Page 38 of An Accident Waiting to Dragon

What was he supposed to say? That calling her love was as natural as breathing fire? That he’d been calling her that in his dreams all this time? That he didn’t want to promise that. He’d already promised so many other things that had fucked up his life. Hers, too. “Understood,” he said instead.

Not responding, Gwen crawled around behind him with her coconut of gunk and then started layering on the poultice. Other than an ache like pressing on a day’s old bruise, and the general sense of something wet and sticky, it didn’t feel like much. Certainly not like relief or healing. He wasn’t about to tell her that though.

Gwen cleared her throat. “When did you injure your tail?” she asked.

Asher jerked away from her touch, not ready for that question.

“Sorry,” Gwen murmured, obviously assuming she’d hurt him with the poultice.

He had to force his muscles to unclench, relaxing back toward her as much as he could. Maybe she’d forget she asked.

“This scar is new,” she said. And suddenly a warm finger gently traced the white line of a scar that started at his lower back and ended near his ass crack. “I assume it goes with the tail injury?”

So she wasn’t going to give it up. “It does.”

Silence settled uneasily between them. Or at least uneasily for Asher. He tried damn hard not to show his own tension. They were getting too close to the truths he wasn’t allowed to tell her.

Instead of asking, though, she just waited, the silence growing heavy like the storm hovering in the distance.

Asher debated telling her a lie or maybe a half-truth. But just like thirteen years ago, nothing he could come up with would explain the situation. Nothing but the truth that will kill him to share.

Damn it, Goran.

“You don’t want to know, Gwen.”

Her hands on his back stopped moving, and he could practically feel the tension building inside her, radiating at him hotter and hotter.

“Are you telling me you were injured when Goran…” She trailed off like she couldn’t quite make herself finish the words.

“It’s old history,” Asher said after a moment.

“Which means yes,” she muttered, more to herself than him.

He kept his mouth shut.

After another minute, Gwen continued with her poultice. She said nothing more until she’d applied it all, then stuck a hand out in front of him, ostensibly for the bandage, which he gave her. Only when she went to wrap it around him, she practically plastered herself along his side in the attempt.

Didn’t she know she was playing with fire touching him like that? Even platonically. He’d had his cock buried inside her this morning on the strength of a fucking dream.

Asher twitched in her grasp, then sort of wriggled out of her touch. “Let me.”

He took the cloth from her hands before she could protest and secured it around himself, feeding the two ends back to her. Once she’d tied it, she got to her feet. He expected her to wash out the coconut, or start filling the unused ones with water, or something.

He didn’t expect her to move around to sit on a nearby rock facing him, her chin jutting stubbornly and lips a grim line. “Now that that’s done, I want to hear what happened that day.”

Fuck.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Gwen

* * *

Talk to me. Please.

Gwen kept her gaze on Asher’s, willing him to finally be honest with her.

All she knew was that, without telling his family, Goran had chosen to help Asher spy. He’d been captured by Thanatos, who’d used him to test Asher’s loyalty, and he’d died because of it.

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