Page 38 of Wounded Christmas Wolf
“Are youeatingthem?” Nestled into her dad’s old brown coat, Jace seemed to be dealing with the winter weather a lot better than the first day she’d met him. But it still didn’t come as easily to him as it did to her.
“Haven’t you ever caught a snowflake on your tongue?” She tilted her head back. It never ceased to captivate her, the way the spinning, dancing snowflakes looked slightly darker against the pale gray clouds, little pieces of sky breaking free to whirl down toward her face.
“But it wouldn’t taste like anything,” Jace objected. “Anyway, if you really want to eat snow, there’s plenty of it on every fence post.”
“This is different. Like eating fresh picked berries instead of buying them from the store.” She tipped her head back toits normal orientation to look down from the back of the wagon at him. Jace was looking up at her with a mildly baffled expression. Snowflakes peppered his dark hair and the shoulders of the coat.
Jace wrinkled his nose in a frown and then shrugged. “Okay, I’ll eat a snowflake.”
To her surprise and delight, he jumped up in the back of the wagon with her. “Getting closer to the sky so they’re fresher,” he explained.
Holly snort-giggled.
Then Jace tipped his head back and opened his mouth, and she abruptly realized that she had made a mistake. Now she was captivated by the line of his exposed throat and jaw, with its hint of fresh stubble; the pink of his tongue, the unexpectedly vulnerable softness of his parted lips.
He licked a snowflake out of the air, and Holly made an embarrassing squeaking noise.
He was so close. She could barely move in the confined space of the wagon without bumping into him.
She hadn’t prepared herself for this.
She didn’t know if shecouldhave prepared herself for this.
Jace lowered his head and looked down at her. She was caught off guard all over again by how much taller he was. She didn’t normally think of him as that tall—she was used to being around her dad; both of them were over six feet—but he also wasn’t normally this close to her.
His presence felt overwhelming. The intensity of his eyes nearly knocked her off her feet. If she took a couple of steps forward, she would bump against his broad chest.
Then abruptly he took a step back, nearly stumbling over the edge of the wagon.
“Sorry,” he murmured. “Sorry, I can’t—sorry.”
He was looking anywhere but her face. His eyes werepure gold, and he was flexing his hands as if they hurt him. She could see him tensing to jump down.
“Wait.” She reached out and caught him by the hand. He was, as usual, wearing gloves. She had never touched him like this before, and she felt an odd bulkiness through the glove. His hand was curled a little, like there was something wrong with the muscles or the bones.
But he didn’t pull away, instead looking at her searchingly. Some of the brown was back in his eyes.
She kept holding his hand. After a minute, slowly, he turned his hand around in hers so that he could grasp hers back. His fingers felt normal now; she wasn’t sure what she thought she had felt at first.
“Jace, can I—ask you something? Something personal?”
“I guess,” he said. “I mean, yeah.”
Holly sat down in the scattered straw and bits of pine branches in the back of the wagon, drawing him with her by the hand. He could easily have pulled away, but instead he sat down with her. It was strangely cozy, and it smelled nice. Their knees were almost touching. Holly put her arms over her knees to stop herself from taking his hand again.
“What was it you wanted to ask?”
His eyes were mostly brown again, but still with that rim of gold around the pupils.
“I was wondering what the deal is with the gloves,” Holly said. “You don’t have to tell me, of course. It’s just that I don’t know why it is that you wear them so much.” She had seen him a few times now without them, working on equipment in the garage or occasionally in the house, and his hands seemed normal every time she had seen them. “I’d like to know if I might hurt you, if it’s something I should be careful about. Or if it’s nerve damage? You don’t have to tell me, but I’d like to know how I might—like, accommodate you better, if I can.”
“Oh,” he said. “I hadn’t realized it looks like ... no. It’s not something like that. It’s ...” He hesitated a long moment. Then he took one of his gloves off.
Holly opened her mouth to tell him he didn’t have to, then closed it again. Therewassomething wrong with his hand. It seemed odd she had never noticed it; his fingers always seemed perfectly deft. But his hand was slightly curled, the fingers bent and a little shorter than normal. And there was something odd about his fingernails. They looked blacker and narrower than usual.
He hesitated, then held it out. Holly put out her hand carefully, and he placed his hand in hers. It felt like a gesture of trust.
She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed this. The back of his hand was coarsely hairy. The fingernails felt like dull claws; they pricked her gently, but not painfully.
