Chapter 14 #2
He was doing it on purpose, she knew, but it didn’t change the effect. She found herself scooting closer to him, to share his body heat, she told herself, but that didn’t explain why she let her hand creep out and brush against the side of his thigh.
He lowered his own hand and covered hers. Neither of them said anything about it.
His hand was furnace-warm, the calluses on his palm rough against the back of her fingers. The cuff on his wrist rested against hers, brass on brass, and the metal had gone warm from his skin.
“One day, one of the pack betas challenged me. It didn’t need to be to the death, but he wouldn’t let up, and I wasn’t a skilled fighter. I didn’t know my own strength,” he admitted.
Delainey might have said something sarcastic then, but she bit it back and saw Reece spare her a disbelieving look. “They all say that,” she finally muttered.
His teeth glinted in the firelight as he smiled.
It was the first real smile she had seen from him, not the wolfish baring of teeth or the suppressed half-smirk, but something that actually reached his eyes and softened the hard line of his jaw. It changed his whole face, making him look younger, closer to the kid he’d been describing.
A gust of wind blew through the forest, and she shivered.
He lifted his arm. “Get in here. We need to share warmth.”
“That’s what they all say,” she repeated.
He rolled his eyes. “I won’t bite,” he told her. He patted the space against his side with his open palm, the gesture almost absurdly domestic for a blood-stained werewolf sitting in the dirt.
She had to resist the urge to make a face.
It was one thing to wake up cuddled against him; that was embarrassing enough. Her body was a heat-seeking missile while she slept, and Reece was an inferno. It wasn’t her fault if she was trying to perform a bit of self-care. Cuddling up next to him while awake was different. Vulnerable.
But hadn’t his story been an act of vulnerability?
He had told it so she didn’t have to sit alone in her guilt over killing the wolf, and now he was offering body heat.
If she didn’t know better, she might think he actually liked her. She refrained from making that sarcastic comment. They were stuck together. They didn’t need to admit their dislike for one another.
She cuddled up close, and once his arm came down around her shoulders, the change was immediate. He was better than a heated blanket. When she shivered again, she told herself it was a natural reaction.
They were sharing body heat. This was survival, nothing more.
For a few minutes neither of them spoke. The fire crackled and settled, sending a lazy curl of smoke drifting sideways in the breeze.
"My mom would have hated this," Delainey said, and wasn’t sure why. Reece clearly won the Childhood Trauma Olympics. But the words wormed their way out anyway.
Reece didn't push.
"She's not outdoorsy." She picked at a splinter on the log.
"She's not really anything-sy. I mean, she's sweet and she tries hard, but she's the kind of person who needs someone to tell her the power bill is overdue, or she'll just…
not notice. My dad was always off doing research for our coven.
Sometimes he was off for months in mystical lands or chasing monsters.
And someone had to make sure the lights stayed on. "
She could hear how she sounded. Like she was complaining, which she wasn't. Her mother wasn't a villain. She was just soft in places that required someone else to be hard.
"It’s whatever." Delainey shrugged under the weight of his arm.
She could have left it there, but the fire and his warmth and the fact that he had bled for her tonight made her add, "I was twelve the first time I called the electric company and pretended to be her.
I thought was pretty convincing. I think that's when I figured out that if something needed doing, I should just do it myself. "
Reece's arm tightened around her, and she let him.
She fit against his side perfectly, her shoulder tucked under his arm, her hip against his thigh, the top of her head just reaching his collarbone. The torn fabric of his shirt was rough against her cheek, and underneath it she could feel the steady thud of his heartbeat.
She had to redirect from her little side trip or risk telling the sob story about how she almost burned down the kitchen in eighth grade.
“How did you feel after?” she asked.
“Things changed,” he said. His thumb moved in slow, absent circles on her upper arm as he spoke, his gaze still on the fire. “I knew I had to get out of the pack, find someplace new. I moved here for the university and found Cole not long after, and he didn’t ask many questions.”
“And it’s better here?” she asked.
She felt him shrug. “There are still fights sometimes, dominance challenges, but none of the bullshit. Cole doesn’t put up with it.”
“That’s good.”
He reached across with his other hand, and their fingers tangled together. Delainey traced her thumb over the back of his palm. She didn’t decide to do it, her fingers moved of their own volition over the muscle and warm skin, the bit of hair there. Reece didn’t tell her to stop, so she didn’t.
The arm around her shoulder tightened, the fingers of that hand making circles on the outside of her arm. Then his fingers trailed down, and he lowered his arm, rubbing his hand over her back.
This was not what they were supposed to be doing. This was not about staying warm.
She needed to pull away and let herself shiver in the chill. She needed to push him away and pretend they could separate more than six feet. She should make him sleep on the other side of a tree.
But a needy sound escaped her mouth, and before she could make another one, Reece covered her lips with his own. Delainey let herself surrender to the kiss.