Page 12 of Touch

“Perhaps you’re clueless.”

“Maybe I’m a challenge. Maybe you have no idea how difficult I can be.”

“Did you injure that woman on purpose?” she demands, refusing to believe it but determined to make certain. “The large one’s mate. The female he was talking about.”

“Holly? I didn’t do anything to her, but good luck explaining that to Griffin. Once that fucker gets an idea into his head, there’s no stopping him. He was chasing Holly through a parking lot when she ran into me by accident and tripped. That’s all.”

That is not all. In the bookshop, a blush had suffused the woman’s cheeks. Griffin or no Griffin, the female is as drawn to Andrew as the rest of the village. Perhaps it’s his success, his evasive nature, or his sculpted face. Feasibly, it’s all three.

Love cannot help herself. “Do you like her?”

Andrew tilts his head. “You mean the way I like coffee?”

“Answer me!”

“Are you fucking serious?”

His question is loaded with incredulity. He just saw Love combat two beastly men with unearthly speed. True, his romantic prospects are not important, and he hadn’t shown any vested interest in Holly beyond her injury. Still, Love’s inability to read him takes precedence over logic.

Andrew crosses over to her, approaching with measured steps. While he absorbs Love’s presence, she does her utmost to maintain her dignity. Deities rarely get flustered. Yet the way this man looks at her… restless energy sparks across her flesh, as if he’s injected a combustible substance into Love’s veins.

“They couldn’t see you,” Andrew says. “Not just because you moved too quickly.”

Even so, she hadn’t been quick enough. Not if he’d been able to catch up to her.

“You’re not real,” he intones. “You can’t fucking be real.”

The turbulent way Andrew says this stalls her breath. She has broken a rule by allying with this man. Moreover, Love shouldn’t be moving in his direction. Yet she steps nearer and raises her hand, palm up.

Without hesitation, he lifts his own hand, his fingers slipping through hers, both glazed in dried blood from the skirmish. In weak moments, Love has lamented her inability to connect with others, but never has she mourned the vapor her body becomes around humans more than now.

“I cannot touch or be touched by you,” she explains. “So no, I’m not real. Not in that way.”

The mortal’s frown is too enticing for his own good. “You rammed the shaft of your arrow against me yesterday. And in the park, that metal bar—”

She grabs the paperback with her other hand, mimicking his earlier action and wiggling it in front of him. “It’s different with objects of your world. They’re links.”

He reaches out to trace one curve of her longbow with his free fingers, then lowers his arm. “You were following me.”

Love pockets the book and nods. “I was.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re the only one who can see me.”

“Why?”

“Because no one else has the power.”

“Why?”

“Because no one else is… special.”

“Bullshit.”

“What?” she demands.

“Come on. No one else is special? That’s a platitude, a cop-out, and ignorant as fuck.”

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