Page 62 of Animal Tamer
ROWE
Wren makes a small sound in her sleep, and I surface from my doze for the fourth time tonight.
The chair is terrible for sleeping. I don't care. She's in my bed—in my bed—curled on her side with one hand tucked under her cheek and my spare blanket kicked down to her hips, and I've spent the night drifting in and out just so I can keep opening my eyes to this.
The bed is too small. The thought circles my skull at six in the morning like a moth around the lamp. It's a bunk built for one man who never expected company, and she barely fits on it alone. Silas gutted the back third of his trailer a few months ago and built a bed that takes up the entire space, wall to wall, big enough for him and Teddy and Nova, and soon, a crib bolted within arm's reach. I used to think it was excessive.
I'm going to build one. Tear out the bench, the fold-down table, all of it. A bed she can sprawl in. A bed with room for the distance we need and the closeness we're learning, and maybe someday no distance at all.
Nine days until the trucks roll. Eight, now. She's coming with us.
She'scoming with us.
Her lashes flutter. Her eyes open, find me in the chair, and the smile that spreads across her face is slow and unguarded.
“You slept in the chair,” she murmurs.
“I slept great.”
“Liar.” She stretches, and my henley rides up her thigh, and I forget what we were talking about. “You could've woken me. I'd have taken the chair.”
“You're never taking the chair.”
“Bossy.” She props herself up on an elbow. Her hair is a disaster, and there's a crease from the pillow running down one cheek, and I catalogue it all, greedy, because I get to. “What time is it?”
“Early. Sleep more.”
She doesn't sleep more. She looks at me instead. Her gaze drifts—my shoulders, my chest, down my stomach, lower—and I watch her eyes go heavy-lidded and dark. She catches her bottom lip between her teeth.
My cock notices before my brain does, thickening against my thigh, and the jeans I never took off go tight.
“What are you thinking about?” My voice comes out rough with sleep and something else.
The blush starts at her throat and climbs. “Nothing.”
“Wren.”
“It's stupid.”
“Nothing about you is stupid. Say it.”
She sits up, tucking her legs beneath her, and worries the hem of my henley between her fingers. “In Nova's trailer. There were chains everywhere. From her act before she started showing.” Her eyes flick up to mine and away. “And I had an idea. Last night. While I was falling asleep.”
“What kind of idea?”
“The kind where I can't touch you.” The words come out in a rush, like she has to get them all moving before her courage runs out. “You could tie me. Arms bound. Legs open and folded up, chained to my body so I can't move, can't reach for you, can't—my hands would be locked down, Rowe. Completely. And then I'd just be—” she swallows, and her voice drops to almost nothing, “—available. For you. However you wanted. And you'd know, the whole time, that Icouldn'ttouch you. Not even by accident.”
The groan that comes out of me is involuntary. I drag the heel of my hand down the ridge of my cock through the denim, pressing hard, because the picture she just painted has me aching in the space of four seconds.
She'd be spread open. Held open. A body I could have without a single hand ever landing on my skin.
“Rowe?” she whispers.
I pull my phone out of my pocket.
“What are you doing?”
“Texting Silas.”
