Page 4 of Lost Touch
I was what, exactly? Gross and smelly, probably. Dry-skinned and thin. My hair…a wave of relief swamped me as I realized I could actually remember more or less what I looked like. Curly blond hair, light brown eyes. A sharp nose and full lips.
Probably.
So matted curly blond hair, bloodshot light brown eyes, chapped full lips, and no doubt something horrible had also gone wrong with my nose. Swollen and red? Five enormous zits? Both?
And then needy, broken, helpless, and amnesiac on top of the unprepossessing exterior.
“You need to tell me what I am and not leave me hanging.” I fidgeted with a loose thread coming out of the fluffy blue comforter spread over me. Drew’s quilt, that he’d tucked around me so carefully. God, I really didn’t want to start crying again. “Because from where I’m lying down being pathetic, I’m not worth the effort. You don’t even know me.”
“Don’t fish for compliments,” Drew growled, making me glance up in startlement, my mouth dropping open. Fish for compliments? I hadn’t meant to— “Yeah, I know you weren’t really,” he said, with a wry little smile. “But you can’t possibly be insecure, either, so I’m not buying it. What you are?” He took a deep breath. “This is going to sound so fucked to a human. I’m sorry. But you’re mine. I found you, I brought you home, I carried you out of there. That makes you mine. Not in a creepy way! But, like…I can’t explain it any other way.”
Mine. Bone-deep warmth spread through me as I blinked at him in disbelief. Reassuring, maybe. Protective and more welcome than I could admit. But creepy? Hardly. My creepy-o-meter had been reset so far into the red that a werewolf declaring some kind of claim on me didn’t even nudge it.
Besides, the way he’d described it didn’t sound creepy so much as…
“Like a stray cat?” That thought didn’t sting as much as it should’ve. Maybe I’d run out of self-respect, too, along with nerve sensation and memories, but better a stray cat brought home and petted than a starving alley cat left to die.
“No! It’s not pity!” I raised one eyebrow at him, remembering as I did that I knew how. People found that obnoxious and condescending, right? At least I had that going for me, since I didn’t have many other advantages in the world. “Seriously,” he continued, sounding exasperated now, “it’s not. You’re not a pet. You’re just…mine. It’s not something a human can understand.”
Speaking of condescending.
On the other hand, maybe he had a point. I flashed back to the claws, and the fangs, and the blood everywhere, including all over him and his claws. Not his fangs, thank God, like it’d been on the other…individual’s. I didn’t even know who or what he’d been, and he’d scared the shit out of me. But the man sitting next to me in that chair wasn’t human, either.
And I couldn’t judge his instincts or his mental processes by any measure I had available to me.
“Okay,” I said.
Drew frowned, his thick dark brows drawing together. “Just ‘okay’?”
“Yeah. Okay.” I could accept it. Pet or not, whatever. I didn’t have the energy to worry about it. Besides, I still had that cozy, heated sensation inside me, something I couldn’t really define but that diametrically opposed the feeling I’d had alone and cold and lost and starved in my bleak cell, waiting to be tortured again.
The frown smoothed away, and Drew stood up. “Okay, then.” His smile warmed me all over again. “You need more water. Food. A shower? That sounded good, right?”
I nodded enthusiastically, probably all wide-eyed and eager-looking, and he laughed, a low, mellow chuckle that chased the last of my tension away.
“Come on, then,” he said, reaching for my blankets and laying his other hand over one of mine, giving my fingers a squeeze. It didn’t feel like much besides pressure, but the heat of his skin reached me, at least. “Up and at ’em. You’ll be feeling better in no time.”
I kind of doubted that, but I appreciated the sentiment. I managed to smile back at him, and I took his hand and let him help me up.
Chapter 2
That Should’ve Felt Good
Drew had to be persuaded to let me close the bathroom door, apparently convinced I’d fall over and bash my head and die if he let me out of his sight for so much as an instant.
By the way I had to lean on the sink and pant with the exhaustion of getting out of bed and walking across the room once that door had closed on his worried frown, I thought his concern might be justified.
But I needed a minute alone. I needed privacy. I had to get my bearings without his life-saving but, admittedly, very slightlyoverbearing presence. Not that I blamed him for it given how much help I’d already required. He’d muttered under his breath, while turning as red as a tomato, that he’d been the one taking care of my bodily needs while I lay in bed, and that I shouldn’t be embarrassed. So sure, he’d been caring for me like a cross between a nurse and a mom for more than two freakingweeks, something I put away in the back of my mind to hopefully never see the light of day again, and another hour of letting him keep on keeping on wouldn’t have made much difference.
Still. With that door closed, I could start to recenter, to reclaim a little bit of what it must’ve felt like to be an independent, free adult before…before.
Not that I remembered it.
With my breath coming a bit more easily, I dared to lift my head and look into the mirror.
My breath caught again. I’d remembered my own basic features well enough: the curly blond hair, the shape of my face. But I hadn’t looked in a mirror for so long that seeing it all put together was like being shown a photo of a distant relative you might or might not recognize in the grocery store.
I had a pointy chin to go with my pointy nose and arched blond eyebrows over huge, wide, brown eyes that looked like they’d sunken into my face, with black shadows beneath them.
