” I chuckle.
Her hands still on my stomach, her fingers just barely playing against the uninjured flesh. I hold my breath, watching her closely—but she pulls away. She moves over to a little bowl she’s filled with water, then rinses her needle with a subtle splash.
“Did you know those monsters?” she asks, training her big brown eyes on me.
“We don’t all know each other just because we’re Blessed,” I drawl.
She blushes, the rosy tint of her cheeks awfully pretty in the flickering light of the oil lamp.
“That’s not what I meant,” she says.
“I know,” I snort. “No harm done, Sunshine.”
“You can stop calling me that now,” she says stiffly. “I told you my name.”
