Chapter 38
Turned out he needed help after all. Wrestling out of his shirt, given the tightness in his chest muscles and newly healed skin was unpleasant, and Audrey was right there to chide him about it.
She turned on the shower, then came over to him, tugging at his sleeve. “Let me help. Isn’t that why you dragged me in here?”
Gunnar grinned under the shirt as she helped him out of it, because he hadn’t gotten too far in his thoughts in the kitchen besides not wanting her out of sight just yet and naked. He was still grinning when she finally got the shirt off, and she rolled her eyes at his wolfish expression.
“Turn around so I can get these bandages off. And no complaining.”
He grunted down at her, five-foot nothing, bossing him around, realizing he liked it, enjoyed having anyone care enough—love him enough—to nag. He obliged her, rolling the word around in his head, over the list of things she’d tossed at him for all the reasons she loved him, how she claimed she could have just kept right on going.
Sounded like everything, and he pondered that word for a minute. The one he’d thrown at her the second he saw her alive and well, and the pain in his chest eased. Maybe everything was love; hells if he knew.
Gunnar watched the steam curl and the water circle the copper tub’s drain. He’d never thought he could love, never thought he was worth love either, but Audrey’d insisted on proving him wrong. Maybe she did on the other side too. Didn’t seem so strange, after listening to her reasons for loving him, that maybe all the reasons he had about her—everything—amounted to the same damn thing.
The bandages clung to his skin, Gunnar wincing as the layers separated, the skin underneath still a bit raw. Smelled bad too, she wasn’t kidding. Then the bandages were off, but Audrey said nothing. When he turned, she just stared at him, her hands clenched under her chin as her gaze roamed over his chest.
Gunnar glanced at his reflection in the polished mirror. It was ugly, the gash in his chest still red around the edges, thick scar tissue in a raised ridge. The entire region was discolored, darkened and pocked from healed blisters. Right, hellfire—it burned deep and fast, and he’d been impaled on a burning blade. Scarring entirely covered his right pectoral, wrapped over his shoulder, down most of his bicep, and when he peered over his shoulder, it went halfway down his back too.
A perk of his vileblood, he rarely scarred, so it was strange to see such a vast stretch covering his body, to know the marks wouldn’t fade in a few days.
He met Audrey’s gaze in the mirror; she was pale, shaking as she walked around him and flattened a palm on his chest where pale, flawless skin met the fresh scarring.
“I thought you were going to die. You were dying.” Audrey shook her head when he protested. “Let me get this out, please.” She wouldn’t look at him, just his chest, so he gave her a quiet nod, and she went on after a shuddering inhale. “When Kushiel died, the hellfire went wild, and it melted his sword inside you. It was . . . boiling, the metal . . . and you . . .”
Gunnar folded his hand around hers. Audrey swallowed, blinking a few times as tears slipped free.
“Virtue took control of the hellfire and pulled it out of you, and then E stepped in.” She patted his chest. “There wasn’t time to explain. He worked the metal inside your body so it stopped the bleeding and kept you . . . kept your body together.”
Another thick swallow as she went on, “He came by to check on you a few days after. I’ve never seen him so animated before. He said he hasn”t forged anything new in a century, and that he’s never forged anything inside a living being before. But I think the fact that E is proud of his work is a good sign you’re okay?” She let out a watery laugh, and he squeezed her hand again, then she grinned up at him. “Does this make Mj?lnir your brother?”
Gunnar snorted. “Guess we’ll have to ask E.”
“Gullin too.”
“What now?”
“If E made Mj?lnir, I’m guessing Gullin is Gullinbursti,” Audrey said. Gunnar just shook his head; he didn’t read nearly as much about mythos as she did. “E was worried about you. We all were.”
“I’m right here, sweetheart,” he said, unable to stop himself from wiping away the fresh tears, tucking her hair behind her ear. “You’re not getting rid of me that easy.”
“Easy, huh?” She sniffled and wiped her face. “I’d hate to see what you think is difficult.” She wrinkled her nose. “How about we just not?”
“Yeah, alright,” he said, tugging her against him. She fit perfectly, curling up against his chest, her head tucked under his chin, her sigh long and tired. “Come on, why don’t you wash my back and you can tell me more things about me you like.”
“Love,” Audrey corrected.
“Besides, you stink.”
“Only because of you.”
“Hmm, so you showered while I was resting?”
His only answer was a glare, and Gunnar grinned as he dropped his pants, knowing that would stall more arguing. Sure enough, she went quiet as he stepped into the shower naked and pulled the curtain closed.
He hissed as the water hit his skin, which felt stretched thin over the wound, and he frowned a bit, not liking the idea of having this magic metal in his chest. He supposed he’d be thanking E as much as bitching at him later, because he was alive and Audrey was too, and that was really all that mattered.
He felt the cold air as she stepped in behind him, and as much as he wanted an eyeful, he ducked his face in the water. They had time. For now, he just wanted to be close to her.
She washed his back, her gentle touches soothing as she checked everything was healed. Audrey let him wash her hair, and he found himself reminded of the night he killed Mateo, when they’d been here in the shower because she’d begged him to stay. The first night they’d slept in his bed together.
Washing the sickness and sweat from his body freed his senses to take in her scent in more detail, including the touches of embarrassment and desire as she stole glances at him when she thought he wasn’t paying attention, the pink dusting her cheeks, neck, and shoulders from more than the warm water.
Once they were out of the shower and wrapped in towels, Gunnar couldn’t help another peek at his new body, which looked a bit better without the dried blood and dead skin.
“You don’t mind scars, right?” He called after Audrey as she went to change the bedsheets.
She laughed when she came out with the dirty linens, tossing them in a pile on the floor for now. She wore one of his shirts, swimming in it is as usual.
“Are you really fishing for compliments?”
“I almost died, remember? Maybe I need a little ego patting. Maybe you should tell me more about those things you like about me.”
“Love,” she corrected again, effortlessly.
He followed her into his room. Theirs, he decided, because he found he liked the idea of the arrangement being permanent. “Well, lay it on me.”
She rolled her eyes as she tucked the fitted sheet on the bed. He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, towel tied low around his hips. She still blushed, and he decided if he loved anything, it was that color on her skin.
“Fine. I love your recent scars, because they mean you’re alive,” she said, very matter-of-fact and not looking at him as she worked her way around the bed. “I also, um, have always loved that you’re very tall.”
“That so?”
“Yes. I love how you always make me feel safe, and you . . . your, um . . .” She cleared her throat, changing the pillowcases, glancing at him sideways now and then. “The physical side is part of that.”
“Hmm. Because I’m tall.”
“Yes, and . . .” She turned waved a hand in his direction. At his body, top to bottom. “And muscly.”
Gunnar laughed. “Anything else?”
“Please, like you don’t know how handsome you are.”
“I don’t know how handsome you think I am.”
Audrey finished making the bed, tossing the blankets in place rather hurriedly. “Entirely too much so.”
Gunnar grinned as he prowled over to her; despite her embarrassment and fatigue, her scent remained playful, and her desire, well, it sweetened everything about her beautiful scent. He caught her by the hips, pulled her close, enjoying the way she fit against his body.
He purred the word, “Interesting,” knowing she’d feel the low rumble of it in his chest against her back.
Sure enough, she shivered, goosebumps dancing across her bare arms, and he inhaled against the top of her head as the burst in her pheromones rolled over his senses. This was unfamiliar territory, not strangling down his want for her and instead acknowledging it. Baser urges he normally reserved for fucking, the physical act and release.
He already knew it would be a fundamentally different experience with her, which thrilled him, sent a hum deep in his bones that made his cock half hard every time he looked in her direction, while at the same time he felt raw and desperate in a way that he was starting to think had nothing to do with sex.
All of which could wait.
They were both exhausted. Audrey’d taken care of him for a week. Her desire and curiosity and wandering eyes might drive him mad, but for her, he’d wait. And if all Gunnar ever got was this, a quiet embrace and her trusting him enough to sleep at his side, in his bed, he’d take it.
“I love the beast in your blood,” she breathed, so soft he thought he’d misheard. Then he frowned, ready to argue, but she’d already turned in his arms, the soft pads of her fingers resting on his lips. “Use your senses, Jonathan, not the defenses you’ve built to survive.”
He took her wrist, moving her hand away from his mouth. “They’re the same thing.”
“That’s fair,” Audrey said, unflinching as she stared up at him. Her wet hair hung loosely around her face. “And it doesn’t make me love it less. Don’t argue.” She lifted a brow. “Don’t tell me what I feel.”
Jonathan pursed his lips, but his scowl was not as firm as he wanted.
“I love the beast in your blood because it’s part of you. I love how you use that part of yourself to be the monster you despise in order to protect what you care about. To protect the place we call home and the people who live here. To protect me.”
She took her hand back from him.
“I love it helps you know me and what I need.” Her cheeks went redder. “You went to Virtue because you worried your urges would scare me.”
Gunnar winced despite himself; he wasn’t ashamed, yet, “She’s a friend,” he said, honestly. “We helped each other, but that’s it.”
“I know. I know about her and Rina,” Audrey said. She still didn’t look at him, not directly. “I was jealous, but not in the way you’d think. Not because of the sex. Well, I mean . . .” She covered her face with both hands and laughed, the sound strained. “Yes, but also because she got to share part of you I didn’t.”
“Audrey.”
She shook her head, fierce when she met his gaze. “I love you for stopping when I asked after I kissed you. It was so easy, being touched by you, finally having that part of you. To be under your attention. To be desired by you, but I couldn’t. Not then.” Audrey exhaled a shaky breath. “And I love that even though I . . . I want that again, to feel that with you, and I think you want that with me, you’re going to insist we sleep because I’m exhausted, and you’d rather take another hellfire sword through your chest before you do anything you worry I’d regret tomorrow.”
The truth of it all was in her earnest gaze, the way she looked into him despite blushing furiously, but he couldn’t have ignored the honesty in her scent, the sheer stubborn will.
“I love you,” she said, flattening a hand on his chest, over his heart, over the scars, over the metal fused and forged under his skin. “Everything about you, everything you are. Everything.”
A little grin, a little wrinkle of her nose as she watched him blink dumbly at her as understanding settled in, and he realized he was a fucking idiot, but she didn’t push him to give it a voice. Not yet. She just gave him a sleepy smile and tugged him to bed.