Page 84 of Wolf of Ashes
She huffs at me before she lowers her head back to the couch she’s draped across.
Diavolo kicks the bedroom door shut behind us and places me on the floor. He finishes wrapping the towel around me before he turns to the bed.
I glare at his back because this has gone far enough. “You know how I feel about this bed.”
But he’s ripping the bedclothes off, starting with the puffy blanket, then the one below it, stripping the bed right down to a single layer of silky material that covers the mattress. He even throws the pillows on the floor.
He turns back to me and only now do I see the growing darkness beneath his eyes. Not shadows, but rings of what appear to be exhaustion.
It surprises me so much that I take a moment to reassess him. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s been millennia since I did anything like that. If, indeed, I ever did,” he says. “I need to sleep. It’s up to you if you sleep with me.”
My eyes widen at his admission of what could be a vulnerability. I’m certain it’s not so much the sex that has drained him as the use of energy and power.
It only now occurs to me to wonder if he was drawing on dark magic or if it was an illusion when he held me against the wall. The light that had engulfed me was black. Much darker than any compulsion power he’s used, and not sapphire or emerald like his other magic normally is.
I’m not sure I want to know the answer.
“I’m not sleepy,” I say. “But I’ll lie with you for a while.”
He seems especially relieved when I say that I’m not sleepy, his exhale immediate and deep, but his reason surprises me.
“It would be best if you can stay awake,” he says. “It’s difficult for me to sleep when you do. Your heart hurts too much.”
My eyes widen.
My heart hurts while I sleep because of my dreams. He told me that on the beach.
He pulls the flat sheet up off the floor and then he crawls onto the bed, pulling the sheet around himself before he closes his eyes.
“Well, I suppose this bed will have to do,” I grumble, dropping the towel and slipping onto the bed beside him, my body still naked and my partially braided hair damp.
I’m happy to find that the mattress is firmer than I thought it would be, and I can’t complain about the smoothness of the material covering it.
This sheet has certainly expanded my ‘soft as’ comparisons.
Soft as towels. Soft as sheets. Soft as…
Lips.
Diavolo’s upper arm pulls me closer, his mouth brushing the edge of mine. Not so much a kiss as a brief, tingling meeting of skin on skin.
I wait for more, but his features smooth out and his breathing becomes even.
The deeper he falls into sleep, the darker grow the shadows across his features. I’m surprised by the way his face and body very slowly shift between personas, his skin color and even its texture changing, as if his body is settling into whatever form he needs to take so he can rest.
I’m surprised when he stops on a form he hasn’t shown me before. Possibly his largest male silhouette with broad shoulders that cause the tucked sheet to tighten around him so much, it could rip. His skin is fair, his hair is a metallic, auburn color, and a golden sheen is visible across the top of his chest where the sheet doesn’t cover him.
When he stays like that, I finally close my eyes.
But there’s something I need to say to him that I won’t be able to say when he’s awake, so I take my chance with him while he’s asleep.
“Obviously, I’ve never had sex,” I whisper. “There’s going to come a point where I’ll need to do something about that. And it can’t be with you. Because if it’s with you…”
I’ll lose myself. I’ll lose control.
My eyes fly open when his voice sounds.
