I raise my hand to touch his jaw where he was pressing his now discarded hoodie. But he grabs my wrist to stop me. “And I’m sorry about your dad. I don’t know the why or the how or any of that stuff. But Tempest shared a little bit of it with me and –”
“Tempest should keep her mouth shut,” he says with clenched teeth and his thumb mashing into my pulse.
Even so, I’m not deterred. “I-I’m here though.”
“You’re here for what?”
“If you ever want to talk about it.”
Reed goes silent for a second as if he can’t believe I said that. As if it hasn’t occurred to him that anybody would say that. “You want me to talk about it.”
“Yes.” I throw him a reassuring nod. “Talking helps.”
Again, he goes silent for a few seconds before he replies, “Yeah, no. Talking isn’t what I had in mind. So, you should really call yourself a cab and leave.”
He lets go of my wrist then, ready to dismiss me.
But he doesn’t know that with nothing stopping me, I have free rein.
I have free rein to get even closer to him, free rein to put my hand on his body.
His chest.
Smooth and muscled and hard under his cotton t-shirt. Radiating heat.
As soon as I touch him though, he stops breathing. His chest ceases all motion and he lowers his eyes to look at my hand on his body.
“What is it then?” I whisper and he looks up, his wolf eyes flashing. “What’s on your mind?”
The anger in him, the agitation, is palpable and when he resumes breathing, he becomes even scarier somehow.
It’s like touching a wild animal, petting his hard, lethal body.
But I’m not afraid.
Because strangely I think I can tame him.
Strangely I think I’m the girl to tame this wild mustang.
“Are you sure you want me to answer that?” he asks.
His challenge only makes me caress his chest gently, tenderly, and he clenches his teeth. “Yes. Tell me.”
“I’m warning you, Fae, you need to leave now.”
His muscles buzz under my fingers.
As if his cold, black heart is trying to bust free from the cage of his ribs but doesn’t know how yet.
“Why?”
He leans down over me, his chest pushing back against my hand. “Because my head is all fucked up right now. And this here is my second bottle of vodka. So I’m not exactly thinking.”
In retaliation, I push him back with my hand and close that last inch between us.
So far my backpack was acting like a wall between us but I let it go now. It slips from between our bodies and crashes on the ground with a thud.
Neither of us even spares it a glance though, no.
I’m too busy finally meeting his tall, hard body with mine and he’s too busy being shocked that our bodies are touching.
This isn’t the first time that we’ve touched like this.
Of course not.
He helps me with my routine. He lifts me, assists me in my leaps and turns. He knows what my body feels like. I know what his body feels like too, all hard and smooth.
Powerful.
Like he could push mountains away to make space for his tall self and rip the earth open with his bare hands if he wanted to.
I know all that and yet I’ve never felt his body like this.
Just because I want to. Just because I can.
And neither has he.
For all his bad reputation and villainous intentions, he has not once tried anything with me. He helps me and that’s it.
He’s always been controlled.
Restrained.
Respectful even.
I wonder if I tell my brothers about this, about Reed’s careful nature, what their reactions would be.
“I don’t want you to think,” I say, my neck craned up.
His stomach contracts with a large breath that he exhales as he stares down at me. “You do realize you’re in the middle of nowhere, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Miles away from civilization.”
“I know.”
“So if you scream for help, no one is going to hear you. Not even your four older, fucking useless brothers whose one job was to protect you but they can’t even do that right, can they?”
His rough tone makes my heart race faster. “I won’t scream.”
Another breath whooshes out of him. “You will. If I want you to.” His eyes grow all dark just like the sky around us. “If I make you. And I can make you do a lot of things. In these woods, I’m the god, Fae, and my word is the only word. So if I tell you to get the fuck away from me and out of these woods, you need to do that.”
I don’t listen to him.
Of course I don’t.
He should know by now. Just because he tells me to do something, I’m not going to do it.
Not if I don’t want to.
I’m not the good girl Callie for him.