I didn’t notice when the hot water ran out, but I was shivering beneath the deluge of cold water when a knock on the bathroom door broke through the maelstrom of my tortured memories.
“Riley? Are you all right?” Holbrook called through the flimsy door. Distantly I noticed that his accent thickened when his emotions ran high, and at that moment his voice was tinged with worry. “Riley?”
“I-I’m here.”
“Are you okay?”
“Not really,” I hiccupped, swiping at the tears streaming down my face, or maybe it was just the water from the shower. I couldn’t tell anymore.
“Can I come in?” he asked, concern creeping back into his tone, chased by a hint of, was that embarrassment?
“I guess so.”
The door creaked open as Holbrook slipped in, his presence filling the room and making the space feel even smaller. Somewhere deep inside the wolf lifted her head, hackles rising at the claustrophobic closeness of the room. We knew that Holbrook was there to help us, protect us, but his silhouette looming over the tub when we were already so vulnerable had her snapping her jaws defensively. The wolf didn’t like to be trapped, and right now my entire life felt like a prison cell, the walls closing in around me, suffocating me.
As if sensing my internal struggle, he lowered the lid on the toilet and perched on the edge, making himself seem smaller, non-threatening. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was impressed, but all I could focus on at that moment was how tired and afraid I was. Propping his elbows on his knees he leaned over and pulled the curtain back so he could see me.
“You planning on staying in there all night?” he asked, the corner of his mouth quirking upwards in the beginnings of a smile.
“Maybe,” I replied, sniffling as I wiped at my eyes with the back of my hand, but made no move to get out of the tub.
“So, Eeyore huh?” he asked with a faint grin. His eyes settled on the small tattoo on my right shoulder, definitely not focusing on any of my naked bits.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said with a shrug, my words broken by the fierce shivers wracking my body. I’d gotten it in my freshman year of college with my roommate Emma, before Samson, and all the ugliness he had wrought into my life.
“I was always partial to Grumpy myself,” he said leaning back to push down the waist of his jeans a few inches to reveal a small tattoo of the sour-faced dwarf. Both the wolf and I licked our lips at the swath of bronzed skin stretched taunt across his hip bone. I wondered if he had any tan lines, and if so, how far down they went.
“So, how about we get you out of there before you’re as blue as Eeyore?” he asked, disrupting my speculations.
I uncurled from my hunched position in the tub, wincing as my cold and stiff limbs moved sluggishly, sending resistant tremors of pain through my body. Holbrook leaned close as he reached past me to turn off the water, the motion revealing the long line of his throat, already showing the beginnings of dark stubble. Letting the wolf float up to the surface, I drowned in the scent of him: sun warmed molasses lingering beneath the woody, earthy tones of his cologne, and beneath it all, thumping in the vein in his throat, the coppery scent of blood.
Both the wolf and I wanted to grasp the skin of his neck in our teeth to mark him as ours. But he wasn’t ours; I’d only just met him, and yet I was drawn to him like a moth to a flame. I couldn’t figure out what it was about him that was inspiring such reckless feelings in me. I’d never been so strongly swayed by someone before; even the hormone-driven attractions of youth hadn’t left me so enraptured.
Pulling back, his eyes met mine, heat swimming up through the forest green depths to burn bright, sweeping away any trace of reservation I might have had.
Fuck it. I need this. I need his lips, his hands, to chase away the darkness.
A shuddering breath flowed out of me seconds before his lips smashed into mine. Electricity arced through me, making my lips tingle and my toes curl. Large hands wrapped around my waist, lifting me out of the bathtub, leaving trails of dancing energy across my skin. The water dripping from my skin soaked through the cotton of his t-shirt, plastering it to the hard planes of his chest. Being pressed against him was like standing too close to an overhead power line, his energy thrumming in my veins as if someone had struck a chord deep inside me.