Page 31 of The Edge of Never

Despite being thoroughly embarrassed by thinking Thane was married only for him to tell me his wife had died, I fell asleep quickly from utter exhaustion. Now, in the morning light, I was still tucked up in the sleeping bag with him. The thought of getting out filled me with dread. It would be freezing, and I didn’t much feel like moving until I absolutely had to.

Each of his breaths made me rise and fall with his chest. His heart was beating steadily under my palm, reassuring me he was okay after fearing for his life last night. And I was very aware of something else going on with his anatomy that I was desperately trying not to think about.

Listen, it’s not his fault. It’s just a thing that happens in the morning. And I’m not going to say anything when he wakes up. That will make it even more awkward between us. As if it isn’t bad enough already.

When I asked him about being married, it was out of curiosity, since he was most vehemently opposed to being naked in front of me. I mean, I didn’t blame him. We were relative strangers, but I was far more concerned about saving his life.

The thought of him being married niggled at me though, especially as we had to spend the night in the valley between two mountains. If he had a wife, then I imagined she would be very worried about him. But the fact he was a widower made me feel even worse. It was clear he didn’t want to talk about it.

Who can blame him? He doesn’t know you. It’s obviously a difficult subject.

I felt for him. Grief was no fun. It broke parts of you that would only heal with time… if at all. Now I wanted to hug him and tell him it would be okay, that I understood how painful it was to lose someone precious to you, but he wouldn’t welcome that. I doubt Thane would welcome much from me, considering he made it clear he didn’t like my company. He tolerated me because he had to. And now we were stuck with each other for the foreseeable future. It was just my luck to be trapped with someone who never wanted to be around me.

I didn’t know what to do with his jealous wife comment either. Did he think I had designs on him? Or that I even considered for one second that what we were doing could be inappropriate? It hadn’t crossed my mind. Survival was my focus. And now he fucked it all up by making it about something else. Something I wasn’t prepared for.

Let’s face it, you’ve been fighting your attraction to him this whole time.

Being attracted to someone didn’t mean I had any interest in acting on it. It would be a complication I didn’t need. My life was already messy enough without throwing him into the mix.

“Are ye awake?”

His voice startled me. I turned my head up to find him staring down at me.

“Yeah.”

Thane adjusted his hold on me. I had almost forgotten his arm had been curled around me all night. I folded my lips inside my mouth when his fingers brushed over the base of my spine.

Don’t react. Don’t react. Don’t fucking react.

My body betrayed me. A shiver made its way down my back, making me shift my hips.

Thane let out a grunt at the movement.

I wanted to die. Involuntarily rubbing myself against his hard dick was not how I wished to start this morning off.

No, you’d rather intentionally rub yourself all over him, so he realises you don’t hate him. And you wouldn’t say no if he reciprocated by rubbing against you.

Not waiting for him to make another sound, I unzipped the sleeping bag and practically flung myself out of it. My cheeks were hot. I pressed my fingers to them as I kept my back to him. I didn’t even care about the cold, despite it hitting me like a ton of bricks.

“Ye okay?”

“Yup, totally great.”

I inwardly cringed at myself. My voice sounded unnaturally chirpy.

“I just have to go… um… relieve myself.”

Thane moved. I could hear him, but I didn’t dare look.

“There’s a shovel in mah pack.”

“A shovel?”

He let out a huff.

“Aye. Ye might need it depending on what ye need tae dae.”

I immediately got the gist of what he was saying. All I needed to do was to pee, but if I needed something else, then I would have to bury it. We had to be responsible while wild camping, even if this hadn’t been our intention and we were in the middle of nowhere.

---