Page 76 of His Claim
Varek glanced at me again. “We’ll rest here for a while longer,” he said. “At first light, we start moving again. The Resistance is only about a day’s walk now. You think you can make it?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I can.”
“Good.” He shifted his weight, grimacing.
Morning crept into the cave like a shy thing. Pale light slid across the stone, stirring dust into little constellations. The fire had burned down to red embers. I woke to the comforting sound of Varek’s breathing and the soft drip of water somewhere deeper in the rock.
He was already half-awake when I sat up. His eyes opened, clear and watchful in a heartbeat, and then softened when he saw me. “Hungry?”
“Always,” I said, voice rough.
He reached over and pulled his pack closer. Rummaging inside, he pulled out jerky and handed me a strip. We ate in comfortable silence, the kind that didn’t ask for anything and still felt likeenough. The salt steadied me. The warmth from the embers kissed my knees. For a few minutes, the world forgot to be cruel.
When we were done, Varek doused the last glow of the fire with a careful splash from his canteen. “Time to get moving,” he said. “We can make good distance before the sun goes down if the mountains cooperate.”
We stepped out into the morning air. It was bright and clean, rife with the scent of pine and damp. The storm had rinsed the world while we slept; the sky was an inverted bowl of polished blue, the peaks cutting clean against it. We followed a narrow game trail through the trees, weaving between boulders furred with moss. Everything smelled new.
After an hour, the scent changed. Steam drifted across the path like a white ribbon, and the air picked up a mineral sweetness. I slowed without thinking, head tipped, breathing it in. “Do you smell that?”
He nodded, a hint of a smile tugging at his mouth. “Hot spring. There should be one around here near the ridge.”
We found it tucked into a cradle of stone, steam rising from glass-clear water. Ferns crowded the rim, beaded with dew. The surface broke and re-formed in lazy circles where the heat lapped the morning air. It looked like a secret someone had left for us to find.
Varek studied me, then the water, then me again. “We should keep going,” he said, and then added, almost sheepish, “but to be honest, the two of us look like a disaster.”
I laughed. It felt good to be able to. “That’s a very nice way to say I smell like I wrestled a wolf, a cougar, and a rainstorm in the same night.”
“You won against all of them, at least,” he said simply, grinning.
We lingered at the edge, unwilling to break the spell of it, then Varek slung off his pack and set it on a flat stone. “Twenty minutes,” he said. “Maybe thirty.”
“Forty-five,” I bargained.
He gave me a look that said I was pushing it and then softened. “Fine. Forty-five, little wolf.”
Steam curled around us, warm on my face. My skin prickled with the memory of his hands on me. When Varek reached for the buttons on my shirt, I moved to stop him.
“Let me,” he said softly, and I let my arms fall away.
His hands were warm and careful, unhurried. He worked button by button, each small click oddly intimate in the quiet. He peeled the flannel from my shoulders with a gentleness that made my breath catch in my throat, then eased the shirt aside. His gaze traced where he’d bitten me. He kissed the mark once, and the world narrowed to the soft press of his mouth and the steady thrum of heat beneath my skin.
“You’re all healed,” he murmured.
“Soon you will be too,” I said.
His fingers found the waistband of my jeans, waiting. I nodded. He slid them down, careful not to scrape fresh cuts and scrapes, and I stepped free. The air was cool on my legs, with the warm steam curling around my body. He stripped out of his torn shirt in turn, the fabric catching on a cut along his ribs, and I moved without thinking, easing it over his head. My fingers followed the line of the wound, light as breath.
“You should have let me fight with you,” I said.
His hand covered mine.
“I told you not to,” he said quietly.
I undid his belt and pushed his jeans down, slowly, letting my palms learn his beautiful body once again. He leaned into my touch like a man easing into the light after too long in the dark.
When we were both naked, we slid into the water together. It swallowed us up to the ribs, hot and soft, lifting the ache from my bones. The shock of it made us both hiss. Then we laughed a little as we settled into the warm pool.
He drew me in first, arms around my waist, hands spanning the small of my back. I floated into him, my legs brushing his, my cheek finding his shoulder. The spring whispered against my skin. The heat went deep, untying things I hadn’t known were knotted.
