“No, you can’t.” Blay shifted his head because he knew eye contact was necessary to get the point across. “And I am not doing that to you right now.”

“Buzzkill.”

As they started at each other, they both laughed. And then Blay got serious as he admired his mate’s hard face, and that strong chest, and that constant wellspring of sexual desire that was ever present, ever ready. Instantly, nothing else mattered or even registered, and it was funny—you’d think after all this time, things would stop receding. But it happened again: The hospital bed disappeared. The room disappeared. The clinic, the training center, the mountain, the world. Everything was gone but the male who was looking back at him.

“Your face is a view I never tire of,” Blay whispered as he stroked the black-and-purple hair that had been mussed in the process of… well, the blow job of his life.

Qhuinn nodded. “And yours is my true north. So there.”

With a smile, Blay meant to keep the compliments going. But then it dawned on him—

“Oh, crap, my pants are around my ankles.”

“I can think of no better place for them to be.”

“Good thing that door is locked—” As Qhuinn went to move, Blay put his hand on the male’s shoulder. “Wait, where are you going?”

“Nowhere.”

Qhuinn’s face tightened as he sat up and sucked in a breath. But when Blay went to pull him back down to the pillow, Qhuinn fought the urging even as it cost him more pain.

“What are you doing?” Blay demanded.

Ah. The blanket that was folded at the end of the bed.

Qhuinn pulled the soft weave free, shook it out of its squares, and placed the softness over Blay’s lower body with careful hands. Even as his face lost its color from whatever he was feeling at his wound site, he batted away efforts to help, and covered that which was clearly precious to him.

Abruptly, Blay found himself blinking fast.

There were so many ways that people said I love you.

And sometimes, they did it without speaking a word.

CHAPTER NINE

Elle had done something bad last night. And someone had been hurt. In some awful way.

Or at least… that was what she had dreamed of.

As her head began to pound again, she tried to stop pushing into the weird void that took over her mind every time she attempted to remember the details of t

he nightmare she’d had. God knew the straining hadn’t gotten her anywhere. She had nothing but a lingering sense of fear and worry. And the headache.

Still, whatever she had dreamed of was like a mental scab—she just had to pick at it. Then again, her guilty conscience had always been a thing. It was like the time she’d stolen one of Uncle Tommy’s cigarettes and tried it out behind the garage. She’d felt awful afterward, and not just because she’d coughed her lungs up by the recycling bin.

Taking her father’s car out last night with her sister in the passenger seat and absolutely no legal driver’s license in her pocket had been a really stupid move. Especially when she was supposed to have been in charge.

So of course her subconscious would hurl something over her mental fence while she was sleeping.

Rubbing her eyes, she attempted to focus on where she was, what time it was, and what she was waiting for. At least she was clear on the first one: She was sitting at the breakfast table in her father’s kitchen. She was also certain that it was a little before 6:30 a.m. And as for the third thing on that list? She was dressed for school, with her homework in her backpack, her hair brushed, and her parka over her lap.

Like being all organized and ready for the bus this early could somehow make up for breaking her father’s trust.

News flash: She wasn’t actually waiting for the bus.

Glancing around, the weak light of morning made everything seem black and white, the pale green cabinets and cheery ivy wallpaper dimmed down to shades of gray, the throw rug under her chair nothing but a shadow, the spines of the cookbooks on the shelves altogether without color. The only light that glowed was the one out by the front door at the base of the stairs, but the illumination didn’t go far, a mere patch of false sunshine.

Picking up her phone, she signed in, but then just flipped through her screens.