Page 31 of Moonless
I twist to get a knee under me, but he’s already above me. One broad hand braces beside my face, claws sunk into the earth. The other closes around my right wrist when I shove at his chest.
“Let go.”
“Stop fighting me.”
“Then let go!”
He frees my wrist, and I plant my palm against him again. He’s breathing hard through his nose, his ears flattened into his hair.
The pale band across his brow is clear in the moonlight.
Full moonlight. He’s just cleared a trunk taller than my waist without touching it.
“You’re supposed to be weak tonight.”
His ears come up out of his hair. “I’m Gulon.”
“You’ve said.”
One side of his mouth lifts, and a fang shows. “Then learn what it means. We’re strongest at the full moon.”
I look past him at the round moon above the trees.
Oh, fuck him.
He’s been getting stronger while I’ve been waiting for him to tire. All those trips out, all the meat he could carry back. I spent all that time watching him and chose tonight.
He follows my glance, then looks down at me again. “You went into the water.”
“Yes. I got wet.”
“You vanished under that bank. I couldn’t see where you’d gone.”
“That was the idea.”
His hand presses deeper into the ground beside my head. “Anything could’ve reached you down there.”
“You reached me.”
He doesn’t move off me. “This time.”
I twist my hips to get a leg out from under his, and that’s when I feel him.
He’s hard against the inside of my thigh, thick through his trousers. He’s been lying on top of me complaining about stream banks the whole time.
He goes still above me, and his eyes leave mine.
I stop twisting. My thigh’s still against him, and I leave it there longer than I need to, and I’m wet, and not from the stream.
Every evening he’s changed my bandage with his eyes on the linen, and I put it down to Gulon manners. Manners aren’t what’s pressed against my leg.
He shifts his weight back onto his knees, off my hips. The hand beside my head stays where it is, and I get my good elbow under me.
He looks at the trees instead of at me. “I took you outside.”
“You let me sit on a rock.”
“You asked for it.”
