Page 41 of Lamb

“No. A shape,” I responded, sarcasm saturating my voice, and again enjoyed the scowl sharpening her features.I shrugged, offering her an easy smile as I began to walk back over to her. “Tit for tat.”

She rolled her eyes again, and I liked how the attitude looked on her.

“A color for what?” Ash ignored the comment as I stopped just short of her perch.

“For anything.” I lifted my hands, revealing what I’d grabbed as I placed the simple black-framed sunglasses onto her face.

She jerked back at my touch, the glasses jumping down her nose. She righted them, pushing them back up her bridge, a puzzled look staring through them.

I gave her a wide smile, knowing what reaction I’d get.

“We’re going shopping.”

It had been an impromptu plan, but as we walked—or in Ash’s case, hobbled—into the shopping mall, I patted myself on the back.

This new detour posed potential profits for my plan, starting with Ash clinging desperately to my arm. I was beginning to wonder about the cost of an artificial arm when pins and needles prickled my fingertips as Ash’s death grip cut off my circulation, all the while hissing from next to me for the thirteenth time, “This is such a foolish idea.”

Paranoia hounded her face, tucked tightly into her chin, veiled by only the brim of the baseball hat she’d stolen from my wardrobe as I’d dragged her out of the house. Her eyes were everywhere, suspicion radiating from them like a laser beam,shooting at every man, woman, and child, as if a spy might be disguised inside a stroller.

“If you had been this cautious while traveling, our current situation would have been a tad more unlikely,” I commented, earning myself a laser beam to the pupil. I met her gaze, an easy expression on the face of my adversary. “If you’re looking to blind me in solidarity, then all you have to do is ask.”

“No,” Ash grumbled, turning away from my gaze. “I feel like if I asked, even as a joke, you would grab the closest fork and stab yourself right in the face.”

“Of course.” I shrugged, jostling her weight a little and consequently earning a sharp pinch beneath the navy sleeve of my long trench coat. “Which would you prefer I do first? Left or right?”

I turned to catch her face, leaning close enough to feel her breath rolling over my cheeks, and batted my eyelashes. Our heights weren’t too different from one another, but with a limp, Ash was more hunched and lower from me than usual. I ate up the space with ease, and the sweet, soft scent of the shampoo I’d bought for her wafted into my nose. Something about her smelling exactly like I’d predicted had a purr rolling in the back of my throat.

Ash rolled her eyes, something that had been rare for me before today.

Choosing to leave our debate at that, Ash blanched at my proximity, my cologne not stirring a reaction out of her as it did myself. Perhaps, I ought to try a different brand.

“I can walk on my own,” Ash grumbled, once again trying to free her hand from the crook of my arm.

I pressed my palm over hers, her skin cool as I held it firmly against mine. “You shouldn’t put weight on your foot. It will open your wounds.”

“Then we should have stayed home,” Ash said. I’d heard the words inside my mind before they’d left her lips, reminiscing about the struggle it’d taken to leave the house.

With an open door, I’d expected Ash to fly out of it. But, much to my surprise, Ash had stayed anchored in place, her face paling at the thought of leaving. Her protest had been legendary, and I’d had to pin her arms and legs to her sides as I’d all but thrown her into the car and tied her into her seat belt.

“They are papercuts, at best,” Ash said. “It is an inconvenience compared to a bullet through the chest or anything else I experienced.”

I knew the last part meant her life on the streets, even if she didn’t elaborate. When we’d set up her new identity, we’d given her a card with money loaded on it to get her started. But once Ash had escaped the nest, there hadn’t been a single penny spent from it; it had been a dead end in my search to find her. She’d also been shot six times, so there was that.

“Well, you’re here now, with me,” I answered. “And I made a promise. So long as you stay here, by my side, no harm will come to you.”

“What good is a one-man army against my father with governments, gangs, and the underworld at his beck and call?” Ash shrugged as well as she could with one arm fixed under my own.

“I think you overestimate his influence.” I shrugged again.

“And I think youunderestimate it,”Ash countered.

I thought about it. “War can break with a word. Fire can ravage with a match. An avalanche can fall with a whisper.” I smiled. I knew the foe I had faced, but I’d never met a match I couldn’t best. And I never fought a war I couldn’t win. Some might call it arrogance, but I preferred confidence. It hadn’t guided me wrong yet.

“Very poetic,” Ash said, voice flat, clearly unimpressed. Writing a love letter would be off the list of potential persuasion techniques. “So, which are you—the stone, the match, or the whisper?”

I pulled her in, a gasp slipping from her lips, her foot catching mine, momentum throwing her into my arms. Surprise widened those glossy pale eyes as her glasses slipped down her nose, pupils peering up at mine. I tightened my hold around her waist, the weight of her body against mine uncomfortable, her sharp shoulder pressing into my sternum, but I was hesitant to let it go.

“I can be all you want me to be,” I offered, a free hand lifting to push back the stray hair slipping from her head. I tucked it behind her ears, the tips a soft, blushing red as my finger lingered longer down the trail from her ear, down to her neck. “I can be a reckoning war, a vanquishing hellfire, a mighty avalanche; I can tear down your enemies untilnothingbut ash and dust lay beneath your feet.” I stopped my finger on her throat, the thundering pulse quaking beneath my touch. “If that is what you wish, then I am capable of all of it.”

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