Page 10 of Lost Touch
“Are you sure they’re all dead?” I demanded. Shouted, actually. Well, maybe shrieked. “Everyone there. All of them. Because I want to fucking kill them all over again!”
“Ash, are you—”
“I don’t know if it doesn’t have enough salt. Or too much. You could’ve put the whole goddamn Dead Sea in there and I wouldn’t notice until my tongue shriveled up and I died!”
I shoved at the bowl, pushing it halfway across the table and slopping a glob of beans and sour cream onto the now not-as-shiny surface. And fuck, I knew I was behaving like a petulant child. But my stomach had started growling and the tears were starting to come, and—I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t take anything else.
“I can’t taste anything,” I finished. “Nothing. It’s—it’slumpy,” I wailed, sounding so pathetic I didn’t even recognize my own voice. And then I dropped my head in my hands and hyperventilated, my heart thrumming through my limbs until I vibrated.
Drew got up. I knew that by the screech of his chair legs and then the sound of his footsteps crossing the kitchen. A couple of little thumps and scrapes, the fridge opening and then closing again.
He didn’t say a word.
Had I finally hit the limit of what he could deal with from me? Cleaning me up when I pissed myself—and in his own bed, no less. Biting me so that his family didn’t dump me in a ditch. Pretending to be my mate. Hiring doctors and shamans and experts to examine me and keep me alive, and if you couldn’t get a pizza delivery out here where he lived, I doubted the doctor’s house call had come cheap.
Another soft thunk and clink from right in front of me made me peek through my fingers. My chili had gone away, the table was shiny again, and in place of my previous meal sat a bowl of what appeared to be plain yogurt with honey drizzled on the top.
Drew’s hand landed on my shoulder, and he gave it a gentle squeeze. “I know you can’t taste the honey, either. But it’s the same texture. And I can’t just give you a bowl of fucking yogurt without feeling like an asshole.” He sighed. “I’ll get lots of ice cream without any bits in it for the calories. Smooth stuff. Oh, and sliced apples. Those’ll be crunchy but not weird-feeling.”
Yeah, if he meant to turn me into a sex slave, I could only imagine the horrors he’d inflict on me. Asking me what position I’d be most comfortable chained in, no doubt, and then apologizing if he hogged the blankets.
“Is this what you meant when you said I was yours?” I asked him. “That you’re going to wait on me hand and foot?”
Drew sighed again and took his seat, picking up his own spoon and poking at his chili. “I guess it does. I hope that’s worth the biting. And the lying. I’m truly so fucking sorry, Ash. I can’t tell you how much. About all of this.”
“It’s worth it.” I picked up my spoon, winced in anticipation, and took a bite of the yogurt. It tasted like smoothness and coolness. I could tolerate it. I took another bite, swallowed, and said, “You know, being your stray cat isn’t so bad. As long as you don’t start feeding me that fish stuff in a can.”
I looked up, our eyes met…and we both burst into laughter, his eyes lighting up not with his alpha glow but with amusement and mischief. It made him impossibly handsome, like the moment the magazine cover photographer had been waiting for to capture and sell for a million dollars.
“Would it matter?” he asked me, his voice still full of laughter. “At least you wouldn’t be able to taste it. Silver lining, right?”
It was a little too soon for that joke, but I appreciated it anyway. I had to either laugh or cry at this point, and I was done with crying.
“Yeah,” I said, and took another bite of yogurt. Still smooth. And cold. Slightly sticky. Fuck my life. I managed to smile at him, not all that hard given the glint in his eyes and the infectious upward curl of those firm lips of his. “Yeah, silver lining.”
We ate the rest of our food in comfortable silence, and I almost felt like a person while we did, deadened nerves and scars and all.
Chapter 4
What Are Fake Mates For, Anyway?
Eating and drinking led inevitably to my needing a nap, my body overwhelmed by the activity and the calories. Drew had to half-carry me up the stairs and pour me into his bed, and when he pulled that fluffy comforter up to my neck and tucked me in I passed out within seconds.
I crawled out of bed again some unknown number of hours later, feeling at last almost like I might be on the way to recovering some of my physical strength. Using the bathroom and brushing my teeth didn’t take all the energy I had, for one thing.
Somehow I’d slept long enough that dawn had barely broken as I got up. Christ, it must’ve been close to twelve hours.
But when I poked my nose out of the bedroom, the door of the guest room stood open, with no sign of Drew.
Either he was a freakishly early riser or a freakishly dedicated night owl.
I headed downstairs, pleased when my knees didn’t give out.
But that happiness faded into a hollow, chilled sort of loneliness when I didn’t find Drew in the massive living room or making coffee in the kitchen.
I explored more of the downstairs, feeling a bit like Bluebeard’s bride and a lot like a rude asshole, but driven to find Drew by a niggling in my gut like incipient panic. The house felt so empty. What if something had happened to him? What if he’d been kidnapped again, or his uncle had dragged him off into the woods, or who the hell knew what?
An office space filled with more computer equipment than I’d ever seen in my life—well, okay, I had no idea if I’d seen that many computers before, but it certainly seemed like a lot—held my attention for a moment, but Drew wasn’t there, so I moved on. A closet with some coats and a vacuum cleaner, the walk-in pantry off the kitchen, and the laundry room behind it didn’t yield anything of interest.
