18. Chapter Eighteen #2
Rook’s hand shot out and grasped the same wrist he’d broken, holding my hand up so he could see how deep the cut was.
He snatched a dishrag off the counter and pressed it against it, making me wince when the skin pinched and more blood oozed out.
I closed my eyes so I couldn’t see it and took a slow, deep breath.
“You, of all people, are scared of blood?” he laughed.
“I’m not afraid of it; I just don’t like it.” Maybe it wouldn’t bother me so much if I hadn’t had most of my mother’s on my hands when I was so young.
“This is going to sting,” Rook said, and that was the only warning he gave before he pulsed warm magic through my hand and the cut burned so hot I had to grit my teeth before it sealed itself. Rook tightened his grip on my arm to make sure I wouldn’t pull away until it was done.
“There,” he said, rubbing his thumb up and down the blue veins of my wrist.
“You studied healing?” I asked, staring at the thin scar where he’d mended the cut.
“People tend to bleed a lot around me.” He finally let go of me, but my arm hovered in the air a moment longer, as if I was trying to hold on to the feeling of his touch.
“Dinner’s ruined,” I muttered, glaring down at the blood-spattered chicken.
“Which means we are ordering takeout. You need to broaden your horizons, England.” He laughed when I scowled at him across the island and leaned in to kiss the frown off my face. When he pulled away, he said, “I know a Thai place. It might surprise you.”
***
“You win,” I admitted, finishing off a carton of noodles. “It’s fucking delicious.”
“Don’t look so mad,” he said, gathering it all and putting it away in my fridge like rummaging about in my kitchen was absolutely normal. “So what’s with that guy who ran?”
I groaned and pressed my palm to my forehead. “Teddy Abner. He was supposed to retrieve payment from a mutual acquaintance for me. Instead, he took the money and ran. My people have tracked him down twice, and both times he slipped through their fingers.”
“Sounds annoying.” He closed the fridge door and flopped aggressively onto my couch. The leather creaked under his arse and I bit my tongue instead of telling him to go easy on my furniture.
“A minor inconvenience. I don’t really need the money, I just need to make an example of him so this doesn’t happen again.”
“That’s the fucking worst,” he said. “Payback only has two sides. Either you catch them, they crumble immediately, and you miss out on the high, or they think they’re tough shit and try to hold out, but by the time you end up breaking them, you’re fucking exhausted.”
“The high?”
“Yeah, you know…you beat information out of someone, you get that adrenaline rush,” he said, but I only stared blankly back at him. “No? Maybe it’s a fighter thing. You don’t feel anything?”
I shook my head. “Annoyance maybe. Honestly, I don’t feel much of anything most of the time.”
I’d never said it out loud. I got pissed off when work was inconvenient.
I often thirsted for revenge, primarily on Death.
The rest of the time? I was numb, running on autopilot the same way my business did.
That feeling of monotony sank into my bones again, but this time it hollowed out something too, or maybe filled a space that was already empty.
“That’s not healthy,” he said, sliding his hand down my forearm to lace our fingers together.
“People are telling me that a lot lately.” I hesitated. “That thing I was looking for? I think I’m close to finding it. Maybe then I can have a life again.”
A real one with anything in it that actually mattered, not the extra ones I ran through.
“You should. Anyway, I'd better go. It’s almost midnight.” He moved to pull his hand away, and I squeezed his fingers between mine, my grip tightening like I needed to hold on to him, as if his fingers were preventing me from slipping into those hollow spaces inside me and getting lost.
“You could stay.” I barely heard myself, but he did.
His thumb rubbed over the inside of my wrist again.
A decision crossed his face, making it hard, then softening his features.
He tugged on my hand, guiding me toward the bedroom and kissing me as we crossed the threshold.
He unbuttoned my shirt, and I didn’t chastise him for the way he tossed it aside.
I grasped the hem of his t-shirt and tugged it over his head, my fingers skimming his ribs.
We removed our own pants and underwear, and when I reached for his half-hard cock, he stopped me.
“Go lie down,” he said. “Just sleep.”
I didn’t know what to do with that. So far, our encounters had been either near-deadly or transactional. We both got off. All wasn’t right in the world, but it was predictable.
I had never felt as uncertain as I did climbing into cool sheets next to Rook, one of his arms slung over my waist. He yanked me closer with a possessiveness bordering on violent, then relaxed next to me, completely at ease, as if all the suffering we’d caused each other had been wiped away.
“Close your eyes.” His were shut, but somehow he knew mine weren’t.
He stroked his fingers up and down my spine, dipping close to my backside and then trailing back up to my shoulders.
The movement soothed all the tension in my body until I suddenly felt heavy against the mattress, and all the little details of him invaded my senses.
The weight of his forearm. The citrus scent.
The even rhythm of his breath. My eyelids drooped until it was just him and me breathing slowly in the dark.
“Why are you doing this?” I whispered, resisting the spell he’d cast that had nothing to do with magic.
I didn’t clarify what I meant, but he understood. “The nice answer or the selfish one?”
“You choose.” I thought about peeking at his face, but as his hand continued to travel my vertebrae, I couldn’t find the strength to open my eyes.
“The selfish answer is that I don’t let people get close enough to touch me—physically or otherwise—not for a long time, and it’s fucking addictive.”
“So you chose to get addicted to the person who tried to kill you?”
His shrug vibrated through his arm. “Addiction isn’t usually a choice, and I tried to kill you first.”
“Mental,” I scoffed. “And the nice answer?”
“I think you need someone to touch you too.”
I let that settle, uncomfortable, but quickly soothed by his fingers that hadn’t stopped dancing.
“I’m a charity case then?”
“I don’t know what the fuck you are,” he said softly. “I just know I don’t want to stop.”