And those were the only words exchanged between us before the medical supplies were forgotten, and he was picking me up off the side of the tub where I had been sitting so he could doctor me up. I clung to him, knowing my heart was thundering against his chest and not caring at all. I wanted to kiss him—God, how I wanted to kiss him—but I figured it was best to let him navigate us to our destination before I blocked his face with mine.
That was the last logical thought I had before he put me down on my unmade bed. For a brief second, I was almost pulled out of the simmering tension by the glimpses of clothes all over the floor and about six empty water cups dotted around the room. Even without having seen it, I knew Paul’s room would be immaculate, and then embarrassment lanced through me. I couldn’t even keep up with taking care of my modest house.
“I need you,” Paul rumbled, and any thoughts about my housekeeping prowess or shame about my habits vanished. It seemed almost impossible that someone like Paul could need a chaotic college dropout likeme, but I wasn’t going to question him. Not now.
“I’m here,” I whispered, the moment feeling too vulnerable, too tender for my normal volume. I reached up, cupping his face between my hands and holding him there. I’d always been a tactile person, but with Paul, it wasn’t enough. I wanted to connect with him on a deeper level. “I’m here, and I will be as long as you let me.”
What I had wanted to say was that I would be here forever, but that would be taking it too far. Although complicated emotions rose in my chest, my mind wouldn’t let me forget that we were just a couple of adults blowing off steam. Our first hookup had been completely casual and now it was something akin to friends with benefits. There was no possibility for romance between us. We came from different worlds, and no doubt he would find some lovely shifter heiress to settle down with and have all sorts of official shifter babies together.
But I could pretend for now.
I’ve always been good at pretending.
We kissed, soft and tender and deep. If I didn’t know better, I would think it was romantic, even if it couldn’t be. But I was fine with that, and I fell deeper and deeper into the fantasy.
My fingers slid up Paul’s chest, and the clean state of his clothes seemed so incongruous with the fight he’d been tossed around in. Part of the magic of shifters, and a handy one, because the generic black dress I was wearing and the bicycle shorts underneath it were filthy and torn up.
Although I still loved the feel of his muscles below my fingertips, my touch went beyond that. Beyond the heat that always radiated from him. It connected us, and I desperately wanted more of it.
How are we ever supposed to go back to normal after this?
Less thinking, more kissing.
That was a logic I could get behind.
I flipped one button, then two, but I paused on the third, wanting to make sure Paul was on board with me. Because if he wanted to just keep kissing, that was absolutely fine by me. We didn’thaveto do anything we didn’t want to, and I wanted to do whatever Paul needed. Not because I was a martyr or anything, but because I cared about him.
But then his hands, which had been holding me so tightly, moved. One went to my zipper behind me while the other roamed down, over my hip, and finally to my thigh. It lingered there a moment, impossibly hot against my flesh, before sliding up only to stop in what I was pretty sure was disappointment as they hit my bicycle shorts.
“What’s this?” His disapproval at the unexpected barrier added a much-needed moment of amusement to the thick tension between us.
“We were setting up a trap, remember? I had to be prepared in case things went south.”
He narrowed those intense gray eyes of his at me. “Were you always planning on getting involved in the fight?”
“I wouldn’t sayplanningto, but I wanted to be prepared for the worst-case scenario.” It wasn’t a lie, more a smudging ofthe truth. Although our plan had largely involved me snooping around to find someone in the crowd without any emotional signature, I’d figured being so close to the fray would likely have some backsplash. Granted, I’d never imagined his zombie brother was the assassin, but then, who could have expected that?
He looked like he wanted to say something about my preparation, but in the end, he just sighed and shook his head. “I shouldn’t be surprised about your penchant for putting yourself into dangerous situations at this point, should I?”
“You really shouldn’t. Kinda a logic error on your part.”
He huffed another small, dry laugh—this one had actual mirth—and then he was kissing me again.
My guy could multitask though, because he dragged down my zipper while he toyed with the hem of my bicycle shorts. I wasn’t about to be caught slacking, so I returned to my unfastening of his buttons, revealing his pale musculature inch by inch.
But I wasn’t satisfied with looking and not touching, so I dragged my fingers over the striations of his abs, the swell of his chest, his defying shoulders, all of it. While I’d never been into the bodybuilder type, I appreciated just how artfully made it was. Paul was carved like a statue with a mind as sharp as a scholar. Talk about the best of both worlds.
Although really, if more blood flow was going to my brain rather than the bottom half of my body, I would have realized his kindness was his most attractive trait. Between how protective he was of his siblings and how he had always treated me with respect—even when I’d revealed I’d tricked him—Paul really was the kindest person I knew. And just being around him, even in these awful times, made me wanna be a better person.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he breathed as he finally got the zipper all the way down. The dress fell to my middle, one ofthe cup sleeves torn in the fight with his brother and the other unable to hold up the weight of my breasts on its own.
I flushed from the top of my head down to the tips of my bare feet, and all my eloquence left me in a rush. So, in lieu of actually speaking, I kissed him again as he stripped my dress down my body as much as he could with how I was sitting on the bed.
However, as much as I wanted to keep my lips locked to his forever, we both reached a point of no egress, with him still being in pants and me sitting on the bottom half of my dress. So, once our kiss broke again, Paul stood and offered a hand to me, guiding me back to my feet.
“You are meant for the moonlight,” he murmured, and for a moment I was confused until I realized that my dress had fallen to my feet and I was standing in a beam of liquid silver shining through my window. I’ve never been into being called a goddess or that kind of worship, but right then, I felt like some sort of ethereal deity.
And only Paul could make me feel that way.