Chapter 7 #2
She wasn’t. She couldn’t be. She was human, and fragile, and she’d leave as soon as the pass cleared. This fixation was nothing more than proximity—the natural result of sharing space with an attractive female after years of solitude. His body was responding to opportunity, not destiny.
He told himself this. He almost believed it.
That night, he dreamed.
He stood in the clearing, snow falling soft and silent, and the world reduced to shades of grey and white.
Ember was there, impossibly close, her grey eyes gleaming silver in the darkness.
She wore nothing but one of his shirts, the fabric hanging to mid-thigh, leaving her legs bare to the cold but she wasn’t shivering.
“You’re watching me.” Her voice carried strange harmonics, layered like bells. “You’re always watching me.”
“I’m not.”
“Liar.” She smiled, and it was the same smile she’d given him that first time—warm, unafraid, and devastating. “You watch me sleep. You watch me eat. You watch me train until your eyes ache with wanting.”
“That’s not—”
“It is.” She stepped closer, close enough to touch. “I feel your gaze on my skin like a brand. I feel your hands lingering on my body longer than necessary. I feel the heat of you, Rykan, even when you try to hide it.”
Her fingers brushed his chest. The touch burned through his clothing and left trails of fire on his skin. He needed to step back, but his body refused to obey.
“Why do you fight it?” she whispered.
“You’re not real. This isn’t—”
“Isn’t it?”
Her hand slid lower, tracing the ridges of his abdomen through his shirt. His breath caught, his beast roaring beneath the surface, and when she pressed closer he could feel her heat through every layer of fabric between them.
“I want you,” she breathed against his throat. “I want to know what your hands feel like without clothing between us. I want to know what you taste like. I want—”
He woke with a gasp, his body hard and aching, his skin slick with sweat despite the cabin’s chill. His heart hammered against his ribs like a caged thing fighting for release.
Across the room, she slept peacefully, unaware. She’d curled into his furs the way she always did, small and trusting, her breathing soft and even.
He stared at the ceiling and tried to force his body into compliance. Tried to ignore the demanding pulse of need thrumming through his veins. Tried to pretend that her scent wasn’t thick in his lungs, intoxicating, everywhere.
Just proximity, he told himself. Nothing more.
His beast laughed at him.
Dawn came too soon and not soon enough. He rose before the light, as he always did, but today his body felt wrong—restless and edgy, painfully aware of every sound and movement from the female sharing his space.
He heard her breathing shift towards waking and forced himself to move, to put distance between them before she opened her eyes.
By the time she emerged from the furs, he was already outside, splitting wood with unnecessary force.
“Morning.” Her voice was rough with sleep, a reminder of warmth and softness and the bed they could have shared.
“Training starts in one hour.” He didn’t turn around. “Eat something. Stretch. We’re working on footwork again.”
“About yesterday—”
“We’re working on footwork again,” he repeated, cutting off whatever she’d been about to say. He couldn’t have that conversation. Not now, not ever. “One hour.”
A pause. Then her footsteps retreated into the cabin, and he let out a sigh.
This has to stop.
But he didn’t know how to stop it. He didn’t know how to stop noticing her, wanting her, dreaming of her in ways that left him aching and furious and desperate for something he couldn’t have.
The axe bit deep into the log, splitting it cleanly. He grabbed another, then another, working until his muscles burned and his breath came hard and fast.
It didn’t help. Nothing helped.
When the training resumed, he kept his distance, correcting her posture verbally whenever possible, touching her only when it was absolutely necessary. He forced clinical detachment into every contact, treating her body like a mechanism to be adjusted rather than a temptation to be resisted.
It worked, mostly. He managed three hours of drills without incident, watching her fall and rise and fall again, noting her improvement with professional satisfaction rather than personal investment.
Then she tried the pivot-step again and her ankle turned the wrong way.
He was beside her before he consciously decided to move, catching her before she hit the ground, one arm around her waist and the other around her shoulders. Her back pressed against his chest, and her scent flooded his senses.
“I’m fine,” she said quickly. “Just lost my balance.”
“Your ankle?”
“Fine. Just a twist, not a sprain.”
She wasn’t trying to pull away. She wasn’t struggling or stiffening or showing any sign that she wanted to be released.
She was just… resting against him, her breathing quickened, her heartbeat rapid beneath his palm.
One of his hands was in the center of her chest, the other on her stomach. When had that happened?
“Thank you,” she said softly. “For catching me.”
“Instinct,” he said gruffly. “I couldn’t let you break something on your third day of training.”
“Is that the only reason?”
Don’t answer that. Don’t let her know—
“What other reason would there be?”
She turned her head, looking up at him over her shoulder. Her eyes were very close, very warm, asking questions he didn’t know how to answer.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “You tell me.”
His beast surged. His grip tightened before he could stop it, pulling her fractionally closer. He watched her pupils dilate, heard her breathing shift, and for one crystalline moment he let himself imagine—
He released her and stepped back.
“That’s enough for today.” The same words as yesterday, the same retreat, the same desperate attempt to maintain the control that was slipping through his fingers like water. “Rest your ankle. We’ll continue tomorrow.”
“Rykan—”
“Tomorrow.”
He walked away before she could say anything else, before those grey eyes could break down the last of his defenses.
It was proximity. It had to be proximity.
The result of years alone, of isolation, of his beast going too long without…
companionship. Once the pass cleared and she returned to her own life, this madness would fade. This obsession would end. It had to.
She stood in the snow and watched him go.