Page 57 of Born of Ice

“Tell me what you feel?” I ask him, avoiding his statement.

Exton takes a deep breath, holds it and on the exhale, he lays his head down against my knees, his sleep-mused brown curls nestling onto the blanket and without thinking my fingers reach for them.

Just a graze against his softer than silk hair yet it ignites the tips of my fingers where I touched him.

“Do it again,” he says, and I freeze.

How…? Did he mean my fingers on his hair? I barely brushed against it. No, it must’ve been something else, but then he says, “My hair, do that with your fingers again.” I still and then I reach over again, this time my touch a little more sure, a little bolder and he seems to like it, almost purring like a big cat every time I run my fingers over his curls.

Somehow, this feels intimate, too intimate but neither one of us stops or pulls away.

“I feel at peace,” he says softly with a touch of vulnerability I’ve never expected him to have. “I feel…free.” My breath shutters at his admission.

“And here I thought you didn’t like my small town.” I try to joke, to break out of this…whatever it is, that is swarming the air around us, but to my surprise, Exton doesn’t seem to be eager to move on.

“I wasn’t talking about the town now, was I?” My fingers halt in his hair, but there are no words leaving my mouth, because I’m not sure what he means, so I let the silence take over as we sit and watch the world light up in color.

“How is your first experience with sunrises?” I try to change the subject again.

“Not half as bad as I thought it would be, although the sun could be a bit more accommodating and wake up later.” I laugh at his grumbling tone.

“Damn you, sun, messing with Exton Quinn’s beauty sleep,” I tease him, and after a few seconds he turns to look at me with narrowed eyes.

“Why aren’t you flinching when I’m pinching you?” he asks and I roll my lips to hide the smile.

“I’m going to assume you pinched me on my legs.” I lift my eyebrows playfully. “You know those two useless sticks that can’t feel anything?” I tease him some more even if it’s at my own expense and I don’t mind it one bit, because with Exton it doesn’t feel like an insult. It doesn’t feel like I should be sad about my situation, and to prove my point I see his eyes narrow further but with a glint of something almost wicked in them, and I’m a second too late to see what he plans to do.

Exton pounces on me and I yelp and shriek as he starts pinching and tickling me all over above my waist and I break out in a fit of unstoppable giggles.

“Oh my gosh, stop, you lunatic.” I mean to sound stern but it’s not half as convincing with all the wheezing and squirming and laughing I’m doing.

“Payback is a bitch, little star, and that’s for teasing me,” he says playfully and keeps torturing me as I try to smack him on his hands to stop, but he doesn’t, and I can’t exactly run away from him.

So, I do the only logical thing, I sneak past his hands and start tickling him back.

Exton jumps off me right then and the shriek that escapes his mouth is so loud I burst out laughing even harder, my stomach cramping from the sudden strain I’m putting it through. But that was the most hilarious sound coming from this six five hulk of a man.

“You little evil elf,” he muses and dives right back, his hands all over me as he finds my most ticklish spots.

“Oh my goodness, s-stop…stop. P-please stop,” I try to get out past my laugher.

“Mm-hmm, I stop so you can sneak your little hands past me again? Don’t think so.”

“No, no…I won’t. I promise. I promise! Exton!” I yell out as he unknowingly to him finds my most sensitive spot. Which happens to be right underneath my breast and I nearly fly off the couch when his bare fingers that somehow slipped underneath my shirt, skim the tender skin there.

In a flash, his hands are gone and when I look up, I find him hoovering over me, supported by his arms as his brown locks fall over his forehead and he’s wearing the most peculiar expression. It’s something along the lines of “Got you” and “I wonder where else are you this sensitive” and the one that traps my breath in my lungs is what I’d called the look of “hunger.”

The laughs and giggles cease as my eyes trace the tip of his tongue that peeks out over his plush bottom lip. Forget mybreath, my whole heart is trapped somewhere else in my body—the lower regions—as it heats up and beats wildly.

“Truce?” he asks, his voice husky and low and all I can do is breathe heavily, feeling my chest raising and falling with a strain and nod.

“Y-Yeah, yeah.”

Exton hovers over me for another second, something unspoken lingering in his eyes but then he gets up and hauls me up with him as he carries me back to my room where my wheelchair is waiting.

I look at it as if seeing it for the first time, having completely forgotten about it while we were watching the sunrise and all that followed afterward.

I felt normal, I felt like just a girl, not someone bound to this thing—and not even as the same person who I was before I ended up here—and I almost don’t want to get back in it, but that’s my new reality. One, I’ve made peace with weeks ago.

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