Page 51

Chapter Thirty-Eight

M y breath catches in a burning ball at the hollow of my throat.

Part of me shouts Predator, run away ! Another part shouts, Teeth!

Stay still ! And another, the deeply human part of me, the part that was my ancestors who had grown up with dragons, lived alongside them for uncountable generations, says Be still, he'd never hurt you.

"Dav," I whine. My voice is squeaky and tangled. My heart kicks like a rabbit in a shoebox. "Hey, hold up."

Instead of holding up, he surges to his feet, wings snapping open with a bullwhip crack. In a second I’m on my back on the bed. Claws prick along the soft flesh of my inner arms, where he's got them pinned above my head.

"Dav, please," I try again, chest hitching. He snuffles behind my ear, god, are his teeth pointed? Are they right above my jugular? "What's wrong?"

"Mine Own," he hisses. Goosebumps ripple across my flesh. He burns like a star, and where his cheekbone drags across my throat it's slick with scales. " Mine ."

"Yes," I choke desperately. "I'm yours, okay, but—"

"Stay sssssstill," he hisses, and hunches his shoulders, visibly shudders as he pulls away from my soft underbelly.

What the fuck is happening, I think frantically, He's usually so together, what —

"You stink," he growls, hands flexing gently, ankles tangling with mine, pushing outward so he can settle into the cradle of my hips.

Usually I like it when he manhandles me a bit. It's sexy, the way he can move me so effortlessly. Would be sexy if we were playing, if we'd negotiated any of this in advance. But we hadn't.

I'm not scared of Dav, I can't be. I won't let him make me.

"I'll take a shower," I say.

I can't see his expression now. His hair has flopped down in front of his face, his features screwed small, as if he's concentrating with all his might. I don't know what he's thinking. Christ, I don't know what he's thinking.

"Let me up, love," I say, a tiny, breathy plea. "Come on, I can shower."

"No!" he snarls again, dropping the whole weight of his body on top of mine, punching the breath out of my lungs in surprise.

"Ssssstay ssssstill." His body rolls against mine, once, a high whining keen escaping. "Please. Help me, Mine Own. Stay still."

"I'm staying still," I say. "Okay? I'm here. I'm yours. I'm not going anywhere."

He's fighting something. It’s in the way his muscles flex and roll, the way he shudders, letting his mouth get close to my face, my hair, but never touch, never kiss.

"Please," he sobs, miserable. "Don't fight me."

"I'm not," I protest gently, and I take as deep a breath as his weight on my ribcage allows, then force my muscles to let go. Legs limp, hands soft, uncurled from their fists, head back, chin raised.

Exposed.

Vulnerable.

He exhales, relief in the noise. He presses his mouth against my leaping pulse, tastes the flop-sweat gathered on my collarbones.

I focus on my breathing. Slow in, slow out.

Gentle.

Calm.

I am scared.

Scared as fuck.

Dav’s nose smushes against my cheek, breathing in the air straight from my lungs, chin resting on mine as if he's desperately weary, can’t even hold his head up. Or like he can't let himself have any more than this awkward press of face-to-face.

"That whoreson," Dav says, smearing the words against my mouth. "That thief ."

"Who?"

"He touched you."

What?

What ?

And then it slams home—Onatah refusing skin-to-skin contact, Laura's dancing gloves, the way Lt.

Gov. Fuckface offered his hand at the door, held on too long.

The way his finger had brushed along the underside of my wrist. My brain lights up like a Tesla coil, arc lighting jumping from vertebrae to vertebrae up my spine until it tingles out the top of my head: revelation .

I’d thought the handshake was weird.

I hadn’t realized it was deliberate .

"That's right," I say hastily. "He touched me."

"You let him," he accuses, wounded, and now he pulls back. He lifts my arm, sneers at it as if he could see the stain Simcoe imprinted on my flesh.

Now I can see him, too. Somehow his eyes have gotten too big for his face, red scales gathering around their tender rims.

"It was a handshake. To mend fences." I’m careful to keep my body language open, accessible, all his. "He wants to break us apart, but I won’t let him. It was just a handshake, because it's good manners. Because he cares about manners. I did it to keep us safe."

Dav growls, a rolling, menacing sound that shakes my bones. " I keep you safe."

"But you weren't there, and I—ah! Dav!" I whine and wriggle. "You're hurting me!"

He stops moving, eyes flickering down to where his claws have punctured flesh. They're just a small constellation of blood spots, no worse than a prick with a pin.

" Fy Nhrysor ," he says in that language I don’t know but I am starting to suspect is Welsh. He sounds wounded and terrified. He hasn't snapped out of whatever this is, he's still holding me down, but his eyes are his again, fearful and wet. "I'm sorry,… I don't know how to…"

"Mark me," I say suddenly, before my sense can catch up with my mouth. "Give me a hickey. On my wrist, right here. Bite it."

I push the arm he's holding up in front of his face.

"Colin—"

"Go ahead." I try to infuse more confidence into it than I'm feeling. "You won't hurt me."

"I might."

"You won't ."

He runs his tongue first over each of the pinpricks, lapping away the blood and soothing the little stings.

His mouth is wet and wide on my arm, his saliva washing away whatever trace of Simcoe might be left.

By the time he's sucked a livid purple mark into the skin, he's shuddering and heaving like he's just run a marathon.

"Hey," I say softly, when he's sprinkling little kisses around the hickey. I reach up, brushing his lank, damp hair back from his forehead. "Hey. Look at me."

I’m still fucking terrified. But Dav is clearly more scared than me.

"I'm sorry," he sniffles, raw. "It's been so long since I've had a Favorite, and I—no, it's not an excuse, I'm so sorry—"

He retreats to huddle against the footboard.

"If I leave, will you jump me?" I ask, feet tingling with the itch to run, lungs tight. I take deliberate, slow breath after deliberate, slow breath, keeping up the illusion of calm surrender.

"No," Dav grinds out, curling in on himself. His knuckles are white as he grips his own bare ankles. I want to kiss them. I want to scream. "Just… move slow."

I sit up as slowly as I can, abdomen trembling with the effort.

"Don't look me in the eye." His whole body shudders. The tendons of his neck stand out, ropes under his flesh. "Don't challenge me. But don't turn your back."

I slide as slowly as possible to the side of the bed, eyes firmly on his feet.

I've never studied them before. The vulnerable sweep of the arch.

The knobbly way his pinkie toe sticks out.

I back toward the door, slip my phone off the table.

His big toe has sparse ginger-gold hair on the knuckle.

His toenails are as fussily manicured as his fingernails.

Yesterday's jeans and shirt are still laying on the floor by the door, and I scoop them up. I bump into the door frame, shuffle to the side, and back into the hall. One step to the left, and his head shoots up, pupils slit again as he struggles to restrain himself.

Another step, and I’m cut off from his eyeline.

He lets out a desperate, terrible wail.

I tear toward the front door. I'm in the shirt before I hit the landing, and I swap the jeans in the foyer.

I jam my feet into my shoes, and don't stop running until I am all the way to the front gates.

I wrench them open, and eel through the gap.

I wriggle into the space between the twisting trunk of a cedar hedge and the wall, slide down, press my bruised wrist against my mouth, and start to cry.

My phone tells me it's only been an hour. Feels longer. It's felt like an entire fucking geolithic era: an ice age, and a thaw. My eyes and nose are raw from rubbing them on my shirt and the hickey on my wrist throbs .

What do I do? My mind is starting to rev back up. Holy shit, what was that? Do I go back inside? Do I… I don't know what to do.

Dav hasn't come to find me.

I can't decide if I'm relieved or hurt.

What if he's still out of his head? But what if he's just Dav again? What if he's sorry, and he's back to normal?

My hands are shaking. I don't know what to do.

It's quiet. There's no search party calling my name. There's no Sarah peering around the bush, asking if I'm alright. There's no Diego shouting "found him!"

There's nothing.

Dav hasn't told anyone.

Or he has told them, and they don't care.

What do I do?

Do I go back inside?

Do I leave?

Dav said to walk away, to get out of his sight.

He didn't mean forever.

Did he mean forever?

I think about texting Dr. Chen, but she doesn't know dragons. I type out a text to Hadi, What defines an abusive relationship ? Then I delete it, because that's not right. Dav isn't abusive. He was… changed . Hadi wouldn't know why.

That leaves just one other person. I text her: I need you to come get me.

Another hour later, the gentle roar of a motorcycle wakes me from a miserable, dehydrated doze.

I lift my head from where I had it resting on my knees, the monster hickey cradled against my stomach.

The motor cuts off right in front of my bush.

There's the crunch of a kickstand on gravel. How does she know where I am?

I must stink.

Stink of Simcoe.

Stink of what Dav did.

Onatah parts the bushes far enough to get a good eyeful.

"You look like shit," is what she says.

"You got gloves on?"

"Yeah."

"Help me up?"

Onatah levers me to my feet, pulls me through the branches.

She lifts my wrist, turns it over and sniffs at it.

It's flaked over with gross dried saliva.

The bruise itself is huge, three wobbly circles overlapping one another, already angry red around the edges and purpling in the center, a thin cut oozing a sluggish bead of drying blood. It's horrifying. It hurts like crazy.

It was my idea.

She circles around me, looking for other hurts. My neck burns when I turn it. It's rough with another massive suck bruise. Onatah comes back around to stare at my face, which I'm sure is puffy and lined with tear-tracks. My eyes feel swollen.

"Fucking colonizer bullshit." She yanks me in for a warm, firm hug.

"Don't touch me!"

"Over the clothes," she says gently. She smells dragon-smoky, and like the wind, and leather, and that's good, right now. It’s safe. Then she adds in a slightly louder voice: "You're not going back in there. Not before you clean up, and we have the conversation someone else clearly wormed out of."

A rustling on the other side of the gate catches my attention.

"Who was…?"

"Never mind. Get on the bike. Helmet's in the saddlebag."

We're already off down the road before I realize that the sound on the other side of the wall had probably been Dav. Standing right there .

Probably had been there the whole time.

And not saying a goddamned thing.