Page 66 of Bought for Blood

Neither of us speaks for a second.

“You didn’t have to come here,” he says.

“I know. That’s why I did.”

I watch the words sink in. His hand tightens once on the edge of the door before he lets it go.

He steps back and opens the door all the way.

His room isn’t what I built in my head. There’s a wide bed with the covers turned down on one side. A desk with the papers squared up on it. Books stacked four deep on the floor beside a chair. A fire burning low. Heavy curtains across the whole of the far wall, floor to ceiling, and behind them the shutters I already know are there.

On a table by the window there’s a small silver bird in a silver cage.

I go to the bird before I go to him. The cage is cold. The bird’s beak is open, and there’s a keyhole in the base with no key in it.

“This is pretty,” I say, because now that I’m here, I’m not quite sure what to do next. “Does it sing?”

“It did.” He hasn’t moved from the door. “I paid far too much money for it.”

“For a bird that doesn’t work?”

“For a bird that doesn’t work.”

Of course you did.

I turn around. He’s standing there with his hands at his sides, waiting, and I understand that he’s going to keep waiting all night if I let him.

So I cross the floor.

I get his shirt open, button by button, and he doesn’t move while I do it. The side that faced the fire is warm, and he isn’t. My palms press against his chest and hold there. It always surprises me that I never feel a heartbeat, but for some reason that’s starting to feel right.

His hand comes up and covers mine.

My fingers stop working.

He’s sending me back.

He isn’t. He lifts my hand and presses his cool lips to my palm, then looks into my face.

I wait for a word. A sign. Something.

He puts my hand back on his chest, and I can breathe again.

I push the shirt off his shoulders and put my mouth at the base of his throat. He’s cool everywhere, and all I want to do is warm him. My wolf leans right into it, and I don’t say one word to her about it.

He takes my nightgown up over my head and folds it onto the chair. Folds it. Then he turns back and looks at me, naked in front of him, and doesn’t touch me. I stand there and let him, and my face burns the whole time.

“Say something,” I tell him, voice hoarse.

“I’ve had three centuries of words.”

“Use one.”

“No.” He steps into me. “You’d stop believing me.”

“Try me,” I say.

He moves closer, his fingers threading into my hair as he lowers his face to my cheek.