“Enjoy this. Tonight is the final night we’ll have these ready-made shelters. Tomorrow we break free of elven territory and head into the more wild portion of Kingdom.”
She didn’t give him a chance to respond back. Instead she snatched up another loaf of bread and rolled onto her side. Giving him a prime view of her backside.
The lass had definitely put on some curves in the two weeks they’d been together. A steady diet of nothing but fruit and bread had filled her out nicely. It bothered him that he noticed, but the blood pooling between his thighs attested to the fact that he’d long been without a woman. And though the two of them were like oil and water, she was a beautiful woman.
With a muttered oath beneath his breath, he rolled over onto his side and tried to get some sleep. At some point he must have brushed against the wood while he’d been sleeping, he woke up with a hiss and stared at his now-throbbing hand.
“What?” Lilith’s whisper drew his gaze to her shadowy form.
There was no light within the tree house save the glow of moonlight. Touching a finger to his palm, he grimaced as a sharp burst of pain ran like fire down his wrist. “I don’t know, I think I may have gotten a splinter.”
“Can you shift and make it fall out?”
“No.” He shook his head, turning his palm into the brightest swath of moon glow, which wasn’t much, as he tried to pinpoint where the splinter lay. “It’ll be there until I take it out.”
He didn’t hear her move, but suddenly she was beside his bed. Her soft gaze was staring down at him. “I can pull it out if you trust me.”
It wasn’t a life-threatening injury, but it throbbed and would make him unable to sleep peacefully until he had it extracted. “Yes. I trust you.” He held out his hand.
Suddenly she was glowing amber and then a second later she’d become her wolf. Her pretty blue wolfy eyes stared at him for just a second and then she shoved her nose under his palm so that he turned it upward.
Then, very gently, her tongue came out and traced the length of his palm. It was a soft, gentle touch, and he wasn’t sure what she was doing. He almost asked her, when her tongue scraped over the splinter.
Clenching his teeth, his body tensed up.
She gave a soft, snuffling noise, as if to say, Okay, there it is, and then she opened her mouth, and, using her teeth, she delicately latched on to the tip of it and pulled it free.
He breathed a sigh of relief when it came out, rubbing at the now-itchy spot. Calling her light, she shifted once more and held up the splinter to him. “That’s a big boy.”
Taking it from her hand, he stared at the four-inch sliver of wood and shuddered. He could have eventually gotten it out, but her way had been much swifter and less painful. Humbled because of the uncharitable thoughts he’d had of her earlier in the day, he muttered a swift, “Thank you, wolf.”
But she was already back on her bed and laying on her side, and regardless of the momentary flash of kindness she’d shown him, he knew that many unspoken words still remained between them.
Ahead windows glowed with firelight and the air smelled heavily of smoke and roasted meats.
They really hadn’t spoken for days, and at this point Lilith was too tired to care. No, she did care. She shouldn’t. But she did.
And it wasn’t even so much his silence, which annoyed her greatly, so much as being disgusted with herself for caring. She’d tried hard to lock her emotions away when she was around him, reminding herself constantly that she had no right to even entertain the possibility of enjoying his company.
Because admitting to liking having him around would be opening the floodgates to other emotions that could lead her down a winding, slippery path straight to her death. Which wasn’t an exaggeration at all.
Just the thought of it made her sigh with disgust and disappointment. No matter how hard she tried to ignore him, it seemed it only made her more aware of him.
Maybe she was just tired. And it certainly didn’t help that she was in heat she was sure. What she needed now was food and a bed. In that order.
But first…
Now that they were safely beyond the boundaries of the shifters land, it was time to call upon her magic.
“While we walk through the bandits’ forests,” she said, turning to Giles who was staring at her with a hard, penetrating look she could not decipher, “I will pretend to be little more than a weak human. Any element of surprise we can have on our side is worth salvaging, and things will get worse from here on out.”
“Worse.” He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. There was a darkness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. She wondered if perhaps he might be worried about the dragon, but that’d been days ago.