Page 24 of Dark & Dreadful Brutes

I tried not to react as his gaze scanned my flame-clad figure clinically, looking at my wounds without paying any attention to the rest of me. My body heated when his gigantic hands landed on my hips and carefully turned me around so he could see my back.

When he released me and stood, his motions were stiff and uncomfortable. He walked back to the backpack he’d dropped next to Gleam, picking it up silently and digging through it.

When he pulled out a long-sleeved dress and some tiny strips of fabric, I frowned. “My flames will probably burn that.”

“Not if I’m holding it.” Ravv grabbed one of the strips of fabric—it resembled two triangles sewn together, with a few extra bits of glorified string—and maneuvered the glorified string bits over my arms. He adjusted a band of it around my back, and then fastened it between my nearly-nonexistent breasts.

I stayed silent, my body flushing at the contact between his knuckles and my breasts.

He stepped my feet into the other undergarment one at a time, pulling it into place over my ass and lady bits. Then, he slid the dress over my head and slipped my arms through. The fabric was insanely soft and clung in all the right places, form-fitting enough that most human women wouldn’t have even considered wearing it.

It fell to my feet, which I thought would make riding with Ravv and Gleam a bit difficult—but Ravv’s ice sliced through the skirt, then, cutting its length to the middle of my thighs.

“I don’t know how you’re preventing that from burning,” I told him, as he stepped backward and gave my dress a critical look.

He turned me around with one hand, his gaze lingering on my body. He ignored my remark and said, “You’re already gaining a bit of weight.”

My face warmed.

I started to say something in my defense, but before I got the words out, he added, “You look good.”

The compliment caught me off guard, and I went silent.

He added, “Mates can heal each other by exchanging blood. If you’re still bruised by the time we reach Jirev, you’ll drink my blood to recover.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I changed the subject. “I can’t ride on Gleam’s back, obviously.” I was still on fire, so that was out of the question.

“No.” He hauled me off my feet, with one of his arms beneath my knees and the other around my lower back. It was entirely different from the way the gargoyle had held me, and made me feel closer to him, somehow.

My face pressed to his chest, and I realized the intimacy of it didn’t bother me at all.

I trusted him… more than I probably should’ve.

Enough to relax against him as he started to run.

The sweat and sand coating his skin didn’t bother me anymore. If anything, they made me feel safer.

Because they meant that Ravv had come after me when someone tried to take me captive. And someone willing to protect me without stopping to question it was someone I never wanted to walk away from.

Ravv ran through the darkness for a few hours before he finally slowed and then stopped. There were deep circles beneath his eyes, and exhaustion in his shoulders.

He built us a shelter with the last of his energy, then collapsed inside it without so much as a mention of me sleeping alone.

My fire was still burning, so I just sat down on the sand.

After that much running, there was sand everywhere. In my mouth. In my eyes. On my skin. Under my nails.

I may as well have been made of the damn stuff.

“Are you alright?” Gleam asked me, plopping down a few feet away from me. She was just far enough that my fire didn’t have a chance of reaching her, which I was immensely glad about.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, pulling my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around them.

I had finally started to feel a little less powerless, and then…

My eyes moved over the hand-shaped bruises on my legs.

My sight at night was much better than it had been in the cellar, which I assumed had something to do with my connection to Ravv.

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