Page 20 of Tattooed Cowboy
Suddenly, her eyes find mine, breath rushing from her lungs. “You went to school with my grandpa, grandma. How old are you, Maveryk?”
I shrug. “Quit counting at some point.”
“Does that mean you’ll live forever? Watch me grow old and?—”
“No,” I say, not wanting even the thought of her mortality in the air. “The bond changes everything. It ties my life to the length of yours.”
Her chin trembles. “Really? You’d sacrificethatfor me?”
I raise a finger, stroke along her jawline. “Only really living if it’s with you.” My lips ghost over hers, sparks flying.
Her mind relaxes, and I explore. My throat tightens as I taste her psyche in return—the moment she first saw me at the ranch, the tremor of fear she mistook for fate. The dream we shared at her bedroom window.
My hand slides lower, savoring her curvy form beneath the blanket, worshiping as her walls drop further, and she lets me feel her desire in the barn. Then, the cold sting of my back to her the morning after. I want to explain the reason, but I won’t let her feel my fear.
Not yet.
I hold back.
She doesn’t push.
Peace settles.
A stillness so complete it feels like prayer.
Outside, the mountains vibrate the same harmony back, as if the world itself has joined the song.
Then, a sound intrudes.
I try to ignore it until I can’t.
The liquid light of the bracelet around our joined bodies fractures, hardening back into the thin metal around her wrist. Her eyes search mine.
I lift my head, staring toward the black window. The night beyond gives away no secrets.
“What is it?” she whispers, as if trying to disentangle her mind from mine.
Static crawls across the radio. A thin mechanical whine threads through the wind—precise, deliberate. Not weather.
“They’re coming.”
The fear rises like a tide, and this time, she feels it too.
Chapter
Seven
MAVERYK
The hum fractures.
Not gone … changed.
It crawls through the cabin’s bones, the air turning metallic, sharp as lightning before a strike.
Melody stiffens beneath my arm, her breath catching in the hollow between my ribs. The bond still thrums between us. But its warmth has thinned—replaced by a low vibration that isn’t ours.
Outside, the wind howls wrong, too even, too precise.
