by Selena Scott
She took her time answering. “I mean that we were really friends for a while there. Weren’t we? Or was it all in my head? Was it all fake?”
Everything would be easier if he could have just lied to her. He knew that. It would be easier on both of them if he could pretend that he didn’t care for her.
But for the same reasons that she’d had for seeing Sasha one last time before she headed to the Director, Quill couldn’t lie to her as they lay side by side in the dark. He was headed, interminably, toward a probable death, and at least for tonight, he wanted nothing but honesty between them.
“You were my friend. I don’t know if I was yours, considering what I did to you and your family. Honestly, Dawn, I’m not sure I even knew how badly I wanted to be worthy of your friendship until it was too late. I’d already done too much bad to ever deserve it.”
It was the kind of honesty that extracted poison from a festering wound. It hurt. It didn’t feel good. But it was necessary. He was better for it. He knew, without a doubt, that this was the kind of wound that left a scar, but maybe that wouldn’t matter as long as it was possible for it to heal.
Her breath was slightly unsteady and a few moments passed in which the only sound in the room was her occasional sniff. He’d made her cry and it damn near paralyzed him. He wanted to reach across the pillow barrier and take her hand. But he wouldn’t violate her boundaries like that. Not when he’d already done so much to hurt her. He wouldn’t take away anything else from her.
“Quill?” she said eventually and he couldn’t help but grip onto the sound of his name in her voice. What a gift it was. One he was sure he’d take with him into the hell that awaited him with the Director.
“Yeah?”
“What I’m doing, turning myself in to the Director… I know it’s not going to be pleasant. But, should I be scared?”
She rolled onto her side, her cheek pressing on top of the pillow so that she could peer over the barricade to see his face. He tipped his face so that he could look her in the eye, her dark eyes catching the scant light from a streetlamp out the window. She was a glittering shadow, inky black in places and bone white in others. He wanted to press his thumb into the dark shadow between her parted lips. He wanted to lose his fingers in the black sea of her hair. He wanted to press his cheek to hers, to lever his weight over top of her and shelter her from everything that might be coming for her. The world wasn’t kind to shifters, but he’d die to make it kinder to Dawn.
“No,” he answered softly, holding her eyes with his.
She blinked and pressed her lips together thoughtfully. She most likely thought that he was saying that to her to appease her, comfort her for the night. She probably thought he was telling her a white lie.
What she didn’t know was that it was none of those things. His statement to her wasn’t false in any way. In reality, it was a promise to himself. Did she need to be scared? No. Not at all. Because he was going to do everything in his power to get her through this unscathed. To send her back to her family intact and free.
***
Dawn woke up the next morning with the sun. It wasn’t as much sleep as her body wanted, but there was too much on her mind to stay inert for long.
Her brain came online before her eyes did and for a long moment, she relished the cave-like dark behind her closed eyes. The blankets were warm, the air was cool, the pillow was soft and clean beneath her cheek. But then she registered the soft wash of warm air over her brow.
Opening her eyes, she was alarmed to find Quill’s face not more than a foot away from hers. Sometime in the night, they’d both rolled to their sides and apparently deemed the pillow barrier as the best place to rest their weary heads. They faced one another, close enough that she felt his warm breath against her skin.
He was asleep, backlit by the morning light. She’d never seen him in repose before. His eyelashes were inky half-smiles against his cheeks, his eyebrows aggressive, frowny slashes. She privately enjoyed the juxtaposition. It was the same as how the carved lines of his face made him appear mature and world weary, while at the same time, the relaxation of his features made him look like a younger version of himself.
He was composed of contrasts and Dawn had to admit it fascinated her. She’d always felt like Quill was two men at once. As if there were some hidden inner version of himself that was constantly chafing to be free.
As hypnotized by his sleepy face as she was, it took her a second to register the strange quality of the light out the window. She lifted her head off the pillow to squint out the front window of their motel room.
“What is it?” he asked in a low, sleepy voice.
Her movement must have woken him. “It’s rain. A lot of rain.”
She laid her head back down on the pillow, still warm from her own heat, and they seemed even closer than they had a moment ago, though she was certain that he hadn’t moved except to open his eyes.
But it was his eyes that closed the distance between them. She fought not to shrink back from his icy blue high beams. Even lazily half-lidded, his gaze was gaspingly intense.
“Hm.” He stretched his arms high above his head and Dawn couldn’t help but let her eyes run over the ball of his shoulder exposed above his sheet, the thatch of armpit hair that was unexpectedly attractive to her. His tendons stuck out with the intensity of the stretch and she wanted to trace them with her finger.
He tipped his head back to look out the front window and frowned. “Dang,” he said, rolling back and putting his face onto the pillow again. “That is a lot of rain. Let’s check the weather channel.”
Dawn grabbed the remote control off the nightstand and flicked through the channels on the old television until she found the weather channel.
“Wow.”
There were flash flood warnings for almost the entire state. It was supposed to rain for the next day at least. And not singing-in-the-rain sort of rain. Cars getting swept away down the highway sort of rain.
She sat up. “Oh my god. We were just there yesterday.” She recognized the stretch of highway that was being shown on the television. Cars were piled up in a ditch on the side of the road while two feet of water drowned the highway.
She jumped out of bed and ran to the window, gasping when she saw that it was already six inches up the wheel wells of their car.
“How bad is it?” he asked, scratching at his head as he watched her.
“Not as bad as that,” she said, nodding at the television. “But not good.”
He got up to join her at the window, the heat from his chest searing into her from an inch away. A line of concern etched its way between his brows. “Looks like we’re not going anywhere for a while.”
“But on the upside, nobody is likely to get to us either. We’re probably safe here for a while.”
He scratched at his head again. “I hate that you even have to consider that, but yeah. You’re right.” He sighed. “Look, before it gets worse, I’m gonna run out and get us some provisions. You stay here.”
“You can’t go out in that alone! What if you get swept away!”
He looked down at her, all dark brows and tumbling hair and sardonic tilt to his lips. “Dawn, I’m a bear shifter. It’ll take a lot to sweep me away. I’ll just shift if things get rough, okay?”
“Oh. Right. Okay.”
But still, she was uneasy as he yanked on a coat and stepped out into the howling wind. “I’ll be right back.”
And, to his credit, it didn’t take very long, but her fingernails were still bitten to the quick by the time she heard the key in the lock again.
The door, caught by the wind, banged open and a gust of rain blew in ahead of Quill. He charged into the room and slammed the door behind him. And stood there… completely fucking naked.
“You’re completely fucking naked,” Dawn said blankly as she stared at him.
“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say the f word, I think,” Quill replied as water dripped
off the ends of his curly dark hair, sluicing over his chest in tributaries leading down to a place that Dawn couldn’t have pulled her eyes away from for all the bananas in Panama.
He dropped the bag of groceries onto the floor and strode past her into the bathroom. She mutely turned on her heel and watched him go. She was a little confounded to see that the back view was as hypnotizing as the front.
He had a dark fleece of hair covering his chest and his legs were hairy too. There was scarring along his back, but other than that, his skin was a pale gold and almost glowed in the low morning light. His body was tightly packed, his muscles layering over one another in geometric shapes that flowed smoothly together as he moved powerfully across the room. It was the first time that it truly made sense to Dawn that he was a bear shifter. He looked raw and powerful and dangerous. He looked like he had the strength of a thousand-pound animal hibernating under his skin.
She shivered as he disappeared into the bathroom. He came back out a second later, a towel around his waist and another scrubbing through his wet hair.
“You were right. I almost got swept away.” He cracked a small, almost goofy smile at her. One she’d never seen before. His face was flushed, his eyes bright. He looked almost boyish. Like he’d just had a grand old time. “I had to shift into bear form and carry the groceries in my mouth to make it across the main street.”
He strode back across the room and peered out the window again, shaking his head. “Nobody saw me, though. Probably because I was the only one foolish enough to go out in this weather. I was lucky that I went to the store when I did, because the manager was just sending the employees home. We would have been shit out of luck for food if we’d slept any longer.”
He finally turned back from the window and seemed to realize that she was still standing in the exact same place she’d been when he’d come storming back into the room.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Why aren’t you talking?”
“You were completely fucking naked!” she sputtered, her hands rising to her cheeks to try to hide the color she was sure was exploding across her face.
Quill blinked. And then blinked again. And then he burst out laughing.
“Stop laughing!” Dawn demanded with a stamp of her foot.
That just made him laugh more. He plunked down on the hotel chair and just looked at her for a second with a friendly shake of his head. “Dawn, you’re a shifter. You know how this works. When we shift back into our human forms, we’re naked. How many times must you have seen your brothers do this? How many times have you done this yourself? You can’t tell me that a little bit of nudity is making you blush like this.”
“You are not my brother,” she said and was embarrassed by even more color flooding into her cheeks.
Something changed in his expression and it went from blind mirth to a sort of charged awareness. He looked at her quizzically, his head tipping to one side. “You’ve seen at least one naked man before, yeah? Sasha?”
Her cheeks went even hotter. This was terrible. She was registering that this was, in fact, incredibly embarrassing, but her brain was moving in fits and starts and she couldn’t make anything make sense in her head. “We were so young. He was more of a boy at the time. I’ve never…” she trailed off, her hands moving up to her hair.
Which was a complete rat’s nest from sleeping on it wet last night. Oh, god. She was wearing a matching pajama set that they’d bought last evening from Target. It was pink and purple striped and the oversized shirt buttoned up the middle. It was incredibly comfortable and last night Dawn had been thrilled to snuggle up in it as she’d fallen asleep. But right now she felt like she was about eight years old. Messy hair and oversized pajamas and so much palpable innocence that she didn’t have a chance of playing off this nudity thing with even a hint of aplomb.
He must think she was a lunatic.
He rose up and gave her a wide berth as he grabbed his duffel bag from the ground and stepped into the bathroom.
“Dawn,” he said, right before he closed the bathroom door. “Breathe.”
She heard the shower click on and was relieved that she’d have a few minutes to herself to gather her thoughts. Because they’d pretty much been scattered to the four winds. She grabbed clean clothes and her bathroom travel supplies she’d bought yesterday and the second he came out of the bathroom, she skirted into it, avoiding all eye contact.
She showered slowly, using the hot water to calm herself down. She washed and conditioned her hair but when it was time to wash her body, she almost yelped in dismay. Her skin felt electric under her fingers. She felt tender and alive and energetic. She felt as if her spirit were penned up like a horse and that it would take very little encouragement to let it free. She wanted to gallop toward this feeling, toward wherever it would take her.
It was a delicious and exciting sensation.
But it rode in on a wave of guilt. Because she was having this feeling about Quill. Why couldn’t she have had this feeling about Sasha the other night? Then maybe she could have actually done something about it. A last hurrah before she went and sacrificed her freedom. But she hadn’t felt that way about Sasha. She felt that way about Quill. Which meant that the only option she had was to ignore this bubbling thing she had going for him.
She had to pretend that watching him walk across the room, naked and wet with rainwater, hadn’t been the hottest thing she’d ever seen with her own two eyes. She had to pretend that she hadn’t felt a gut-punch of desire for him. She had to pretend that she hadn’t ogled the dark line of hair that led down between his legs. She had to pretend that she didn’t desperately want to know what his shadows tasted like.
She got out of the shower and made a project of applying her lotion and dressing and brushing her teeth and blow drying her hair. When she’d spent as long in the bathroom as any sane person possibly could, she decided it was time to face him.
She expected him to be waiting for her with a smug, knowing smile but when she swung the bathroom door open, he was facing out the window, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans.
“It’s getting worse,” he said. He didn’t turn around but he pointed to the small table under the window. “Made you a PB and J for breakfast.” He sighed. “This water is seriously going to fuck up the car.”
“Oh.” That hadn’t even occurred to her. She picked up the sandwich and went to look out the window as well. Though the sun had fully risen, the light still had the dim, filtered quality of dawn. Rain fell in heavy, gray sheets and the muddy, blue water was now eight inches up the wheel wells of the car.
“What should we—” She jumped nearly an inch in the air as someone banged on their door.
Quill stepped around her and opened it up. Wind and a gust of rain puffed in around a short, round man in a clear plastic poncho and military-grade rain boots. “Hell of a storm!” he shouted, nodding his head at Quill.
Dawn realized that they knew each other; this was probably the man he’d rented the room from last night.
Quill stepped back and let the man into the room, closing the door behind him.
“Yeah, we’re worried about our car.”
“That’s why I’m coming by. There’s a parking garage half a block that way. You should drive it up to the second or third floor unless you want to flood your engine.”
“Is there going to be that much rain?” Dawn gasped.
“Yes, ma’am. They’re expecting at least two feet of accumulation.”
She exchanged looks with Quill. This was not good. For starters, this motel was only one level and they were currently standing in it. The flimsy door looked anything but watertight. If there was going to be two feet of water on the ground, at least a foot of it was going to be in this bedroom.
“In the meantime, the motel is evacuating its guests.”
“Where to?” Quill asked, his jaw tight.
“The movie theater on the hill at the end of the street. It’s the highest poi
nt in town and they opened their doors to us. They have a generator, so even if the power goes out, we should be all right.” The man pointed in the direction of the theater. “Once you move your car, walk down to the theater. We’ll have pillows and blankets and towels and some food, but not much, so bring anything you have.” He handed them two plastic ponchos, tipped his rainhat to them, and trudged back out into the weather to get to the next room of guests.
“Wait here,” Quill told her for the second time that morning. “I’ll move the car and then come back for you.”
She didn’t want to be left behind again and she would have argued, but he was already dashing out the door to jump in the car. She watched anxiously from the window as he carefully drove through the rushing water. About ten minutes later, he was back at the door of their room, once again soaked to the bone.
“Are those the only shoes you have?” he asked, pointing down at her sneakers.
“Yes.”
“Okay, then, I’ll carry you to the theater.”
“What?” she gave him a funny look. “Why?”
“Because you don’t need to get your only pair of shoes completely soaked and mine are already wet.” He put his hands on his hips. “The theater isn’t far. I saw it on my way back.”
She put her own hands on her hips to match his pose. “I can do stuff, you know.”
He frowned back at her. “Obviously.”
“I hunted for my supper for pretty much my entire life. I survived in the wilderness. I’m the only one in my family who can read, who has a driver’s license, who is holding down a job consisting of skilled labor. You don’t have to carry me. You don’t have to make me a sandwich. I can do stuff.”
“Jesus, can you please deal with your little-sister baggage some other time? There’s a flood happening outside.”
“Little-sister baggage?”
Something in her tone had his eyebrows rising up. He looked mildly impressed. “If I apologize for making you the sandwich, can we please get a move on?”
They both glowered at one another for a few seconds before, to Dawn’s delight, Quill cracked into a chuckling smile. He promptly turned his face to one side but not before she caught a tantalizing flash of white teeth and smile lines.