Page 39 of Running Feral

He nods, though.

“You?” he asks, his voice raspy. “Did you?”

I shake my head. “I can do that later. It’s fine. Right now, I want this.”

Tobias doesn’t argue, thank fuck. He shifts back into the position he was in before, but his posture is more relaxed this time. His fingers trace their way through my chest hair as he tucks his head under my chin and places the occasional kiss on my neck.

Yeah, I’m fucked. I could never come again, and this would still be all I wanted.

Absolutely fucked.

Chapter Thirteen

Waking up in a bed for the first time all week is surreal. I’d gotten used to the couch. The comforting flicker of the TV chased away the kind of still darkness that I always find unnerving. And once Gunnar had started joining me there, it was a done deal. I was actually sleeping.

After last night though, he convinced me we needed to sleep somewhere fully horizontal for a change. He was right, of course. It couldn’t possibly have been comfortable for him to curl up on that thing with me lying on top of him and him still in his fancy-ass street clothes. That doesn’t mean that all this space isn’t a little disconcerting.

As soon as wakefulness begins to filter through my synapses, I make the conscious decision not to open my eyes. I do, however, reach for Gunnar. It’s warm underneath all these blankets, and my face is buried in the soft edges of them. My hands grope around underneath until I find the thick, solid lines of him before shuffling closer.

He’s dressed. He insisted on putting on some buttery-soft sweats and a t-shirt to sleep in last night, even though I told him he didn’t have to. He was undeterrable, though. It’s hard to tell which of his sticking points are about him being weird in general and which are about him thinking he knows what’s best for me, but I decided it wasn’t worth the fight on this one.

I’ll get him naked, eventually. Just the glimpse of him shirtless last night was not enough. I was too in a daze, lost in the struggle between intense pleasure and whatever else I was feeling to put my focus where it really belonged. But everything about him is just as inviting externally as internally.

He’s muscular and strong, probably from years of lifting heavy shit at the bar, but he’s not cut. I like it. Soft skin over a body that’s just… firm. Solid. There. And everything about him contributes to his overall impression of size.

Gunnar seems larger than life to me most of the time, and watching him sweaty and panting in the low light, like a dark, shadowy version of himself that’s all intensity, didn’t do anything to change that.

But the feverish way he looked at me and kissed me had nothing on how he touched me. That was light—gentle, but not like I’m fragile—this incredible counterpoint to the rest of it.

I could swim around in a vat of all those endorphins and images for hours until I drowned, and I’d die happy.

“Are you awake, or are you just burrowing in your sleep?” Gunnar says when I find his arm and thread my head through it, fully ensconcing myself in both his body and the covers.

“I’m not awake.”

“Ah.” His voice is just as thick with sleep as mine, but he turns a little onto his side, throwing his other arm and one leg over me, as if he could pull me any closer. “That’s what I thought. An unconscious burrower. Of course.”

I huff into his warm skin, but then focus on letting his scent wrap around me in exactly the same way his body is.

I never put any stock in the idea of someone ‘saving’ me. I wasn’t the type of person to sit around daydreaming about being swept off my feet by some guy who would keep me safe. Because there’s no such thing. ‘Safe’ is a fragile, fictional concept and people are inherently unreliable.

Even the good ones who want to be there for you. Even Gunnar.

You never know what circumstances are going to hit.

But right now, I feel pretty safe. It’s just not in the way I thought that fantasy was supposed to be selling me. I’m just as scared of Eamon as I was yesterday. The idea of him creeping up the stairs to break in still sends my nervous system into a fractious, incendiary meltdown. And while I know it’s unlikely, if he really did burst in through those doors, I don’t think Gunnar would physically make a damn bit of difference in the outcome.

In fact, it would probably just be worse. I’d have to watch Eamon hurt Gunnar before he finally shoved me back into captivity.

The reality of my existence hasn’t changed, and my perception of it hasn’t changed.

So why do Ifeelsafe?

It doesn’t make any sense. I’m not going to argue, though. I’ll hang on to this feeling for as long as it lasts.

Gunnar is more than that, anyway. I’d want him even if he didn’t make me feel a damn thing other than the same pervasive fascination I’ve always had with him. His understated but obvious intelligence, his gentle brand of strength, his misplaced bleeding-heart compassion. All of it. It sucked me in too hard and I refuse to be spat out anytime soon.

These are the thoughts that work their way through the layers of my sluggish mind as I press kisses and scrape my teeth overevery part of him I can reach. Most of it is through the cotton of his t-shirt, but it makes him squirm all the same.

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