Page 86 of Run Like the Devil

I hated the sight of her skin against mine, of how different we appeared when she touched me. It showed off how incompatible we truly were…

She belonged nowhere near my true form.

“I need to start a fire,” I told her. “In the Path, you won’t heal as quickly as you would elsewhere. The cold here will only make that worse.” I tugged at my hand, but she refused to let go. I could have yanked away, but I couldn’t bring myself to do so, to potentially harm her. “You need to let go.”

Loch shook her head and tugged at my hand until I came closer. She pressed at my shoulder, making me sit, then crawled into my lap without hesitation. She rested her head against my chest and pulled at my arms until I wrapped them around her. “You’re warmer than a fire.”

I couldn’t stop myself from laughing at the moment, at myself, at her. I shook my head and gave in, holding her and trying to ignore just how much I enjoyed it. My arms wrapped around her more, dwarfing her because of how much larger this form was. “You know, you remind me of that cat.”

“What cat?”

“The one from Wayne’s house.”

She snorted softly and nuzzled her cheek against my chest. Her shivering had stopped. “You mean the one you chased instead of helping me?”

“I helped you when you needed it. Even if I don’t seem like it, I’m always looking out for you. See, I had to chase that cat, and it was not a fan at first.”

“I remember the scratches.”

“Eventually, it crawled into my lap just like this, as if it decided I wasn’t so bad.”

“That happens a lot with you, doesn’t it? Things don’t like you, but they eventually come around.”

I rubbed my hands over her arms, grateful to see the goosebumps disappearing. “Those things come around because they see only the mask I show them. I don’t understand how you can do that, how you can be here with me like this when you know the truth.”

Loch sighed and her breath blew across my chest. “You’re too hard on yourself. I keep telling you, I don’t care what you look like. I don’t care where you came from or what form you have or any of it. Those things don’t matter to me. I know everything I need to about you.” She frowned and touched her leg. “Did you do something? My hip still hurts but I can move it now.”

“I put it back into place.”

“Well fuck, I’m glad I don’t remember that.” She relaxed in my arms in a way I never thought anyone would do, not with me in this form. It felt so much like when she’d cried, when I’d held her and she’d sank into me.

I’d thought that was gone forever, that I’d never experience that again.

Leave it to Loch to never do as I expected from her.

“Guardian is keeping his distance.”

“Yeah, well, he’s licking his wounds.” She twisted her face to look up at me, the familiar smirk of a troublemaker on her lips. “I may have used a pointy stick and stabbed him in his goods. Well, I mean, I don’t know if his tentacles are his goods, but still…”

“Both squid and octopus use a modified arm to impregnate females,” I offered, the fact sliding from me without thought. As soon as I said it, though, I froze.

Loch didn’t seem thrown by the odd trivia, though. Instead, she pushed at my chest so she could see my face clearly. “That’s the first time in a while you’ve told me some weird fact I really never wanted to know.”

I went to turn my face away at the reminder that I was strange.

She set a hand on my cheek to stop me, to make me look back at her. “I missed it. Please, feel free to tell me all the weird shit you want, because when you don’t?” She stroked her thumb over my cheek, showing no signs that my real form bothered her, that the smooth, hard skin, the strange features threw her at all. “It makes me feel lonely.”

Her words felt like a rope thrown down a deep hole, the first time anything she said really got through to me, got past the doubts in my head, the fears that had grown so much through the manipulation from the Path.

Before I could respond, she turned away and frowned.

“What is it?”

“Just before I passed out, I saw something.”

“What?”

“People.”

---