18. Ava #2
When we got back to the cabin, the absence of Lycan hung heavier between us.
His scent had dissipated, and my inner beast whined, panting in the back of my mind, desperate for a sign of him.
I kicked off my boots and glanced around, eyes landing on the covers still balled up in the center of the living room floor.
Only then did the realization hit. It would be my first night without him in weeks…
since he’d taken the night off to hook up with that submissive in Copenhagen.
I hadn’t noticed how attached I’d gotten to always having him here, and the massive void he’d left clenched around my energy like a vise.
What if he didn’t come back? What if Evelyn got him while he was out there? What would I do without him?
Poe seemed to notice. He walked in front of me and put his hands on my shoulders.
“He’ll be okay,” he said. “It’s only a night or two.”
I blinked back the sudden burn in my eyes.
No. I would not cry. It’s fine. It’ll be fine.
“You want a drink?” Poe angled his body toward the kitchen.
“Sure,” I said.
“Sit down. I’ll make it.” He walked to the opened bottle of whiskey on the counter while I slumped in the blankets from the night before, basking in the small remnants of Lycan’s cedar and leather lingering on the fabric.
When Poe returned, he handed me a glass and sat next to me on the blankets, taking a long sip before pushing his journal out of the way on the end table so he could set his drink in its place.
I sipped the liquor and prayed it took away my worries.
“Talk to me,” I said. “Distract me.”
“About?” Poe rested his elbow on his knee and ran his index finger over his eyebrow.
“Anything,” I said. “Tell me about your poetry.”
He laughed sarcastically. “Nice try.”
“C’mon.” I tucked my knees to my chest and hugged my shins, resting my chin on top. “We can play poker and trade secrets if it’ll make you feel better.”
“Last time I played poker with you, I ended up with my head between your legs,” he said. “Not that I’m complaining, but I learned my lesson.”
I tilted my head and grinned. “How about we just trade secrets then?”
“Okay,” he said. “You first.”
“I already asked you for one of yours.” I pretended to be demure. “It’s my game, so I make the rules.”
“Alright, greedy,” he said. “What do you want to know about it?”
“Read me one.” I was treading on thin ice. Poe already said he didn’t let others read his work, but I thought that had more to do with his own opinions of his art than those of others.
He licked his lips and pulled the bottom one between his teeth before he nodded once and reached for his journal, flipping through a few pages before settling and brushing his fingers down the center of the lines. Reverently. Like they were his prayers to a deity that would never answer.
“The Shape of Absence.” He cleared his throat before returning his focus to his work.
I have memorized the shape of every room I was not supposed to be in.
The way a doorway holds the negative space of the one who almost stayed.
The familiar silence of a table set for two when I’m the one who counted wrong.
I learned early that joy is a language I can read but cannot speak without an accent.
Everyone hears it. No one says anything.
I was fluent in absence before I knew the word for it.
A blank spot on a permission slip with no one important to sign it.
An empty mattress imprint from someone who used to sleep there.
A lip print on a glass from the one who swallowed whiskey like I swallowed their gasps.
The ache is not proof of wrongness.
The wanting is not the same as taking.
A man can stand outside a lit window in the cold and call it choice
But he is afraid of what happens when he knocks, and someone answers.
I knocked once.
The door opened.
I ran.
I am still running, trying to fill the shape of absence.
I lost myself in his words as he spoke, imagining a younger Poe in foster care, carrying the assumption that everyone would leave him eventually.
I saw him transitioning alone, terrified and scared of what was happening.
I envisioned him heartbroken and rejected after he called off the relationship with Lycan.
I could see how someone might call his work dark or question whether Poe was really okay after reading it, but I didn’t.
It endeared him to me. It made me want to wrap my arms around him and hold him until all that pain inside washed away.
“That’s beautiful,” I said. “You’re incredibly talented.”
He half grinned and closed the journal, tossing it aside. “It’s just scribbles. It’s more like a diary than it is anything worthwhile.”
“I loved it,” I said. “Thank you for sharing it with me.”
“Yeah, you’re welcome.” He grabbed his whiskey and took another deep drink. “Now your turn.”
I hummed as I thought. He’d just given me something vulnerable, something that he’d probably never shared with anyone else. What could I say in return? What was I most afraid of?
“I don’t think I want to go home,” I said, surprising myself as the words came out.
He widened his eyes and bent a knee, resting his head on top of it. “Really? Why not?”
“I wasn’t the same person when I left,” I admitted. “I didn’t let myself do things like this. I was always in control. Always the image of perfection. People have certain expectations of me.”
“Your family?”
I sipped my drink and relaxed as the warmth settled in my gut. “Yeah, some of them. Mostly the people I work with. I walk into boardrooms, and everyone already has a preconceived idea of what they’re going to get…who I am…what I do.”
“Fuck them,” he said, but I was already on a roll, and I didn’t realize how much I needed to say the next part until I was saying it.
“Mostly, I’m afraid of myself. I’ve learned so much since I’ve been gone. I’ve done so much. I can’t go back to who I used to be. And out here…with you…with Lycan…I’m just…”
“Free,” he finished for me.
I took a drink to hide the sob racing up the back of my throat, threatening to pull me under the more I thought about it.
Would we go back to our previous roles in Montana?
Would they get back together and leave me in the past?
Would I return to the repressed, lonely woman I’d been when I left?
A part of me felt like if I didn’t return, I wouldn’t have to face those what-ifs.
That potential future would never happen if I just stayed right here.
“I get it,” he said. “If it makes you feel any better, you’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever met.”
I playfully shoved his shoulder and sipped my whiskey. “Don’t flatter me.”
“I mean it.” He brushed his palm against my cheek, forcing me to look at him. “You’re amazing, Ava. No one can put you in any box you’ve outgrown, not even yourself.”
Somewhere in the conversation, our bodies had shifted, scooted closer together. His face was millimeters from mine, his forehead pressed lightly to my temple. The heat of his whiskey-scented breath coasted over my lips, and my focus dropped to his mouth.
It seemed inevitable. Unavoidable. Whatever started the moment he walked into my hotel suite in Copenhagen had mutated, grown more powerful, bringing us to this one point of collision.
I couldn’t stop myself.
I tilted my head forward and pressed my mouth to his in a soft, tender embrace.
He gasped, inhaling deeply, but then he grabbed the back of my neck and pulled me closer.
I licked his lips, begging for entrance, and he opened so sweetly for me.
Our tongues brushed against each other, and a wicked current shot down my spine to my cunt, clenching around nothing.
I set my whiskey down on the side and pushed to my knees, cupping his jaw as I deepened the kiss. He shifted back and lowered his leg to make room for me in his lap, which I greedily took. My heart pounded as I straddled him, bending my knees on either side of his hips, settling on his thighs.
God, he smelled so good, like pine and man and outside, and it echoed through the darkest parts of me, igniting a neediness that wanted to devour every inch of him.
He coasted his hands up my body to my throat, brushing his thumbs behind my ears, tucking his fingers into my hair. In the space between me pawing at his shirt and the breathy moan that poured over my lips, he pulled back and looked at me with hazy, dilated pupils.
“We shouldn’t,” he murmured.
“I know,” I replied, leaning in to take his mouth again.
He wrapped his arms around my torso, tugging me closer.
My cunt brushed up against the growing bulge in his jeans, evidence of just how much he wanted this, even if it was bad and wrong.
And the way my panties stuck to my cunt indicated I couldn’t stop it.
I ached to have him inside me. Perhaps I had wanted this from the first time I saw him.
After we shifted, my wolf had known something the human couldn’t identify, but sitting there so close to him, I started to understand what that was.
Poe and I were two jagged edges that fit together, two fragmented pieces of broken glass. Sharp and rough and imperfect, but together, almost made whole.
“Take him,” my wolf said. “Claim. Take. Mine.”
I didn’t stop my worst impulses, and perhaps I should have paid more attention to how deeply they impacted me.
I pushed his shoulders until he lay down, and I hovered on top of him, running my lips down his jaw to his neck.
He tilted his head to give me more room, and I took advantage, nuzzling and licking and nibbling until I got to the spot where his throat met his shoulder, where his scent was the strongest.
My fangs grew, jutting out of my jaw and throbbing with a desperate ache.
I wanted to sink them deep into his body.
I wanted to do what I’d heard mates did when they claimed each other.
I wanted my scent to be permanently on his body, so everyone who saw him would know who he belonged to.
And perhaps more disastrous, I wanted him to do it to me.