Instead of saying what’s on his mind though, he turns his attention back to me, eyes scanning for what I’m guessing are signs of wear and tear. He won’t find any though. My mother used to joke that my skin was made of obsidian, because it would take a hurricane of knives to cut through me. The worst injury I ever had was a sprained ankle from when my foot slipped while Rowland and I were climbing a tree, but according to my mother, even that injury healed as fast as the changing tide.
I might not be strong in muscle, but I am resilient in every meaning of the word.
Satisfied by what he finds—or rather, but what he doesn’t—Rowland nods at me to continue.
“Go on. What happened after?”
His low tone is not too dissimilar from the way he sounds during our late-night rendezvous when he’s whispering deliciously suggestive ideas into my ears.
Warmth settles in the pit of my belly. I’ll be damned if I let it flare to the surface, to heat my pale cheeks.
“There was a ghoul at one of my traps, eating my catch. Before I could kill it or leave, those two showed up. They saw the trap, they knew a human had set it and therefore was likely nearby, and so I did what was necessary to survive. I pretended to be one of them. I couldn’t take them on by myself. And I knew if I led them back here that your sentries could handle them. It was the only way.”
Charcoal eyes burn into mine with the heat of the sun. Under the intensity of his gaze, my skin warms. It scorches. Most would kill to be beneath his glorious rays, but I prefer the safety of the shadows than the sunlight.
I turn around to head for the small table by the window where I know he keeps his spirits. It’s not often I indulge in such things. It’s not that I mind the flavor, nor the inhibited sensations that follow, but generally speaking, I can’t afford to dull my senses with the stuff. You never know when you’ll need your wits. More than anything, I just want to preoccupy my hands with something and to keep them from anxiously fumbling with the vials in my belt.
I open one of the decanters and pour a drink. By the time I finish, Rowland is hobbling across the room to make himself one as well.
“H-here,” I stammer and thrust my glass at him. “You can take mine.”
He looks confused but doesn’t push the matter.
In one swig, he knocks the drink down his throat, then sets the glass back on the table.
It’s then that I notice the distance between us has been swallowed.
No longer can I relish the comfort of knowing there’s an entire desk between us to hold him, and myself, at bay. No longer can I rely on our spacing on opposite sides of the room to assuage those more intimate desires and impede our abilities to act on them.
The lack of space between us sends my heart into a frenzy.
It’s not like when we’re at my place, which is where our encounters usually occur. There, we can keep things between us private. No one knows he comes to visit me, and no one knows I host him.
But here?
His office is nestled in the middle of the compound; we easily passed a couple dozen people making our way here. Some of them I recognized. Others, not so much. But it still means that people know I’m here, and they know I’m with Rowland.
I don’t know why, but the thought of them suspecting that he and I share a relationship that is anything beyond professional makes my stomach twist with knots.
This can’t happen.
Not here.
Before he can get any ideas, I shield my face from his behind a veil of dark hair and shift my attention elsewhere.
Rowland’s breathy laugh summons me back.
“What?” I snap, irritation pricking my skin. “Why are you laughing?”
“It’s nothing,” he says, shaking his head. “You just always do that.”
“Do what exactly?”
After the question leaves my lips, I’m not sure I want him to respond.
Is it that I looked away the minute I started thinking about his full lips on mine? Or was it that I walked halfway across the room, in the hopes that putting some physical distance between us would stop me from wanting to lay him down flat on his back on his desk and ride him until the sun came up?
“That,” he answers, and my heart skips a beat for fear I might’ve said the last part out loud. He points to where my hand rests against my shoulder, hair still caught between my fingers. “You tuck your hair behind your ear whenever you’re—I don’t know, uncomfortable or something.”
