Her eyes were manic and frantic, looking over his shoulder, at his face, and back again, over and over.
“I…I…” Suddenly she stopped, and took several deep breaths. “I’m sorry,” she whispered after a long pause, body still trembling, “I had a nightmare.”
Her skin was petal soft, and he couldn’t resist rubbing his thumb along her wrist once before letting go. Squeezing her eyes shut, she yanked her knees to her chest and rocked back and forth.
The flickering light of their campfire danced upon her pale white skin. Adding shadow to hollows, giving her an almost sinister appearance.
“Are you okay?” he asked into the settling quiet.
She sniffed. “I don’t know. I don’t feel right anymore.”
He cocked his head. “Right how?”
When she turned to look at him there was obvious confusion in her gaze, her rigid posture and seesawing breaths made his heart clench.
“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me,” he said softly.
She rubbed her temple. The vivid blue hair almost seemed to glow in the night. Flickering bursts of fire suddenly spilled down from the tree branches above them, sparking and then dying out quickly. He frowned.
She must have noticed his gaze, because she said, “They’re just fireflies. My scream must have disturbed them,” she settled her cheek on her folded forearm, “I’m sorry.”
“Lissa.” There was a wealth of meaning behind her name. So many questions that’d been nagging at him throughout the night.
Things he couldn’t understand. Couldn’t figure out. So much wasn’t adding up, wasn’t making sense. Ever since he’d stepped foot in Wonderland not much did.
She nodded and sniffed, her toes curled against one another in a fidgety manner. “What happened to me, Aeric?” she peeked at him from beneath lowered lashes.
The oddest compulsion to go to her and wrap her in his arms overcame him. She appeared so small, almost vulnerable just then. Not like the sharp-witted cat of before.
As far as track records went, Aeric had never really had a good one when it came to the opposite sex. But ever since leaving her, and subsequently discovering she’d been abducted and had who knew what done to her, he realized he liked her more than he’d cared to admit before.
But kindness had always betrayed him in the past. A lesson he’d sworn he’d finally learned with Claudia. And while his brain screamed that going to her right now would only lead him down the same path he’d stupidly followed before, he couldn’t stop himself either.
Rumpel had been right, he was a sucker, and what was worse, he knew it.
Shoving to his feet, clamping down on the inside of his cheek, he walked to Lissa. Refusing to think it through, because if he did, he’d walk away. He sat beside her and drew her slight body into the shelter of his arms.
She crawled onto him with the grace of a cat, and rubbed her cheek over and over into his chest.
Touching her now took on a different meaning. Ever since the thought that he’d lost her, having her here, in his arms now… his body craved her in a way he hadn’t craved a woman in a long, long time.
She whimpered.
“Lissa?” He kissed the top of her cheek, unable to stop himself. “What can I do?”
Shaking her hand, she fisted his shirt and sighed. “You’re doing it already, Aeric.”
Blood rushed to his cock as she shifted on his lap, biting down on his tongue he stifled a groan. Seduction couldn’t happen, not now, there were too many questions. Too many things that just weren’t adding up. Things he needed to ask her, he needed to let her go. Needed some space.
But his arms didn’t open.
“Why did you come back for me?” she asked softly, just a whisper of sound in the quiet lull of a sleeping forest.
He sighed. To say it out loud, that he’d dreamed she’d been in danger sounded ridiculous. But she obviously needed to hear something.
Moving, so that she was now straddling him. She wrapped her arms and legs around his waist; her breathing began to grow more settled then.
But not his.
His heart raced, adrenaline pumped through every vein in his body. She had to feel his thickness pressing against her warmth.
Gods, he was aware of her on an almost visceral level. The smell of her, like the clean freshness of a spring rain, saturated his senses. Lissa always smelled of the world she lived in.
The night was thick, the shadows unmoving and it was so easy to close his eyes, drop his nose into the lush softness of her wavy hair and take her scent deep into his lungs.
But she waited for his answer. “I’m failing, Lissa,” he finally murmured against her forehead.
She pulled back just slightly, enough to be able to gaze into his eyes. “How so?”