Chapter Eight #3
Because the problem, the genuinely inconvenient complication developing in my chest, is that the way I’m thinking about him isn’t only hunger anymore.
It hasn’t been only hunger since he came into that basement room and held my panic as if it were tangible.
Since his hands wrapped around my arms and steadied me, firm without hurting, unmovable without being cruel.
I remember the shape of his biceps beneath my fingers when I grabbed him, and he didn’t flinch. He didn’t pull away.
I remember the way he lifted me off the floor when my knees failed. The way his body aligned with mine, chest to chest, thigh to thigh, the hard length of him an unmistakable presence even through layers of fabric.
Not accidental.
Not imagined.
My stomach flips.
That wasn’t bloodlust.
That was something else.
He knew my name without being told. Sat beside me on this bed and said ‘You’re not a monster,’ with the calm certainty of someone who had run the calculation and chosen the outcome deliberately.
No pity.
No softness.
Authority.
My hunger shifts again.
It loosens its grip on my throat and drifts lower, warmer, coiling in places that have nothing to do with survival and everything to do with friction, proximity and the memory of being held by a body built to overpower and protect in equal measure.
I picture his hands on my waist.
Not restraining.
Holding.
My breath catches.
This is deeply unhelpful.
I’m sitting in the firelight of a cabin at the edge of the known world with a half-empty container of cow’s blood, a supernatural identity crisis, and instead of spiraling exclusively about eternal damnation, I’m replaying the way his forearm flexed when he reached for me.
I notice things now.
The width of his shoulders. The way his shirt pulls across his back. The controlled way he moves, a predator contained within his skin.
The hunger isn’t gone.
It’s redirected.
And that might be worse.
Because blood is simple.
This isn’t.
Charlotte Harris, I think, staring into the fire while my pulse stutters in a rhythm that has nothing to do with thirst. You are in so much trouble.
The fire crackles its cheerful indifference.
The hunger settles to a low, persistent hum.
And somewhere in the next room, Rogue breathes in the dark, steady, patient, and unaware that I’ve been tracking the structure of everything he is.
I stare at the ceiling and decide I need considerably more cow’s blood and considerably less proximity to that ridiculously attractive man until I have significantly better control of myself than I currently do.
This is what passes for a plan, given the circumstances.
It’s not a great plan.
But it’s the only one I’ve got.
And now that my hunger is tempered a little, and I feel slightly more human, if I can even say that anymore, I need to get out of these bloodstained clothes and wash all this blood off me.
Creeping to the door, I slowly pop it open and sneak across the hall to the bathroom. As I close the door behind me to finally have a shower, I turn to see fresh towels folded on the counter and a pile of clothes beside them.
His clothes.
I don’t know how I know before I even touch them, some combination of size, scent, and the way they’re folded with more care than anyone folds their own laundry.
A soft gray T-shirt that looks like it’ll swallow me.
Flannel pants with a drawstring I’ll have to pull tight to keep them on my hips.
And a hoodie, dark and worn soft, that carries his scent in a way I can smell from three feet away—warm earth, leather, and something feral underneath that has no business making my throat go tight the way it does.
My body reacts before my brain catches up.
Of course he gave me his clothes.
Because my options were the blood-stained outfit I died in or whatever he could pull from his own pack. And of course, he knew I would come in here before I even did.
This man is prepared for everything.
And I am honestly so grateful for that right now, but I would never tell him that.
But knowing him, he probably already knows.
Asshole!
Half an hour later, I push open the bathroom door, freshly showered, dressed in his hoodie and flannel shorts with the drawstring pulled as tight as it goes, which is still not tight enough, and a soft gray shirt that falls to mid-thigh.
Rogue is in the hall.
He looks up.
And then he goes very, very still.
His eyes drag over me once, slow and unmistakable, taking in the oversized hoodie swallowing my hands, the bare stretch of my legs beneath the hem of the shirt, the fact that I’m standing in his clothes looking like I belong in them.
Heat flashes low in my stomach so suddenly it almost knocks me off balance.
Something moves across his face before he locks it down again, quick enough that I almost miss it.
Almost.
“They fit,” I say, and my voice comes out rougher than I anticipated.
His gaze flicks back to mine, but not before it drops once more, enough to make that strange pull between us spark hard beneath my skin.
“They fit,” he agrees, voice lower now.
The air between us tightens, so I pull the hoodie sleeves down over my hands mostly because I need something to do with them and look up at him. “Thank you… for thinking of it.”
His eyes hold mine for one dangerous second too long.
“Go to sleep, Charlotte.”
“That’s not a you’re welcome,” I sass, because the alternative is standing here reacting to him like my body’s forgotten how to behave.
One corner of his mouth threatens to move. “Go.” He steps aside from the doorway, jaw tight now, like putting distance between us has become an active effort. “Sleep.”
I brush past him toward the bedroom, and his hand catches mine for half a second in the narrow space between us, skin against skin, and the reaction is immediate.
A sharp spark tears through me, hot enough to steal the air from my lungs.
My body jolts around it instinctively, every nerve ending suddenly awake, the pull between us surging hard enough to feel physical.
Rogue goes still behind me.
Not frozen.
Aware.
I feel it in the sudden tension that snaps through him, the hitch in the air between us, like both of us are registering the same thing and neither one knows what the hell to do with it.
His fingers loosen immediately.
Too immediately.
Warmth lingers against my skin anyway.
I don’t look back.
But I’m smiling when the door closes.