Page 37 of Hush

Freckles, he repeats, then shakes his head. Ember marks.

I let out a weak laugh because the alternative is melting into the moss. “That’s not what they’re called, Onyx.”

Called freckles; to me is ember marks.

I scoff, trying not to have cuteness aggression right now. “Arguing with you seems pointless.”

His thumb moves again, tracing the highest cluster across my cheek. It shouldn’t feel intimate enough to make my knees untrustworthy. It’s just my face. People touch faces. Barbers, doctors, my momma when she checks to see if I’m feverish, even though I’m an adult.

None of that has ever felt like this. None of that has ever made my blood pull low and hot as it does with him.

Onyx’s gaze drops to my mouth, and I can feel it through the bond more than I can see it. Curiosity. Want, but not human-slick and practiced. It’s instinctive, bright, and complicated by restraint because he has learned restraint matters to me.

I lick my lips before I can stop myself, and his thumb stills against my cheek. Then his expression changes—not hunger now, but confusion.

He pulls his hand back a few inches, but doesn’t fully lower it, brow faintly furrowed as his eyes search mine.

This morning, in water, you needed, he sends through the mind-link, was me?

All the blood in my body rushes straight into my face.

14

Lucas

The words hit me cleanly—innocently—and for a full second, I don’t understand them because my brain refuses to connect them to the obvious… Then my whole body goes rigid.

“Oh, my god,” I sputter, choking on air. “No. Nononono, absolutely not.”

He doesn’t move his hand. If anything, his thumb drifts absently over my cheekbone. Felt through bond, he says, and I really didn’t need that clarification right now.

I make a sound that’s somewhere between a groan and a laugh and immediately want the earth to open up and take me.

“You felt that?” I ask, voice strangled as I step away from him and run a hand through my hair. “This morning? In the shower?”

His head tilts slightly, and the bond gives me immediate, earnest confusion. Shower. Water-place in den. Yes.

I make a sound that would get me bullied by Parker for the rest of my life if he heard it. “You felt all that?”

Much of that, Onyx says, with such devastating innocence that I turn away, and the bond tightens with a sudden drop of distress so immediate that I feel like an asshole.

Wrong? He asks, the word sounding smaller than anything I’ve heard from him. I did wrong?

I force myself to look at him, which is a mistake. He’s standing there tall, gorgeous, bare-chested, and visibly worried that he’s somehow done something wrong. His eyes are too bright, arms held slightly away from his sides.

The embarrassment twists into guilt again. He didn’t say all this to tease me. He didn’t smirk or try to make it dirty. He only asked because he genuinely didn’t understand, and thinks he did something wrong.

“No,” I say, stepping closer before I think better of it. “No, Onyx. You didn’t do anythin’ wrong.”

He watches me carefully, still not moving. Did not look, only felt heat. Thought bond hurt you. That maybe dream made ache. Wanted to ask and fix.

I drop my forehead against the heel of my free hand, and laugh once in naked humiliation. “You cannot say that with a straight face.”

My face is straight, he says, and that honestly breaks some of the mortification.

“You know what I mean,” I groan.

No, he shakes his head.