“Trust someone,” he said softly.
There was a pause where neither of us spoke, then Charles cleared his throat and rubbed his hands, as though he were trying to wash himself of his confession.
A bead of sweat pearled at the nape of my hairline and trickled a slow path down my neck. “I didn’t expect you to show me now.”
“Won’t hurt less if I show you later.” He winked and backed away several paces.
“Wait!” I lifted my hands to stop him. “Just—never mind.”
“I’ll be okay,” he said. He took off his shirt. “Watch.”
I was watching all right. Or maybe staring. His body was firm, lean. Not too muscular—not in a way that implied he obsessed over going to the gym—but defined and strong. Equally as strong was the heat spreading from my stomach down to my thighs and up to my breasts. I sat back, holding my breath.
His body trembled. Pain etched into his face as his figure blurred. My heart thundered in my ears. I wanted to tell him to stop, but the words remained trapped. Wild vibrations coursed through him.
Then, I heard it.
Several loud pops sounded over a deep growl. He hunched over as his skin forced his body smaller. His spine protruded against a thin layer of flesh. At the sound of bones crushing, I dug my nails into the couch cushion.
His face deformed. Hair pierced through his flesh as his form shrunk. I almost gasped in horror, but bit it back, my teeth digging into my bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. At any moment, the tea I’d drunk might surge from my stomach.
The end of the transformation came suddenly, leaving a pile of clothes on the living room floor. A bushy-tailed squirrel pounced out of the pants and scampered over.
This was the man I was planning to move in with?
Perched on his hind legs, he tilted his head and chittered. I cupped my hands together and lowered them to the floor. He padded into them, and my hands shook as I brought his face to mine.
Charles was in there, somewhere. His eyes had changed, too—no longer teal but an eerie shade of green, like the squirrel I’d seen in the woods and the eerie, smoky eyes I’d seen outside my window after the ritual.
“Your eyes,” I said, lost in a sense of wonder and dread. “You were the squirrel in the woods.”
He placed his tiny paws together and nodded. Surprisingly, having witnessed his change firsthand made me feel less freaked out. If I was scared of anything, it was for him, not of him—scared of the pain he had to endure with every shift. And if I cared about that, I had to admit I cared about him. Somehow, some way, he was working his way into my heart.
I released him and watched as he returned to his human form, the process seeming quicker in reverse. He stood naked before me. Hastily, I dropped my gaze, but the image might as well have been burned into my retinas.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him smirking as he redressed, but I didn’t dare allow my peripheral to take in anything more than the expression on his face. Even after he dressed, my heart thudded over the memory of him without clothes.
He sunk onto the couch beside me, his brow heavy above his eyes. “You sounded afraid.”
“Your eyes—” I shook my head. “I would swear I’ve seen them before, and not just in that squirrel.”
“Happens to all elementals at night.”
“My attacker didn’t have eyes like that,” I said.
“He wouldn’t if he was hungry. The eyes only glow when the elemental has lifeblood in their system.”
“Why a squirrel?”
“It’s one of the easier ones”—he swept loose hair from his eyes—“and it doesn’t rip my clothes.”
“That was—I mean—” I paused to gather my thoughts. “An owl outside the woods had the same strange eyes. You?”
“I had to follow you to make sure no one else had. I wasn’t the only one hunting those grounds.”
This man was not good for me. My life might not have been normal before he showed up, but at least it’d made sense.
I was shaking just thinking about what would have happened without him. Charles cradled me against him. He probably meant for it to be comforting—and, at first, it was. But when I peeked up at him, and our gazes locked, all I felt was lust. I saw the shift in his eyes, too. The shift from wanting to protect me to simply…wanting me.
He released me and cleared his throat. “This—Well, you and me…You know it’s not a good idea.”
“Then what is it you want?” I asked.
“You,” he said, his expression unreadable and his voice heavy and full of…full of what? Sadness? Regret? “To understand you. To know that you’re safe. To not have to avoid the only person I can be myself around.”