Page 18 of Lost in the Wild

“I guess this is how you keep warm in that cave while you wander around bare chested.” The hair is so thick at first that I hack at it in clumps, watching it tumble down to the sheet below. “Your poor head must be boiling.”

Rowan grunts, staring right ahead.

A few determined snips reveal more of his throat, his neck, his ear. Safe where he can’t see me, I press my lips together, fighting a smile. This is so freaking intimate.

I love touching him like this.

Love that he trusts me enough to let me do this.

And lord, he’s so big and warm and muscly and solid. Even sitting on the spindly wooden chair, Rowan’s head is level with my chest. Getting my hands on him, touching his hair, breathing in the windblown scent of his body… I’m dizzy. My pulse throbs between my thighs, heaving and aching.

Sun spears into this attic room, cooking the dust motes as they spin in the air. We’ve propped open a window, but it’s nothing like the breezy cave. Rowan’s shirt is tossed on the bed, his torso bare beneath the towel again.

Thwump, goes another lock of tangled hair onto the floor.

Thwump.

Good. Riddance.

Don’t know how Rowan feels about this, but I’m riding such a high. Everytime I hack away another heavy chunk of hair, it’s like he sits up straighter in the chair, breathing looser.

“You let it get pretty bad.”

Rowan rumbles his agreement.

“Why?”

He lifts one muscled shoulder in a shrug. And I think that’s all the answer I’m going to get, but half a minute later, Rowan speaks quietly, addressing the wall.

“I don’t have a mirror in the cave. Don’t really think about how I look. And I figured it was getting bad from the stares I got when I came down to town for supplies, but… I guess I didn’t care what anyone thought of me anyway.”

My heart thumps against my rib cage. I tilt my head, cutting slowly to make sure it’s all even. “And now?”

There’s a long pause.

“Now I guess I care.” A faint blush spreads up the back of his neck, but Rowan stares forward at that wall like his life depends on it. “What some people think, I mean. One person.”

Holy moly.

“Your sister?” I guess anyway, though I know full well who he means. “Tess?”

Rowan grunts in disagreement. “She’s my baby sister. She has to love me.”

Those words hang in the quiet attic air, while both of us stop breathing in the golden sunshine. Love him? Love him? A pipe gurgles on the wall, and a blackbird flutters onto the windowsill outside.

Rowan’s hands are balled into fists where they rest on his thighs.

I drag a shaky breath in through my nose.

“I didn’t—I meant—”

“Stop fidgeting.” The flat side of the scissors rap against his shoulder, and Rowan shuts his mouth, jaw tense. “This is a delicate operation, Wild Man. Sit still.”

We can dig into that veiled confession once I’m done transforming the famed cryptid of Starlight Ridge, and no sooner.

Otherwise my hands will never stop trembling long enough to finish this.

Eight

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