8 #2
Her scent reaches me before she does, and it has the power to make me forget where I am. I want to put my face against her skin and inhale deeply. I dig my hands into my pockets to keep myself from just picking her up and carrying her off, god knows where.
“What happened to you?”
She spares a glance down at herself and brushes off her shirt with her dirty work gloves, managing to both knock specks of soil onto the floor and transfer more onto her clothes.
There’s a smear on her cheek, and even when she pulls off her heavy work gloves, her nails all have a line of dirt under them.
“I was carrying this bag of mulch over my shoulder, and it got caught on my earring, ripped it open.” Ava shrugs, and now I do see the Band-Aid taped around one earlobe. “What about you? Telling the priests all our nasty details?”
“Father Mulcahy isn’t known for keeping things to himself.
” I grimace, and my mouth goes dry once I notice a bead of sweat on her neck.
I feel rabid. I want to pin her against the wall and lick it off her.
I opt for massaging my jaw instead, hoping it’ll lessen the need to put my mouth on any amount at all.
Her eyes dart to the headstone I’m leaning against, and I push off it.
“This is, uh, my aunt.”
“Paying respects?”
“Not really, just getting some fresh air. Just happened to bump into her.”
She laughs, way too loud. Disproportionately so. That was not nearly funny enough for her to laugh that loud.
I blink in the face of it, before I realize, holy shit, I think she actually likes me. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it so clearly before.
Ava stretches an arm, rolls her shoulder. She heads for the nearby stairs of the church, sinking onto one of the steps to rest. “I was going to text you. What are you doing Tuesday night?”
Against every better instinct, I follow, taking a seat on the stairs next to her, already making a mental note to move two previously scheduled calendar items for her. “Nothing, why?”
“You’re going to meet me at the Thirsty Turtle,” she says, and I can’t help but grin.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good little Catholic boy,” Ava teases, but the words pull my heart in two separate directions.
I’m continually terrified of how good it feels to talk to her.
Every moment with Ava walks the line between a nightmare and a wet dream.
Every time she smiles or laughs at something I say, it feels like I’ve both won a prize and sunk deeper into quicksand.
It’s not good for my tooth-grinding problem.
I rub the tight spot just above where my jaw connects. Ava’s eyes track the movement, her brows lifting in question, so I explain: “I grind my teeth a lot, one broke recently and I had to get it fixed.”
“Not another casualty from the wedding?”
“No, before.”
“Oh, it’s like a long, ongoing thing? Do you have like one of those mouth guards you have to wear at night? What color is it?” She pokes my cheek, pressing my lip back to reveal my canines, peering closer, looking for the cracked molar. “Your teeth are so straight.”
I’m honestly unprepared for the intensity of her attention.
“No, but my dentist keeps threatening me with one,” I tell her, and gently cover her hand with mine to tug it away from my face. “Do you need my dental history for something?”
“Just curious,” she answers softly, with an innocent shrug. In the space between us, she takes my hand, curls her fingers through mine and pins my thumb down with hers. “I want to know more about you.”
“You first,” I counter, pushing her thumb off mine. “Tell me something nobody knows.”
“Oh, he wants my secrets?” she returns, raising a brow, but her eyes are now trained on our hands, the dancing glint of her chipped nail polish.
Her hands are smaller than mine, her fingers rounded and shorter. It feels like I should have the advantage here, but she keeps evading all of my attempts to pin her thumb.
If I could ask her for all her secrets, I would. I want as much as she’ll give me, but I hold back, afraid I’ll scare her into being guarded again.
“Just the inconsequential ones,” I murmur into her ear, grazing my teeth against the sensitive shell. She takes in a sharp breath, her head rolling back on my shoulder.
Her smile fades into a more contemplative look. She spears my thumb with hers, and I stare so long at her I don’t even realize when she counts down into another wrestling match and pins my thumb again, claiming victory for herself.
It’s always been a losing battle, to keep myself from falling for her. Sometimes I think it would be the easiest thing in the world to just let it happen.
“I don’t like dogs.”
The words come out a little too loud, ringing against the stairs. It’s not what I expected. I hold still, taking in the weight of that. I can feel her waiting for my reaction.
“. . . What don’t you like?”
Ava rolls her eyes and starts listing off on her fingers. “The way they smell in the rain, the fur shedding, the slobber, the way everyone who says, ‘Oh, it’s ok, they’re harmless off leash,’ doesn’t do anything when they start jumping up on you.”
“Huh.”
“So, now you think I’m a monster,” Ava says pointedly, like I’ve failed her test.
“No . . . I just,” I hedge, getting the sense she was hoping for a different reaction. There’s that tension in my jaw again, and I try to rub it away. “I . . . also don’t love dogs, but for different reasons. Valid ones, I might add.”
“Do tell.”
“I dunno. they just always bark at me. I don’t think I’ve ever met a dog that liked me.”
“I think that’s a red flag.”
“Ouch. Like your thing isn’t a red flag.”
“I guess it’s a good thing we’re both terrible people then.” She sighs, and shifts up onto the stair behind me, tugging me to settle with my back to her, between her knees.
When I turn to look at Ava, she glides her hands up the sides of my neck and gently steers my sight away from her. I lean back into her, and her thumb finds the spot I was rubbing, passing over it gently, with a little more pressure each time.
“There’s not a lot that I put my foot down over, but I told Jackson I didn’t have time to take care of a dog; we didn’t have the space it needed to be happy. I didn’t think it’d make or break us, but that was the end of it.”
I hum a note, nodding a little.
I don’t want to press her for details she’s not ready to give. After all the times she’s declined to tell me anything about herself, this felt like it deserved special reverence.
“I tried to take it back. I tried to tell him I changed my mind. I bought this stupid fucking dog crate to show him I meant it, but it didn’t . . . ” she says, and in the waver of her voice I can hear the shame she feels.
She pulls in a long, slow breath, releases it with a rueful shake of her head. While she speaks, every now and then she drags the tip of her nail down my scalp, combing her fingers through my hair.
“Wasted two years of my life on him. I did it all ‘the right way,’ too, didn’t sleep with him until the third date.
He told me he loved me, and I believed him.
I meant it when I said it to him. I dunno, maybe it doesn’t matter how long you take to get to know someone, he can always turn around and become a stranger in a few seconds. ”
She falls silent for several moments, becoming lost in her thoughts, her hands slowing to a stop against my cheek. I want so desperately to turn around and hold her tight, to assure her she doesn’t have to fear that happening again.
I don’t know that I have the power to keep that promise.
After what she’s been through with her ex, how can I wait around on the hope, no, the expectation, that she’d eventually want something longer term with me?
And in the same thought, I already know I’m deceiving her, withholding my true nature.
I don’t know how I could reveal it to her either, without it playing out the way she just described.
“Sorry, you don’t want to hear me complain about my ex.” Ava sighs and shakes her head. “I didn’t mean to unload all that on you.”
Already I can feel her retreating back into herself. I twist in place to look back at her the best I can.
“It’s alright,” I tell her. My hand lands on her ankle when I reach for her, and I squeeze it. “I asked, didn’t I? I wanted to know.”
Beneath the smear of dirt on her cheek, she blushes. It’s perhaps the first time I’ve seen it. She leans over my shoulder for a kiss that leaves a sharp nip on my lower lip, as well as the taste of her ChapStick.
“You’ve been pretty upfront with me, so maybe you deserve to know too,” she offers softly, a reprisal of our conversation the other night.
I don’t know how to tell her that I haven’t been, so I selfishly let the words die inside me.
Her roaming fingertips glide down the length of my throat, pulling a ragged breath from my chest. She smiles wide, clearly pleased with how I let her toy with me, tracing back up over my Adam’s apple as she draws her hands up to cup my face, resuming her strokes.
I don’t know if it’s just because it’s her, or because she’s genuinely good at that. Maybe I’m genuinely starved for this kind of touch, but I think my jaw relaxes for the first time in months. A few more moments of this, and I’m going to melt into her lap.
I’m doing everything I can to remember exactly why I was trying so hard not to fall for her and coming up short.
Whatever. I’ll happily go to hell for this.
She pulls a hair tie off her wrist and starts to gather up all her hair into a ponytail, and I catch sight of her inner palm, the bandage peeling off it.
Just below the soft part of the heel of her hand, there’s a dark crescent blurring the skin.
The wound cuts a wide, textured path, jagged punctures lead in an arc.
A bite.
I fail to keep my reaction fully to myself, the shock and other emotions move through me in a matter of seconds, and Ava sees.
“You good?”
My heart is pounding fast in my chest. My mate wears the bitemark of a wolf.