Page 31 of Lost Touch
Good thing I didn’t have a gag reflex.
I settled back down with the too-groomed supermarket clerks to wait it out.
Drew would have to come back to the house eventually, and when he did…I’d be ready.
Chapter 10
Untethered
Drew didn’t come home until long after dark, an hour after I’d given up on seeing him before the morning.
I’d turned off the laptop ages ago, eaten some dinner without any enthusiasm, taken a long, hot shower, and then come back downstairs to lie on the couch and brood.
The creak of the back door opening made me jump, but then the familiar cadence of Drew’s footsteps had me flopping back into the cushions, my heart still pounding a little. The ceiling lights were off, and the single standing lamp by the end of the couch cast his shadow up against the high wall like something out of a nightmare. He looked good, though, because he always did—even if he could’ve stepped out of a different kind of nightmare, or maybe a horror movie, what with the tears in his shirt and shorts, the bits of leaves caught in his wavy hair, and the dirt smudges and fine scratches on his arms and legs.
The scratches disappeared as I watched, his werewolf healing ability wiping them away like they’d never existed, but his whole appearance made me sit up and blink, peering at him more closely.
“Drew? What the hell happened to you? What happened to your clothes?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t feel like shifting today. My mind works a little differently in my wolf form, and I wanted my human wits about me, I guess.”
Getting himself all filthy and scratched and bruised and ruining his clothes didn’t seem like the peak of human mental functioning to me, but hey, what did I know? Anyway, maybe he deserved a pass, what with the medical-magical experimentation, lack of sleep, and raging alpha hormones.
At least I could try to do something about the last one, and maybe even the second, if I could relax him enough to get a few hours of real REM.
I bent my knees and scooted toward one end of the couch, making room for him. “You should sit down and rest.”
To my surprise, he didn’t argue, just crossed to the couch and dropped down a few inches from my toes, letting his head fall back with a sigh and closing his eyes. With leisure to observe him in repose, I could see the clear signs of exhaustion: the dark shadows under his eyes, and the angular lines of his profile, like he hadn’t been eating enough either.
But he still looked like he could leap into action at any moment, what with the faint tension in his muscles even as he apparently relaxed on the couch. I frowned at him. That tension must be why he couldn’t get to sleep easily, or stay that way for more than a couple of hours at a time.
It seemed silly to want to comfort someone as big and strong and deadly as Drew. But I did. I ached to wrap my arms around him, pull his head onto my too-thin shoulder. Nuzzle my face into all that thick hair, leaves and twigs and all. Would he wrap his arms around my waist in turn? Pull me into his lap?
Speaking of. I glanced down. Even soft, the outline of his cock stood out visibly under those thin gym shorts, the way they stretched across his thighs with his legs sprawled like that. He dressed to the right. I’d noticed that before, no matter how much I tried not to.
Screw it. Cuddling might not be all that helpful, but I could take care of him in other ways.
I reached out and laid my hand on his thigh, squeezing a little.
His eyes cracked open, and he turned his head enough to look at me.
“You shouldn’t be touching me,” he said quietly. He sounded resigned, even beaten, and it made my chest clench. Drew shouldn’t feel like that. I flashed back to that moment in my cell when he’d come to rescue me: bloody and half-naked, fanged and clawed…terrifying in the best possible way. No one who could kick that much ass should feel like that. “You know it doesn’t matter how far and how fast I run. I can’t run away from whatever the fuck they did to me.”
“You seemed okay this morning.” I didn’t move my hand, and he tensed under my fingers. “I mean, sort of? Right?”
Drew made a funny sound, his throat working, and looked away. “Seeing you deep-throat your own fingers and then tell me you didn’t have a gag reflex kind of undid whatever progress I’d made trying to get myself under control, Ash.”
Oh. Right. I cleared my throat. “About that.”
His head whipped back again, and he glared at me. “Ash, whatever you’re about to say—”
“I think you should let me blow you.”
“What?” Drew gaped at me in disbelief. “No! Absolutely not. You jerking me off was bad enough—”
“Bad enough? You want to rephrase that, Drew?” I demanded indignantly. I sat up straight and glared at him.
He sat up too, leaning in, eyes starting to glow. “Not ‘bad’ as in ‘bad,’ Ash, ‘bad’ as in I was taking advantage of you and it’s fucked! I was thinking about it while I ran today. I’ll—fuck, I’ll find another shaman. We’ll take a road trip or something. Fuck my family, I’ll tell them to go to hell, that we need to get away for a while. My parents will have to—whatever, they’ll have to deal with it. Like a honeymoon or something. I’ll—think of something. But I can’t use you—”
