Page 31 of Shadowed Bond

“Is your wound fully healed?” she asks as she lowers herself carefully.

“Yeah,” I reply, standing beneath her, although she’s managing perfectly fine. And she reaches the bottom without falling.

Still, when she jumps the last few feet down, my hand catches her waist before I even think.

She stills.

So do I.

It lasts only a second, maybe less, but I feel the warmth of her through the fabric of her shirt, the small intake of breath she tries to hide, the way her hand briefly closes around my arm to steady herself.

Then she steps away.

“I was managing,” she says firmly, but her voice is quieter than it should be.

“Habit.” I shrug before leading the way in the opposite direction from where we had gone yesterday. She walks slower, more focused, her fingers moving over the screen with precise little motions as she corrects the old routes with her own; it’s ideal. If we get lost again, we’ll have a map to follow.

I try to focus on the tunnels, but she keeps distracting me by stepping closer to examine the walls, brushing past me in tight spaces, her scent cutting through the damp, rotten smell. She smells clean and of something expensive, and that scent doesn’t belong down here. Neither does she.

Which only makes me more aware of her.

At one point, she stops so suddenly that I almost walk into her.

“What?” I ask.

She raises a hand without looking back, silencing me as she crouches beside the water. Her aura glows faintly, green threading into the shallow current while the map balances against her thigh. She’s bent low, and her ponytail slips over her shoulder, and before I can think better of it, I reach down and move it back before it can land in the dirty water.

She freezes when my fingers brush the edge of her jaw.

Barely; it was a fraction of a second, but she noticed. I move my hand slowly as her eyes turn upwards towards me.

“Did you want your hair in the sewer water?” I ask.

“How thoughtful of you to care,” she says, but I don’t miss the way her heart is racing.

For a moment, neither of us moves, and then she lowers her gaze first and returns to the tablet, and I hate that I can still feel her smooth skin against my fingertips.

I step back, jaw tight.

Fucking hell.

I take the tablet from her at one point and skip to her report of what happened yesterday. I’m glad she’s doing the paperwork without being asked, threatened or bullied into it. I fucking hate it, and she seems to enjoy it. I guess it’s good she’s come with me.

I look at the mention of the thing we saw in the tunnel and raise an eyebrow.

I glance over her shoulder. “Entity sighted?”

“Yes.”

“Bit polite, init.”

“What would you prefer?” she asks.

I shrug. “Ugly motherfucker in the tunnel.”

Her mouth twitches, and she shakes her head. “I am not writing that in a report.”

“Shame. Leo would get it.”