Page 12 of Lost Touch
God. Could wolves use guns without opposable thumbs, more to the point, because I really needed someone to shoot me now?
“I’m sorry, that was so stupid,” I said in a rush. “Let’s go in the house. I’m going in the house, okay?”
I scurried up the steps again, reluctant to leave the freedom of the outdoors now that I’d regained it, but desperately eager to get away from the scene of my humiliation.
Still, it’d only be common courtesy to hold the door open for him, right? So I stood right inside the laundry room, hand on the door, waiting expectantly. Drew trotted over and sat at the foot of the steps. Waiting expectantly.
“Are you coming inside?”
He nodded, ears bobbing, but didn’t move otherwise.
I waited. He didn’t move, and his eyes glowed.
And then it dawned on me. He didn’t have any clothes on. If he shifted back, he also wouldn’t have any clothes on, unless werewolves had some kind of fashion magic I’d never heard of.
Had I always blushed this much? Maybe I’d simply never given myself enough of a reason.
“Sorry,” I choked out. “I’ll give you some privacy.”
Fleeing into the living room was for his sake, I told myself. Not because I didn’t want to face him ever again now that he probably thought I’d been standing there waiting to see him naked.
Drew strode in two minutes later as I sat on one of the giant plush couches wondering if I’d ever manage to act like a normal person. He’d put on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt…because that’s why a couple of items of clothing had been sitting on top of the dryer. I had a vague idea, with no way of confirming it, that before I’d been kidnapped my dryer had regularly hosted heaps of clothing with no werewolfery required. This house, with its unhomelike neatness and expensive furniture that looked like no one ever enjoyed it, didn’t feel like the environment I’d create when left to my own devices.
“Hey,” Drew said, standing awkwardly in front of me, as if he felt as uncomfortable in his own expensive and beautiful house as I did. “Sorry. I don’t like to come in before I’ve shifted back. Vacuuming up my own fur is a total bitch.”
Instead of something like,Oh, wow, that must suck, haha, what came out of my mouth was, “I wasn’t trying to see you naked!”
Drew’s mouth dropped open. And then snapped shut. “I didn’t think you were,” he said, with an absence of intonation that made me want to sink through the floor. And then he grinned at me, and it lit up his handsome face like a sunbeam. God, so unfair. I’d seen myself in the mirror again when I got up and hadn’t been all that impressed. “Besides, you already saw me naked. You know, and furry.” He waggled his eyebrows. “All the forest creatures are impressed, let me tell you.”
“Oh, my God,” I gasped, starting to laugh despite myself. “That’s so wrong. Also, for the record, I wasn’t looking that closely.”
He let out a crack of laughter, his eyes lighting up with merriment. “I might look at you a little weird if you had,” he said. “Now come on, let’s make coffee, and then we’ll figure out who the hell you are, okay? I doubt caffeine doesn’t work on you anymore. You’re right, even those assholes weren’t that sadistic.”
I followed him to the kitchen and sat at the table while he made the coffee, chatting to me about the surrounding forest and the wildlife the whole time, making me forget what an idiot I’d been.
Every time he smiled at me I found myself smiling helplessly back.
***
Drew dropped down beside me on the couch with a laptop instead of inviting me into his computer-stuffed Batcave. It made me wonder what the hell he did with all that stuff even more, but those thoughts fled and left me numb and empty-headed when he navigated to a national missing persons site.
He’d sat right next to me, my shoulder brushing his upper arm and our thighs close enough that I could feel the heat of him, but I had to resist the urge to inch even closer. I mean, much closer and I’d have been in his lap, and the laptop already had that spot.
Not that I wanted to be on his lap. But I felt edgy and out of sorts, my mind spinning in circles. His warmth and solidity pulled me in.
I resisted anyway.
“Do you want to do it?” he asked me, his hands hovering over the keyboard.
“No.” I cleared my throat to try to get rid of the rasp in my voice. “You do it.”
He typed in “Asher Stern” and hit enter.
And after a moment of the website thinking about it, in a way that seemed calculated to drive me insane, a result popped up.
I stared at my own face on the screen, my hands clenching into fists. The guy on the screen had the same eyes, lips, nose…identical features to mine. He was me.
But he wasn’t. His bright smile and bright eyes and shiny curls seemed like they belonged in a different reality. The photo looked like a casual snapshot, the kind of thing someone would post on a social media account after a day out with friends.
