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That just made me laugh even harder.
But my laughter died in my throat at a sudden change in his voice. It grew raw and wanting and wistful. Maybe even sad.
“I love your laugh.”
My fingers jerked involuntarily, tightening my hold on his huge hand. Electric heat buzzed under my skin everywhere his hand touched mine.
“How about we just stop talking for now,” I murmured, feeling flushed and weird and freaking awkward. I would have added something about him needing to conserve his strength, but obviously, he wasn’t going to take a comment like that well. Hell, he’d probably start trying to work out with the arrow still jutting out of his chest just to prove me wrong.
I glanced uneasily at his chest from the side, cringing at the blood-soaked shaft I saw there.
Errok was so blasé about what had happened that it was easy to forget just how serious his injury was. And just how lucky he’d been. One slightly different angle and the arrow would have gone right through his heart or a lung. And for all his brash bravado, I knew even he wouldn’t survive something like that, even with a trained healer. That kind of wound had almost killed Camille’s mate, Varrow. It was only the divine intervention of the Vrika itself that had saved Varrow.
“Just for the record, I am glad you didn’t die,” I said softly, squeezing his hand slightly.
His breath hitched.
“I thought you said we should stop talking?” he said, speaking even more quietly than I had. As if, if he spoke quietly enough, I’d forget that I’d said we should stop talking.
Which, in all fairness, I literally had already forgotten.
“Oh, yeah. Right,” I said. I cleared my throat.
We’d made it to the guest quarters we’d been sleeping in, and I was glad to have the change of scenery. The narrow confines of the tunnel had grown oddly intimate.Toointimate.
I tugged him through the first cave that Zoren, Vaxilkai, and Bariok had been sleeping in and into the large room that us girls had been sharing. We were alone – everyone else was apparently still downstairs.
Can you call it downstairs if it’s at the base of a mountain with a tunnel instead of stairs?
Whatever. Focus!
“Try not to bleed on the bed too much,” I muttered as I tugged him over to my side of the bed I’d been sharing with Fiona. At least the bed was so big that, even if he did bleed all over it, it wouldn’t reach Fiona’s side. Something went all wiggly and weird inside me at the thought of sleeping in blankets stained by this massive alien’s blood.
“I may be the mightiest Gahn of the Deep Sky,” Errok growled, “but even I cannot command my blood thus.”
“Mightiest Gahn of the Deep Sky who almost got himself killed tonight,” I shot back. “Now sit down!”
Gahn Errok looked like he wanted to argue, but mercifully, foronce, he knew when to shut up. He plopped down onto the hides in the bed.
“Not as good as the mattresses in my mountain,” he grumbled, shifting from side to side.
Well, there goes the whole knowing when to shut up thing.
“You have an arrow sticking out of your chest and you’re commenting on how uncomfortable the bed you’re sitting on is?!” I asked in disbelief.
His sight stars snapped viciously to my face.
“Maybe it’s thebuttpain,” he snarled.
I blinked.
Then burst into laughter once again.
“At this rate, you’re never going to get healed. I’ll be laughing my head off while you’re bleeding to death over here,” I said shakily, forcing myself to breathe. I knelt down on the stone floor beside the bed, directly in front of him. Gahn Errok eyed my throat with sudden unease.
“Can... Can that happen?” he asked, leaning closer and peering at my neck as if it were about to snap in two before his eyes.
“Oh, yes,” I said with mock seriousness. “Human women’s heads can pop off for any number of reasons. The number one reason being overbearing menannoying us.”
