Page 32 of Taken for Granite
Determined to maintain his distance, he resisted the aroma of the meal Juniper cooked, instead eating a handful of pebbles and sand from the lake.
She was like a pebble in his boot, annoying him at every step and invading his thoughts. Keeping her at a distance helped but he held her in his arms yesterday. She had been in distress, true, and at the time he did not appreciate her warmth or her softness. His skin tingled where they had inadvertently touched.
The situation was insufferable.
Tas tramped through the woods, confident that he was alone. He heard no birdsong, as most animals fled from him. Likewise, he heard no sounds associated with humans, either from engines or their excessive chatting. All he heard was the wind, rustling the leaves and grass. The lake lapped against the shore.
He foot caught a root and he stumbled, wings flexing uselessly to stabilize him. The trees, clustered together tightly, interfered with his spatial orientation. He could discern the shape of things. The lack of significant improvement over the day before frustrated him.
It was the female, his damnable pebble.
Until he could purge the mating hormones from his body, he would never enterduramnaand heal. His body was a broken thing, and he loathed it for not complying.
Tas found a flat rock, warm from the sun, and sat. The afternoon light bathed his skin. He had been too long in the dark. Before his imprisonment, he had conducted most of his business at night, but he never avoided the light entirely. While his ability to shift into a human-like appearance was better than average, he could relax at night and let poor lighting and shadows hide any anomalies.
How dearly he had missed the sun on his skin and the wind under his wings.
He flexed his shoulders, letting his good wing stretch. The lame wing hung limp and useless down his back. Mostly he did not feel its weight anymore. He knew the wing had atrophied. He was almost glad he could not see the membrane withered and inflexible from neglect. Even if the fracture healed, he would not be able to stretch the wing, and it would certainly never be able to support his weight. Only the deepest state ofduramnawould repair the damage.
Footsteps approached. Tas tensed, ready to alight quickly into the forest and disappear. Then he heard the humming.
Juniper really did need a bucket to carry a tune.
“Female, you are a menace,” he said.
“I’m trying to leave you alone, like you asked,” she said.
He could hear the worry in her voice. “But,” he prompted.
“But I’ve been thinking about what you told me. About your ship crashing in the Atlantic.”
He grimaced. The situation had not called for him to divulge such details, but a compulsion came over him. His first moments on Earth were filled with smoke and confusion, followed by saltwater and panic. Juniper did not need to know that, yet he had been compelled to blurt the information out.
“I wouldn’t like the water, either, if that happened to me,” she said. “So, thank you for jumping in to help.”
“You did not require assistance,” he said sourly.
“Maybe, but you didn’t know that, which makes it sweeter.”
“I am not sweet.” Bah.Sweet.
“So it’s been a day…” Her voice trailed off, as if waiting for him to finish her thought, as if he had any notion about what blurted out of her mouth.
She wanted to talk about the kiss. He prepared himself to deny attraction and deny that his cock stood at attention just at the thought of her. “Yes,” he said, cautiously.
Then again, why deny the attraction? His body reacted purely on instinct. It was nothing more than the physiological reaction to a stimulus. He was no more at fault for being attracted to Juniper than she was for causing his aching cock stand.
She sighed. “I can’t sit alone, okay? My mind just gets trapped in this worst-case-scenario loop. I need a plan. I need to plan for a plan.”
Not what he had been expecting, and Tas noted with annoyance that he felt disappointed. “And you want to know my plan.”
“Well, yeah.” She joined him on the rock, their thighs touching. “How long do we wait before we, um, before the exchange?”
“How long before you trade my freedom for your sister’s life?” Perhaps he spoke a bit cooler than necessary. He knew that was the original agreement, but his pride smarted at the notion she would be so eager to see him off.
“You volunteered,” she retorted. “I know you need to rest and heal, so how long will that take?”
“I cannot say.” Too long. His progress was minimal, and her proximity kept his body primed for mating, not healing. Until he purged his body, it would not end.
