Page 115 of The Piece You Stole

I never know how she decides who she needs, but this time, she seemed to need me.

We almost never talk.

It’s just sleep. Just comfort.

Maybe that’s what Kade meant.

But she’s gone now. I dart a glance at the alarm clock on my bedside table. Two a.m. It isn’t like her to return to her room in the middle of the night. Once she’s crawled into bed with me, she’s there until I wake up at six or seven to find her cuddling up to me, still deep asleep.

I shift my focus to the open doorway. Thedarkhallway outside and wonder if I shouldn’t follow her to her room.

She could have had a nightmare, or maybe she just wanted to be alone.

It’s times like this I don’t think I’d mind being a shifter. I’d have known the second I woke where she was in the house, and if she was sleeping or awake. But then I remember Dariel’s years-long battle with his wolf, and I immediately reject the idea. I want no part of that.

I’m lying there, undecided about what I should do when a soft, female gasp rips me from the bed.

The hallway lights are off. What if Saige was on her way down the stairs for water and fell…?

My feet are soundless as I tear out of my bedroom, sprint down the hallway, and then jerk to a stop.

Because I was right.

Saige fell.

She must have for Dariel to be holding her like that.

It’s been three years since I’ve seen Dariel put his hands on a woman. Nica. She wouldn’t have felt that last touch, not with all the blood pooling around her. But she was the last. Until now.

I feel like I’ve stumbled into a photograph. Dariel’s hands grip Saige by the upper arms. Her bare feet hang behind her, her toes still touching the stairs, and her breasts smashed against his chest. Exactly as if she’d fallen.

Neither one of them seems to be breathing as she gazes up at him. In shock, fear, or terror, it’s hard to know—or even see from this angle. But she’s staring up at him, that much I know. His chest is rising and falling hard as he peers down into her face, a look in his eyes like he never intends on letting her go.

Right now, no wolf is lunging out of him. But as if my thought called the animal to the surface, his emerald-green stare sharpens, and his wolf takes up residence in his eyes.

Saige’s body tenses, and I take a step down, ready to wake Kade in case this situation turns violent. “Dariel?”

They peel away from each other so fast, it’s as if I’ve walked in on them doing something they shouldn’t have been. As she retreats toward me, she smooths her hair down with one trembling, bandaged palm. Dariel spins on his heel and stalks toward the backyard door.

Shifting my focus to Saige, I find she’s watching him walk away. “Saige?”

She wrenches her gaze to me, the red flush spilling over her cheeks visible even in the darkness.

Pretending I don’t see it, or that I didn’t feel the strange moment I just walked into, I smile. “Are you okay?”

As she makes her way up the stairs, there’s a tension in her shoulders that makes me think she wants to look back. “I tripped. Dariel.” She pauses. “He caught me. I’d have thought he would just let me fall. You know, after the—”

Sliding my hand around her slender hip, I guide her back to my room. “He wouldn’t have let you fall down the stairs.”

I’d joked about Dariel’s instincts waking up in time to catch Saige should she ever fall down a set of stairs. Is that what just happened, or was this something else?

We climb into bed together. It’s not a particularly cold night, but that doesn’t stop us from burrowing closer. Her small hands, still covered by the thin gauze I taped over the still-healing tiny cuts, are rough as they slide over my bare back, and she presses her face against my throat.

Slowly, I smooth my hand up and down her t-shirt-covered back as I draw her closer. Inhaling her sweet jasmine scent, and that something indescribable I never realized I could do without until it was right there, I fight with myself not to demand more. I’m gentle. I canbegentle. But I’ve been half-starved for so long, and Saige makes mewant.

This isn’t the same comfortable burrowing together that we had before. Her touch is too restless for that. She moves like a woman who needs more than sleep. Trust Kade to see it before I did.

In a thin pair of cotton sleep shorts, there’s no way Saige can’t feel my arousal. And there’s no way I can’t feel her body’s heat inflaming me.

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