The search squadrons appeared to have turned back, but she and Naasir couldn’t afford to lower their guard. Should they be spotted by villagers who reported it to their goddess, a citadel squadron would come at them from one side, while border squadrons would angle in from the other. They’d be caught in between with no way out.
Watching Naasir sleep while she sat guard, on watch for any other signs of life, Andromeda couldn’t help herself. She bit her lower lip and reached out very, very, very carefully to touch his hair. It was cool silk and far softer than she’d imagined it might be. She wanted to—
He snapped up a hand to capture her wrist, his eyes still closed. “Andi, what are you doing?”
19
Andi?
It wasn’t an angelic name, not at all . . . but she liked it. “Touching your hair,” she admitted, since she’d been caught red-handed.
Yawning, he released her hand. “You can.” Then he seemed to fall right back to sleep.
Not quite believing it, she reached out and wove her fingers through the lusciously soft strands. He didn’t wake, didn’t even stir, though she had the awareness that he was like a great big cat who slept with one eye figuratively open. He was even striped like a tiger.
What?
Blinking, she looked again at his arms and face. The illusion held. She glanced up, wondering if it was a particular combination of tree branches that was causing it, but saw nothing that could explain the shadowy pattern beneath the gold-stroked deep brown of his skin. “What are you?” she whispered, but he didn’t wake this time—or if he heard her, he chose to keep his secrets.
She stroked his hair for a long time, her pleasure in the act bone-deep. It felt exactly like petting a wild animal who had decided to permit her close. He wasn’t tame and anyone who made that mistake would regret it, but for now, he’d decided he liked her. She knew that would change the second she took up her enforced position in an enemy court, and that, too, was inevitable.
Her heart felt as if it was being crushed in a giant metal fist.
*
Naasir had to feed that night. Leaving Andromeda to wait in the thick stand of trees next to a small village, he walked in, found his prey, fed, and walked back out. The entire exercise took him six minutes at most, but even that felt too long. He knew Andromeda could defend herself, also knew that if he didn’t feed, he’d no longer be able to protect her, but it still felt wrong to feed from another when she was in his life.
Andromeda wasn’t where he’d left her when he returned. Not that it took him long to track her to a small stream nearby. Her body was stiff, pretty wings patterned like a bird’s held off the ground. “Done?” she asked without turning around.
“Yes.”
She fell in beside him to continue their journey, but he could feel the wrongness in the air. As he’d demonstrated to her, he could put on a civilized skin when necessary. Most of the women he’d taken to his bed had never once seen him in anything close to his real skin. They had seen only the cool, cultured avatar who made them shiver with a primal fear that heightened their sexual pleasure.
It was a game that wasn’t a game but a kind of a lie, and it didn’t come instinctively to him. He’d learned how to pull it off only after realizing women wouldn’t otherwise allow him near their soft bodies and delicate skin.
Don’t act with me.
Andromeda might jump when he playfully scared her, but she hadn’t flinched once when it counted. She’d been happy he’d brought her meat, had let him touch her with his claws, hadn’t looked at him with terrified abhorrence just because he wasn’t like other men. No, she looked at him as if she wanted to pet him and bite him and play with him.
Except tonight. Tonight, she wouldn’t look at him at all.
“I chose a man.”
She stumbled over something in her path, righted herself. “Oh.” A long pause before she said, “I didn’t think you liked men that way.” Her voice was tight, as if she wasn’t breathing properly.