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“You’re chaotic,” she began. “Astonishing. Swirling in and out of my life with the kind of drama only gale-force winds could come up with. You sweep everything around you up into the centre of your force. The eye of the storm.”
I frowned, suddenly unhappy with the comparison.
“A mountain will always withstand a storm,” I pointed out.Why does Gahn Thaleo get to be the mountain in this analogy?But she did that head shaking thing that often seemed to mean “no.”
“Only temporarily. But there’s erosion. Even mountains will be ground down by the wind and the rain eventually.”
“I don’t like waiting for eventualities,” I muttered. I wanted to watch Gahn Thaleo ground down to dustnow.
“You don’t say,” she murmured, smiling and raising a brow at me. “Alright. I’m done with your front.”
I pressed my chin down to my chest, seeing that my skin had been wiped entirely clean. The wound was healing, but it was still a deep divot in my flesh. Zuh-Tephanie’s eyes lingered on the wound, too.
“As long as you don’t move too much I don’t think you’ll need stitches. The worst damage is probably inside where I couldn’t stitch you up, anyway. Not without some kind of surgery.” She stood, hustling over to the heated pool to rinse the rag, then came back. Kneeling once more, she asked, “Can you roll onto your side? I want to clean your back, too.”
With a suppressed grunt of searing pain, I did so. My breath came quick and shallow, my skin tingling as I awaited her touch. I was facing away from her, so I could no longer see her. Only sense her.
My skin sparked when her hand came back to it. The cloth was once again warm from the water. It contrasted with her other cool hand that rested lightly upon my upper arm, steadying her as she worked.
Her touch was too much. More than I could bear.
And nowhere near enough.
It made me want to howl. Howl, like the tempest she’d said I was. Howl and beat down upon the world until there was nothing left but her and that terrible, torturous, not-enough-and-altogether-too-muchtouch.
“Are you alright?” she asked, the cloth stilling. “Your breathing’s changed.”
“Yes, I’m fine.” I mangled the words.Do not worry, mate. I am merely falling apart, that is all.
No, I was not falling apart. I was beingtornapart. The tearing blast of the arrow was nothing compared to my mate’s achingly soft hands upon me.
And yet, despite the tearing, despite the torture, despite the sweet dismemberment that seemed to hang suspended in the air above me like the promise of a beautiful knife, I knew that I could never ask her to stop.
I’d take whatever she had to give me.
Even if I shattered in the process.
