Chapter 8 Inga
INGA
“Wait—what—” Inga stammered as Luke began to strip in front of her.
She had seen him naked the day before, of course, but at the time she had primarily been trying to find out if he was all right and get them both to a safe location.
Now she got to see every bit of the glorious body she had been working hard on not thinking about.
He was thin; as she had observed on first seeing him, he clearly had been living rough.
But it was evident that he had been in good shape before that, and whatever he had gone through, it had honed him to lean muscle beneath a light dusting of curly brown hair that was just a few shades darker than the hair brushing his ears and rearranging itself in the breeze off the bay.
Inga tried not to stare, but there was nowhere to look.
Her gaze drifted to his muscular and slightly fuzzy legs, going up to—
“If they put one on me,” Luke said, and she wrenched her eyes back to his face, “it’ll mostly likely be somewhere inconspicuous, I would guess. The inside of my arm or thigh, maybe, but I can check those myself. I need you to look at my back.”
“Um, okay.” Inga hoped her blush wasn’t as visible as she feared, but with her fair coloring, she had always radiated embarrassment with the intensity of a lighthouse. At least his back was one of the least worst options for naked parts of him she could be staring at.
She went around behind him, while Luke was already running his fingertips over the insides of his upper arms and down his forearms. Even his back was sexier than she’d hoped, a lean expanse of muscle that flexed when he moved.
“Uh, what am I looking for?” There were scratches and healing bruises, scrapes and a couple of scars. Even apart from what he’d been through lately, Luke had clearly lived an active, physical life.
“Little scars, maybe a hard bump under the skin.” Luke had finished checking his arms and was now feeling his neck. “I’m hoping if they did put one in me, they did a fast and sloppy job. If they took the time to do it right, we’ll never find anything, but there’s not much we can do about it if so.”
Inga swallowed and hesitantly placed her hand on his back. His skin was warm beneath her palm. “Are you sure you don’t—mind?”
There was a hint of a laugh in his voice, although it was still taut with tension. “I asked you to. Go ahead.”
She ran her hand cautiously down his back, and when he didn’t react, she became a little bolder and began feeling the muscular area around his spine and between his shoulder blades.
He was tight and firm, and she thought that if there really was a microchip here, she ought to be able to feel it.
Luke had very little subcutaneous fat. Any bumps or other anomalies would stand out.
“I don’t think there’s anything here,” she said.
“Go ahead and check my neck and under my hairline. I can’t see back there.”
He leaned forward to start inspecting his legs, and Inga hastily moved around to his side, not least because his legs were slightly spread to keep his balance and from the back, she had a very clear view of his—everything.
Moving didn’t help a whole lot, because now she got a good look at Luke groping his own thighs.
Trying to keep her mind on the important matters, she ran her fingertips up his neck and around the pleasantly soft fringes of his hair.
She kept losing her place, because now Luke was feeling around his own balls.
“Would they put it there?” Her voice rose in a squeak. She had never watched a man grope his balls before.
“Gotta check everywhere,” Luke grunted.
He bent over further to run his hand down to his ankle, which made it even harder for Inga not to notice his .
.. everything she wasn’t noticing. She very firmly returned her attention to exploring his hairline.
There was a noticeable scar behind his ear, a twist of scar tissue as if he had been cut or seared with something there.
She pulled her hand away and glanced down to see the dog sitting on his haunches and looking up at her with his tongue lolling out, as if laughing.
Very funny, furball, Inga thought in the dog’s direction. “I didn’t find anything,” she told Luke, managing to keep her voice mostly normal. “Just a scar behind your ear.”
“Me neither. That was already there.” Luke straightened up, to her relief. “Which doesn’t meant there might not be something we didn’t find, but we’ve done the best we can do.”
“Good,” Inga said. She cleared her throat and turned her back so he could get dressed, trying and failing not to think about the soft warmth of his skin under her fingers. “Why don’t you get dressed again, and let’s go have breakfast.”
Now that she was no longer distracted by all that naked manflesh, she kept thinking, Microchips?
It was possible that the guy was simply crazy. Conspiracy theorists did have beliefs like that sometimes.
But he didn’t seem delusional. And if he had actual reasons to believe it, she wondered what she had gotten herself into.
Back in the cabin, Inga found a tightly sealed can of powdered eggs on one of the shelves.
It wasn’t quite the same as the real thing, but she made a cowboy breakfast with scrambled eggs, a can of beans, and intense black coffee, as well as toast that finished off perishable supplies she had assumed would last her the entire time she was here.
“If you’re feeling up to it, I’d like to walk along the coast for a ways and try to find the Dingboat,” she said.
“Er, that’s my skiff. If we can’t find it, we’ll still be okay; we can walk out if we need to.
But I hate the idea that it’s just gone.
I especially hate it because I didn’t tie it up well enough, and that’s a mainlander’s mistake.
If my brothers find out about it, they’ll never stop giving me grief. ”
“It’s gorgeous out there,” Luke said. He had finally slowed down after shoveling in several helpings of eggs and toast. The dog got a can of stew and the heel-end of the bread. “I’d love to see more of it.”
“Will you be warm enough? There might be a coat in the clothes we left here.”
“I’m not cold,” Luke said. “It’s fine.”
Inga grinned at him. “That’s right, you’re a shifter. So many of my friends are humans that I’m used to looking out for them these days. It’s so relaxing to just go out for a hike with a fellow shifter and not worry if a human is going to be able to keep up, don’t you think?”
“Yeah.” But he had lost his smile. “That’s great.”
She really couldn’t figure him out. The microchip thing was still weird.
Inga had begun to wonder, uncomfortably, if he might have been a victim of—well—an experiment of some kind.
Her brother Eren had been out of touch with his bear for years after the experiences he had gone through.
Could Luke have been through something similar?
If so, it’s not my business, she told herself firmly. She collected a water bottle and a couple of granola bars for snacking on the hike. He’ll tell me if he wants to talk about it.