Page 48 of Grim and Oro
A moment later, I’m sitting on the chair across from her bed. I’m watching her sleep, the same way I have for many nights before.
I feel her emotions as she dreams. I feel a spike of panic, and my shadows act on instinct, caressing her cheek. She sighs and flips onto her stomach. Her feelings smooth over. Her dreams become lighter.
For once ... I am a cure. Instead of causing pain, I am healing it.
My shadows continue, and I am jealous of them for the first time in my long life. I wish my fingers were the ones stroking down her temple. Running through her hair. Being any balm at all.
I wish she would look at me.
All at once, she awakens, as if she heard me.
I could turn invisible, but I don’t. I want her to see me.
She finds me immediately, eyes blinking rapidly, still blurry with sleep, and she stifles a scream. I feeleverything. Her emotions are unguarded. I feel the full depths of her initial terror, then relief, and ... something else.
“What are you—”
“I’m making sure you don’t bleed out in your sleep.”
She raises a brow. “I’m fine.” Her blood-soaked bandages tell a different story. “You can leave.”
Her emotions say she doesn’t want me to.
Interesting.
I lean back into the chair, making myself comfortable, relishing in the outrage I see growing in her expression.
She really is adorable when she hates me.
Her green eyes are narrowed. Her hands are fisting her sheets.
A thought runs through me, imagining her fisting her sheets for a very different reason, and I have to dig my fingers into my own palms to keep myself from imagining more.
Because of course I’ve imagined her. Several times. Under me, over me, next to me, gasping into my ear, clenching around me.
I speak to get myself out of my filthy thoughts. “Your death would be most inconvenient. I’ll stay a little longer.”
Her outrage almost makes my lips twitch into a smile. “Inconvenient?”
“Inconvenient,” I repeat. “You are an investment.”
It’s true. I’ve spent decades looking for this sword. Every moment I spend with her is for one outcome. I need to remember that.
She doesn’t seem to appreciate that word either. “An investment?”
“My time is valuable. I have a lot to do. Choosing to work with you ... fitting you into my plan. You are an investment. You’re no good to me dead.”
And worse to me alive, if I’m being honest with myself.
She glares at me, and she wouldn’t do it so much if she knew it was one of my favorite expressions of hers.
She huffs and tucks herself back into her sheets. She shifts back and forth. She’s in pain. I can feel it.
I can also feel something else. Something that makes it almost painful for me to be sitting here, so far away from her.
Finally, she sits upright, as if she also can’t take it anymore. As if she could be feeling even a fraction of the torture that I am.
“I can’t sleep,” she says.
