Chapter 12
I balance the sketchbook on my thigh, pencil gliding fast and rough across the page. My eyes ache, but sleep isn’t an option. Not with my head where it is. Not with the ghosts crawling up the walls.
Dove went to bed hours ago.
The lamp beside the couch casts a warm puddle of light that doesn’t touch the corners of the room. I keep my head down and my hands moving.
Shapes, lines, graphite… The image forming tonight is a woman with feathered wings stitched shut and her mouth open like she’s screaming, but no sound comes out.
Real subtle, Wolf.
My thoughts keep drifting to places I can’t let them go. Back to the river. Back to the doctor. Back to the woman sleeping upstairs. I grit my teeth and keep drawing.
Sometime around the Witching Hour, the floorboards creak above me.
I pause.
Another creak.
Footsteps.
I set aside the sketchbook and crane my neck toward the sound.
Dove appears on the stairs, floating down them and into the light like a nocturnal hallucination. Same pajama pants and camisole she wore to bed yesterday. That backpack of hers didn’t hold much.
I make a mental note to take her shopping.
Long blue hair falls around her slender arms. Wavy, bright, freshly washed. She looks like a silk trap, all soft and sweet. The kind of soft that makes a man stupid. The kind that makes a man sin.
She doesn’t make a sound as she steps into the room. Her eyes don’t leave mine as she closes the distance slowly, deliberately. She’s made up her mind about something, and I’m the decision.
Without speaking, she slides one leg over me and sinks onto my lap, straddling my hips.
I freeze, hands hovering midair, heart in my throat.
Her thighs clamp around mine. She smells like sleep and feminine soap.
And I’m hard. An instant, full-on chub that she knowingly, painfully traps between our bodies.
“What are you doing?” I ask, voice rough.
Not a twitch in her expression as she reaches for my waistband and starts unbuttoning my pants.
“Wait.” I grip her wrist, trying to catch her gaze.
“Stop talking.” Eyes on her hands, she yanks down my zipper.
This isn’t right. But holy anti-God in fishnets, it feels right.
My breath shortens. I don’t know where to put my hands. I keep them frozen at her sides.
She’s going through something. We haven’t even had a real conversation. She’s hurting. This isn’t how this should go.
“You don’t have to do this,” I whisper. “If this is about something else, something you’re trying not to feel—”
She covers my mouth with her hand, her breath as steady as her gaze.
Then she leans back and yanks off her shirt.
My throat goes dry, and my insides turn molten.
Her nipples are pierced. Of course, they fucking are. Two tiny hoops glint in the pink buds of the prettiest tits I’ve ever seen.
How the hell did I miss those through her top?
Because I was being a gentleman. Because I wasn’t looking. I didn’t let myself.
“Dove.” I choke. “We need to stop.”
“I’m not some simpering virgin.”
“I am. Not the simpering part. The other part.”
She blinks. “You’re a virgin?”
“Shocking, right?”
“Well, yeah.” Her eyebrows climb together. “Jesus. You’ve really only been in civilization for six months?”
“I haven’t lied to you.”
“I thought… I don’t know. A guy with your looks and confidence would’ve banged every woman in Sitka by now.”
“I haven’t. By choice. Mostly.”
“Okay. I can work with that.” She shifts down my thighs, dragging my pants lower.
I can’t move. Can’t breathe. I can only stare.
Her tiny waist dips into curvy hips that make my hands ache to grab her there. And her tits… Lord, take me now. They’re perfect. High and full and so prettily pierced. She’s art. Raw and exquisite and more stunning than anything I could draw.
And I’m an idiot with trembling hands and no idea where to start.
As I reach up to trace the line of her collarbone, she grabs the hem of my shirt and lifts fast.
I forget.
I forget until I see her eyes go wide.
Until the cold air hits my chest. My scars.
“No.” I flinch away, scrambling to shove down my shirt. “Don’t look at me.”
She stills.
I push her off me. Or maybe she slides off on her own. It’s an ugly blur as I curl up, elbows on my knees, hands clutching my shirt tight against me.
Fuck, I’m breathing hard.
Too hard.
“Wolf.” Her voice sounds broken open.
“Don’t,” I snap.
She pulls her camisole back over her head, the movement so slow as if she’s afraid I’ll spook. Then she settles at the far end of the couch, her posture stiff and defensive.
I feel like I’m bleeding inside.
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you.” She picks at the hem of her shirt, eyes on her hands.
“Yeah, well, doesn’t take much.”
A heavy blanket of awwwwwkward drapes the room.
Congratulations, Wolf. You successfully turned your lifelong fantasy into an emotional crime scene.
If I had a dollar for every time I self-sabotaged, I could buy a space balloon and float into the void.
“I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at me.” I force my gaze to hers. “For feeling too much. Too fast. Too stupid.”
“Nothing about this is stupid. I’m not good with words.
I act on feeling and needed something to anchor me.
” She pauses, chewing her lip. “I didn’t want to be alone.
Didn’t want to be in my head. And I didn’t want to owe you anything.
You helped me, and this was… I wanted to thank you.
And to feel like I had some control again.
” She winces. “That sounds terrible. I don’t mean it like that.
I just… I don’t want to depend on anyone. Not even you. Even though I…”
I stare at her sidelong, waiting with held breath.
“Even though I find you impossibly attractive.” Her eyes shift to me. Honest. Tired. Raw.
I blink. And blink again.
A shit storm of confusion and lust knots in my gut. And that other thing I don’t let myself feel. The one that cartwheels in all cocky and irresponsible.
Hope.
That’s the one that infuriates me.
“Why now?” I lift my head, uncurling from my hunched position. “After ignoring me all day, what changed?”
“I thought you wanted me.” She doesn’t look away.
“I do.” The lump in my throat throbs. “But I’m not… I don’t know how to be normal.”
“I don’t want normal.” Her voice falls flat.
“You can sit closer.” I loosen my death grip on the hem of my shirt. “Just don’t ask about what you saw.”
She scoots toward me slowly, cautiously, until her thigh brushes mine.
“Closer.” I lean back, tucking my shirt into my pants.
After a beat, her hand reaches. Just her fingers on my arm.
We sit like that. Staring straight ahead. Neither of us moves.
Eventually, I pull in a breath and throw myself into the hush. “You ever try to scream, but your throat just locks up? Like you want to claw out the sound, but it won’t come?”
“All the time.” She turns toward me, holding my gaze.
“Yeah. That.”
“I get it.” She leans into me, resting her head on my shoulder. “Thank you for stopping me. You would’ve regretted it.”
I huff a bitter breath. “Stopping you is the second most regrettable thing I’ve ever done.”
“And the first?”
“Jumping off an unsurvivable cliff.”
“You…” She tilts her head. “Jumped on purpose? To die?”
“To escape.”
“I’m glad you didn’t die.”
We both fall silent again.
The sketchpad sits forgotten on the table. The ghosts continue to hover. But they feel quieter now.
“If you want to give me something…” I shift, bringing my mouth within a kiss from hers. “Tell me the truth about Jag. I need to know if my family’s in danger. I need to know what you’re running from.”
She tenses. I feel it in her shoulders, in the acceleration of her breath.
“I won’t use it against you.” I touch the soft hair that flutters against her cheek. “But if there’s something we need to prepare for…”
“Okay.” She straightens and runs her hands along her thighs. “You’re right. I’ll tell you. Just… Don’t interrupt. It’s messy.”
I nod.
“I was eight when I watched Jag kill a man for the first time.”
“And here I thought this would be a slow burn story.”
“You’re interrupting.”
I mime zipping my lips.
“My mom married his dad when I was a baby. David Rath was the only father I knew. Our parents weren’t perfect, but they were good people. They loved each other. And they loved us.” She flexes her fingers on her knees, her voice hollow. “Until that night.”
I hold still, waiting for her to continue.
“Someone broke into our house. Jag pulled me into the kitchen pantry and covered my mouth while our parents were butchered on the other side of the door. I still remember the sound of their bodies hitting the floor.”
My eyes stay with hers, my expression stripped of shock and pity. I have no soft edges to offer, just understanding. I’ve lived through worse and learned that silence says more than sympathy.
“The murderer knew we were hiding in the pantry. I thought we were dead. But the instant that door opened, Jag attacked him with a kitchen knife. Stabbed him over and over and over. There was so much blood. I’ll never forget that smell.
Or his total lack of emotion. He killed that man and showed no remorse.
Nothing.” She licks her Medusa piercing.
“After that, we ran, and for a while, Jag became my illegal guardian.”
“Illegal?”
“He was sixteen, barely able to take care of himself, let alone an eight-year-old. We lived on the streets, dodging social workers and cops. He taught me how to lie, how to steal, how to disappear. He saw threats everywhere, and me… I was the little sister he had to feed and protect. A burden. A reminder of the night he lost everything.”
“Everything but you.”
“He wasn’t exactly grateful for that.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“Not like that.” She draws in a long breath. “But he hurt me. Emotionally. He kept me under his thumb. Kept me scared. Trapped. I thought I owed him everything. I thought…”
“You thought what?”
“I’ll make some more drinks.” She jumps from the couch and darts to the kitchen.