Page 62 of Rune’s Solace

That nearly undid me more than anything.

Rune was always so controlled. Rune knew what to do with a bleeding man and a dying plant and a terrified girl on a parking-garage floor. He could sit still for six hours while I slept wrapped around him and never let one inch of what he wanted touch me.

And I could make that man shake.

The knowledge went through me hot.

I don’t remember deciding to move toward the bed. I remember his mouth coming back to mine, and my fingers sliding into the hair at the back of his head, and the low sound he made when I pulled him closer, and then the mattress caught the backs of my knees.

I sat.

Rune didn’t.

Not right away.

He stood between my knees looking down at me, breathing hard, and I’d never seen him look less like the man who knew what to do with everything. His hands opened and closed once at his sides, like touching me had suddenly become the most dangerous thing he’d ever done, and the sight of it, the sight of Rune barely holding himself together because of me, sent heat rolling through me so fast I forgot to be nervous.

So I reached for him.

His eyes dropped to my hands where I’d caught the front of his shirt.

“Amy.”

There was a warning in it, except I wasn’t sure anymore which one of us he was warning.

“I know.”

I pulled.

That was when he came down over me. He held his weight away, forehead settling against mine while we both tried to breathe, and when his hand slipped beneath the hem of the shirt I was wearing—his shirt—and stopped at my waist, his palm rough and hot against my bare skin, my breath caught.

His did too.

That surprised me enough to look at him.

Rune wasn’t looking at my body. He was looking at my face, watching me so closely I had the strange feeling he could hear every thought going through my head, but his jaw had locked hard enough to show me exactly what having his hand on my bare skin was doing to him.

I shivered.

He stopped instantly. “Okay?”

And God, that voice. Rough and filled with need, while his hand stayed perfectly still against my side. I could’ve said stop. Instead I covered his hand with mine and moved it a little higher.

His eyes closed for half a second.

That tiny loss of control went straight through me.

“Yeah,” I whispered. “Keep going.”

So he did.

And for a little while, there was nothing in the world but him.

* * *

And then, somewhere in it, the other thing came.

It always comes. I should have known it would come. His weight came fully over me and for one second my body forgot where it was, forgot it was him, forgot the lamp, forgot the last year, and the old fears fired all at once, the hallway, the dark, the door that doesn’t lock, and I went rigid underneath him, my hands came up hard against his chest and a sound came out of me.