Page 8 of ColdIron
“No shit.” I crossed my arms. “Now get your hand back under that rag and confirm. Check both, while you’re at it. Protocol. We don’t bring unknowns into base on guesswork.”
“Why do I have to do everything?” Caspian straightened, backing away further.
“Because you’re the Casanova.” I arched a brow. “You’ve had your hands on more breasts than anyone here.”
“That’s exactly why I want you to do it.” Caspian didn’t look remotely offended by the name-calling. If anything, he seemed pleased. “You’re up, vamp. No bias that way.”
I turned to Aelindor, hoping for backup, or at least a decision.
The Fae’s expression remained cool as fresh snow. “That’s not in my scope.”
He wasn’t going to do it. Beneath him, apparently.
I shook my head in disgust at both of them. Fine. I’d get my hands dirty. Do it quick and move on before we got swarmed by cannibals or worse.
I squatted by the boy and slipped my hand under the rug-shirt.
My fingers met resistance immediately—a chest binding, wound tight enough to restrict breathing. I blinked, flexed my fingers, worked them beneath the rough fabric, between the binding and skin.
My mind went completely blank.
A warm swell of flesh met my palm. Unmistakably female.
“Soft skin,” I reported, keeping my voice clinical and detached. “The breast is full and perky. Definitely female.” I moved my hand to the other side, just to be thorough and professional about this. “Same as the other one. Soft, well-formed.” My thumb brushed over the nipple. It contracted at the touch. “Large and responsive. Confirmed on both sides.” Something in my chest seized. “We’re done.”
The girl sat up.
Bolt upright. Faster than someone half-dead had any right to move.
She stared at me. Fear and rage flashed in eyes that were somewhere between midnight black and the darkest blue, like the color of the sky right before a storm broke.
All three of us froze. Something about her burned so bright it dazed us, caught us in her gravity.
In that moment, she was the most beautiful thing I’d seen.
Cracked, bloody lips. Skin blotched and burned. Face filthy with war paint and dried blood. None of it mattered. There was a fierceness to her, a wild quality that made my dead heart stutter.
Before I could assure her that I meant no harm, that this was a misunderstanding, she swung.
Fast. Strong.
Her fist connected with my nose. The crack was audible. She was near death, starved and dehydrated, yet the punch carried real power, the kind born from muscle memory and desperation.
My hand slid from her clothes as I rocked back on my heels.
“Red-eyed monster.” Her voice came low and raspy. “Fucking touch me again, and I’ll turn you into a toad.”
I opened my mouth to protest, to explain, but her eyes rolled back. Her hands went limp. Her head dropped backward like a rag doll.
She was about to crack her skull on a sharp rock. Unfortunate, after she’d survived this long.
I reached for her.
Caspian beat me to it with his shifter speed. He slammed his boot down over the rock.
“I gotcha.”
Her head landed on his shin.
