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He made a little ticking noise.
I knew that sound.
It always came with a grimace, like he was on a ladder but still stretching for his answer. “The way he spoke your name,” he said slowly. “I think that was it. And it was more than the accent or the formality—though I have to say, he turns ‘Lucina’ into an art form.”
“Yeah.” I bit my lower lip. Like a freaking thirteen-year-old. And didn’t care one damn bit. “He does, doesn’t he?”
“Another topic, another time.” His voice carried a warning, for which I was thankful. The tangent of Shiraz’s magical voice would’ve had us skipping down a path populated by everyone from Bowie and Axl to Cumberbatch and Banderas and beyond. “For now, let’s just leave it at the obvious.”
I bit the other side of my lip, this time in a weird surge of trepidation. “Which is what?”
He cleared his throat—all but confirming my apprehension. “He practically prowls around the subject of you, Luce.” He attempted a self-deprecating chuckle. “I know that sounds strange, but I can’t think of a better way to say it. The entire time we were talking, I imagined him pacing the room like a lion or a panther or something, ready to bite someone’s hand off for coming near its food.”
I turned. Let the wind hit me full in the face, needing the blast. The moment I thought of a pacing Shiraz, pounding a room’s floorboards with his single-minded stride, every blood cell in my body lit signal fires of arousal. But that was no excuse for not getting out my reply. “Was he…violent?”
“Huh?” A choking laugh. “God, no. Just growly. And protective. Like a mash-up of Firth as Darcy, Craig as Bond, and that Daryl guy from The Walking Dead, only without the crossbow. Or maybe Cimarron has one of those too.” He snickered again. “Maybe he’s really good with a crossbow, and a certain someone’s just being stingy with the details about it.”
I groaned. “It’s not stingy, okay? It’s just—”
“What?” he prompted into my deliberate pause.
“Confusion.”
I knew how ridiculous it sounded. How the hell was I confused about a guy I’d met three days ago, with whom I’d slept with once? Once and a half, if technical details were applicable. And granted, there had been pillow talk—the usual sharing of little life stories, acceptable in the aftermath of rocking world-class orgasms together—but nothing I hadn’t disclosed to other lovers, for the sake of smoothly escaping back to real-life after the passion.
And there was where the reasoning fell apart.
Shiraz Cimarron hadn’t been just another lover. Avoiding that fact was as useless as avoiding the sun through the trees or the wind on my face.
Equal truth: I hadn’t given my stories to him as a damn “escape”.
I’d shared myself with him, as a gift.
I’d wanted nothing in return because I hadn’t expected anything else. But that was because I never expected to ever see him again. Because I was supposed to be back in LA by now.
Walls of defense that were all but rubble now—especially as the words of his last text seared themselves again on my brain.
We WILL discuss this…tomorrow.
Today was that tomorrow.
“Confusion?”
Ezra’s echo made me focus on verbalizing this shit. Like that was going to happen easily. But I had to try. “Yeah. About…him. About what happened between us. I feel kind of caged wildcat about it too, Ez. Maybe it was just because of what we’d been through first, with the storm and rescuing those kids and…”
I let my thundering heartbeat conquer even the words for a second—thankful Ez filled them in.
“Thinking about your own mortality?”
“Yeah,” I got out after a lengthy pause. Another lap around the clearing had me flattening a hand over my head, wondering how far to take the revelation. “So things got…intense.”
Ez hummed again—this time, communicating a smile. “But in the Book of Lucy, intense is usually good.”
“In the Book of Lucy, intense is very good.” I stopped. Swallowed hard. “But Shiraz Cimarron…”
“Rewrites the book?”
“If you were here, I’d punch you for that.”
