by Holley Trent
“Easy, now,” he murmured, pressing the back of her wrist against his lips. “You’re all right.”
“I am?”
Her body went still with shock.
Does that count as a kiss?
She should have known if it did, but she had no frame of reference. She didn’t let people touch her, and he shouldn’t have been kissing her. He wasn’t hers. He was obliged to wed some other woman, and Willa wasn’t going to do anything to impede that.
“You don’t have to go back there.” Sliding down the sleeve of her robe, he made another warm press, a bit higher, closer to the hollow of her elbow. “It doesn’t matter anymore. They can’t get you now. No one’s going to hurt you.”
“You can’t promise me that. Maybe those people are gone, but there are others who can.”
“I won’t let them.”
“A pretty thought, but you can’t be with me all the time. Even if you liked me enough, you wouldn’t want to.”
“Who said I didn’t like you?”
“It was pretty well implied.”
Another press, at the sensitive inside of her bicep. Ticklish in a way that made her gasp instead of laugh.
He smoothed his thumb over the seam between tan and gold on her upper arm as if noting the difference in texture and in elevation and committing the properties to memory.
“Do you have sensation here?” His fingertips skipped up her arm to the gnarled flesh over her shoulder and neck that her shirts usually covered. “In all of the gold places?”
“Yes. Maybe even more than the normal flesh.” She shied away from the tickle along her collarbone, if she could even call it that. The calluses on his fingertips ignited little nervous reactions that had her nails digging reflexively into her palms and her breath caught somewhere between her open mouth and lungs.
She realized she was quivering, then, rocking toward him in anticipation of his touch and away from ignorance. She didn’t know what to do and knew it wasn’t acceptable or proper for her to entice him, only that some part of her wanted the attention.
Or maybe needed it.
“They’re all over your body? The scars?”
“No.” She forced a swallow down her tight, dry throat. Revealing was thirsty work—unplanned-for emotional labor. “Mostly on my side and on my back.”
“Would you let me see them?”
“Why?”
“Because someone should see them. Why not me? I don’t kiss and tell.”
“Kissing?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“You can’t. You have a fi—”
“No,” he said with emphasis. “I don’t.”
Incredulous, she gave her head a skeptical shake. “Since when?”
“Since I left.”
“But—”
“When doesn’t matter,” he pleaded. “What matters is that it’s done. Right now, you matter.” Blue unknotted the tie of her robe, and she watched dumbly as he nudged down the other sleeve.
No fiancée?
As the ramifications of Blue’s statement became clearer in her head, Willa tried to feel pity for the jilted woman. But she couldn’t, not when the man who’d done the jilting was right there, tearing down her walls and making her want to risk everything to finally be understood.
With her camisole still on, there was plenty of fabric covering her, but it’d been centuries since she’d felt so naked in front of someone. She could hide the flesh, but not her form. She’d spent so long shrinking into herself so that people wouldn’t play attention to her. Blue was asking to see things that she’d never revealed, and she wouldn’t be able to disguise what she was from him.
She was a woman, and he was a man, and perhaps not every act of intimacy had to result in permanence.
Perhaps fleeting connections were just as important and fulfilling.
Perhaps the very best person to finally have some intimacy with would be someone she knew was using her to achieve an end goal he hadn’t been deceptive about.
No one needed to know.
She turned her back to him, raised her shirt over her head, and covered her breasts with her forearms.
“You’ll have to tell me what it looks like,” she said. “I’ve never been able to see the whole picture.”
He sucked a forceful pull of air through his teeth. “I don’t even know if I can describe it, sweetheart.”
Chapter Nineteen
Blue didn’t know how long he’d sat there staring at the gold welts and blemishes on Willa’s back, but he could sense her mood changing from the calm-for-her baseline he’d forced into her to a more heightened state.
Nervous.
He’d done that because he was sitting there like an asshole and not saying anything. So he did the first thing that came to mind and kissed her spine where a tentacle-like welt snaked across the skin. It was smooth as glass against his lips. Not dead, the way it should have been, because she gasped softly and arched away at the touch.
“I’m not gonna bite, Willa.” Not even if she wanted him to. No way would he ever further mar that pretty flesh—either hue of it. She’d earned her stripes. He understood why she wouldn’t want to show them off. People wouldn’t understand. He didn’t understand. He’d never seen anything like her burns before. “Not gonna hurt you.”
She swallowed audibly. “What does it look like?”
“You want me to take a picture of it with my phone?”
She shook her head. “No, just describe it, the best you can. Maybe I’ll look later.”
He didn’t think she really wanted to—not yet. It was on him to give her the overview.
He took a breath. Let it out.
Cursed the fools who’d done it to her and hoped karma had treated them to the kiss of fire for their role in the evil.
“It’s twenty-four karat here.” He traced along the edges of the scars on her back and up her shoulder. Smooth as silk. “Redder and thicker at the top like your body just gave up on healing the same way there.”
“I can’t remember. I passed out, and when I woke up in Italy, my aunt had been there and everything was bandaged. Maybe she had something to do with the way I healed. I don’t know. Is it . . . ugly? You were staring so long that I thought maybe you were making up a pretty lie to tell me.”
She looked over her shoulder at him in such a bashful way that had him instinctively reaching out and grasping her chin so she wouldn’t turn away from him.
“There’s nothing ugly about you, do you understand me? Not a thing except those damned bags under your eyes that tell me that no one in your life has been doing a good enough job of taking care of you.”
“I’m responsible for myself.”
Blue snorted—his human body’s physical response to his inner coyote’s incredulity.
“Excuse me?” she balked.
“I think that I should probably be responsible for you from here on out.”
She had the audacity to laugh at what he’d intended to be an earnest, serious statement—breathless giggling that had her doubling over at the waist and her shoulders shaking hard from exertion.
She must have realized after a minute that he hadn’t joined in because she straightened up and looked over her shoulder at him again. “You’re not joking, are you?”
“Maybe you’ve met an alpha here and there who’d joke about putting people under his protection, but I’m not one of them.”
“I’m not one of your Coyotes.”
“I said people. That means Coyotes, and humans, and . . . ” He toyed with a distracting glint of golden skin at the side of her ribs and watched her squirm. “Whatever you are.”
She didn’t say anything. Just stared.
“Tell me no and I’ll do it anyway. Don’t waste your breath.”
“Yet another thing you don’t value my opinion on.”
“I hear your opinions. When I don’t agree with them, I tell you why, and in absence of a better argument, I enforce my decisions.”
“And what would your way entail as far as I’m concerned?”
Moving her far away from the dipshit next door, for starters, but he didn’t bother saying that aloud. He got a sneaking suspicion that specifics wouldn’t get him anywhere. Generalities were safe.
“I’ll have someone keep an eye on you.”
Me.
She arched a brow. “You can’t have people following me around all the time. That’ll get awkward and folks’ll start asking questions.”
He couldn’t find a single fuck to give.
“At least you’ll be getting some sleep,” he said. “Funny how sleep has a way of making bullshit disappear from your life.”
“And how are you going to guarantee this sleep? Elephant tranquilizer darts? Or maybe you’ll just get Kenny or Lance to tase me at ten o’clock every night?”
He wouldn’t let Kenny or Lance anywhere near her when she had her pajamas on. He shared a lot of things with his lieutenants, but Willa was all his, and he was going to ensure she was no less dignified because of him.
“I don’t need to go to those extents,” he said.
“Then what’s your plan?”
“I’ll show you.” He put a hand on each side of her waist and pulled her back to him.
Her arms fell away from her chest as he skimmed his palms up her sides, fingertips skimming cautiously along the undersides of her breasts.
Her posture went rigid, and her scent of her hormones spiked from panic to something almost approaching arousal.
Not quite. She was too scared.
“I’m not scary,” he whispered. He put his lips against the crook of her neck and felt the weight of her breasts in his hands. Uncharted territory, perhaps. He hadn’t set out to potentially be the first, but he wouldn’t lie that there wasn’t a masculine thrill to being a woman’s introduction to sex, if they even got there.
He hoped like hell they did. He craved her touching him in every possible way.
For every gasp she expelled, he kissed her again. Kept kissing her until she laid her head to the side and let him have free access to the long line of her neck.
She slouched back against him, curling her fingers into the fabric of his pants as he traced around the peaks of her breasts and mounded them against his palms. He could keep sucking on that few inches of skin all night. Her skin was like ambrosia, and the weight of her against him unexpectedly intoxicating, but even he knew she couldn’t go to work covered in love bites. She’d have yet another reason to wear her shirts cinched tight at the collars.
He put her gently on her back on the center of the bed.
Immediately, she folded her arms over her chest, and he let her have her moment of modesty. He knew how difficult the exposure must have been for her.
He could make things easier.
“Stay right there.” He eased off the bed, heeled off his shoes, and then grabbed King by the collar. The stubborn dog dug in and refused to move, but Blue wasn’t about to fight him in front of King’s mistress.
Releasing the collar, he jogged around King and out to the kitchen. Finding the kibble in the third place he looked, he poured a scoop into a bowl, waited for King to dive for it, and then returned to the bedroom while the dog was distracted. For good measure, he locked the door.
Willa was on the bed, sitting up and holding the covers up to her chin.
He chuckled as he found the light switch and pressed it down. “In the interest of transparency, I’ll remind you that I can see a little better in the dark than most people.”
She gave a minute nod.
“You still all right with me being here?” he asked.
A slower nod. “You said you’d help me sleep.”
“Yep. Sleep,” he acknowledged in a bland tone.
He padded to the side of the bed nearest the window and sat, unbuttoning his shirt. “I’m taking off my shirt. I’ve got another one under it, and I’ve got underwear on under the pants. Taking those off, too. Don’t panic.”
“I’m not panicking.”
“Smells like you are.”
He looked over his shoulder in time to catch her rolling her eyes.
The room’s dimness couldn’t obscure the pinking of her cheeks and the startled roundness of her eyes. “Am I not allowed to have any secrets?” she spat in a supersonic stream of words he almost couldn’t pick apart. “Can I keep anything from you?”
He got rid of his socks and peeled back the covers. “You’re hiding plenty from me. You’ve got a brain that’s filled to the brink with shit I can’t even begin to fathom, and yet you’re worried about one of the few advantages I have in a negotiation.”
She snorted. “You have only a few, hmm?”
“Yep. I’m really the one at the disadvantage here. If we were chess pieces, I’d most certainly be a pawn. Or maybe a rook.”
She chuckled and tightened her grip on the top of the covers. “Not a knight?”
“Hmm. Maybe a knight if I’m having a good day.” He eased down onto his side and closer to her. She was nearly at the opposite edge of the bed, and that wouldn’t do. It was her bed. She didn’t have to cede so much space to him.
He patted the space right in front of him. “Come here. I’m a Coyote. I don’t have personal space issues.”
The crease between her brows deepened. She set her teeth into her bottom lip, staring contemplatively at the empty space. Then she moved, inching over slowly until her calf bumped his bent knee. “Too close?”
“No,” he said flatly. He just stared at her for a while, resting the side of his head against his fist and drumming his fingertips against his thigh. She was going to have to let go of the covers or they were going to be in a tangle by the time REM sleep kicked in. He had a tendency to move around in sleep—the dog in him trying to get more comfortable on an artificial surface, probably.
She must have gotten bored with him staring at her in silence because she eased down under the covers and fluffed her pillow under her head. Better than suffocating herself beneath it as she’d been doing when he saw her in the window.
“Why do you cut your hair so short?” he asked. Out of the blue, probably, but mixing up a conversation seemed to be the best strategy for her.
She squeezed her eyes tight. If he’d been normal, he wouldn’t have caught the tiny catch of exasperation in her breath or the way the muscles in her forehead flexed. Even if he’d been paying attention, he wouldn’t have seen or heard those subtle giveaways.
He’d touched a sore spot, but he wasn’t going to back away from it. They were already there. Resolving it seemed to be the best path forward.
He traced one remnant curl near her temple and wondered what her hair would look like if she left it alone. He couldn’t help but feel like there was part of her picture missing. Short hair was an aesthetic choice for some women, or even a practical one. Neither of those seemed to be Willa’s M.O.
The way she cut it almost seemed like she was punishing herself. He was close enough to her to see, as he’d previously suspected, that the length wasn’t uniform all the way around.
“I don’t care if you cut it,” he said in a soothing tone. “You can do whatever you want to your body, and I won’t criticize you unless you’re hurting yourself.”
She laughed unexpectedly and then burrowed beneath the covers, resting her forearm over her eyes. “The funny thing is, I miss having hair, but now there are mirrors everywhere and so much glass. You can’t get away from them. You can’t walk past a store on Main Street without catching your reflection, and you can’t possibly know how utterly unnerving it is to startle yourself to tears because you thought you saw someone you can’t stand.”
Damn.
She was right. He couldn’t know. He wasn’t that sensitive, and if he couldn’t stand someone, he confronted them, no matter who they were.
“I wish I could tell you I know what that feels like, but I don’t,” he conceded. “I’m sorry that happens to you, and I’m sorry there’s
nothing you can do about it.”
“You’re not to blame. Why are you apologizing?”
“Decent people tend to do that when other people hurt.”
“Decent?”
He shrugged. “I try to be most of the time. Not saying I don’t do plenty of shitty things, but I’m usually aware of what the consequences will be. There’s a balance, you know, between taking care of my needs and trying to get everyone else some of the things they want.”
“Oh.” She rolled onto her side, putting her back to him. “I miss it. Things weren’t as hard back when good manners entailed me keeping it covered.”
It took him a few seconds to realize she’d meant her hair.
Took him a few seconds more to nudge the puzzle pieces in his brain closer together. She said she looked like someone she hated. Her father. Some god with curly hair in a color that couldn’t be described. If he was even a fraction as pretty as his daughter, he must have been a real spectacle.
Blue snaked his arm around Willa and pulled her more snugly against his front.
Her being there felt right—or perhaps, him being there. The beast in him was soothed by soothing her, by taking care of someone who needed him in a different way than anyone he’d had to shepherd in the past.
As he let his eyelids drift downward, he rubbed her arm, her waist, her hip, halting when he noticed what wasn’t there. His legs against hers confirmed it. He hadn’t been paying attention.
“You’re not wearing pants.”
She sighed. “Don’t . . . make a big deal of it. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but I . . . Just. Ignore me.”
There was a beautiful, warm, naked woman a micron away from him. His heart was pounding hard enough to take flight and pushing blood to places that really didn’t need it. Ignoring her was the last thing he could do.
Frustrated, he rolled onto his back. “This is how you planned on getting me to go away, isn’t it?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I didn’t think you had Mata Hari instincts.”
“What?” She sat up and scowled at him.
“That’s pretty desperate.”
“Maybe I am, but not in the way you’re thinking. Maybe I just . . . ” Groaning, she picked up his left hand and planted it awkwardly on her breast.
