Page 30 of Stealing Embers
My face slams into an uneven stone wall. I sit on my haunches and check my nose, glad to find it isn’t bleeding.
Steel crowds me from behind, shuffling around in the pitch black. I think he’s turning his body and sitting, but without my sight I’m not sure. I’m certainly not going to feel around to find out.
“Sit. We’re here.”
“Here?”
“Yeah, this is the glorious cavern where we get to wait out the siege. Impressed?”
My head moves on a swivel in a vain attempt to take in our surroundings. “I might be if I could see anything.”
“Trust me, you wouldn’t even then.” He blows out a breath that kisses my right cheek. Shocked by his nearness, I rear back and bang into another of the mini-cavern’s walls.
“Ouch!” My spine throbs from the impact.
“Sit down already.” Steel’s fingers wrap around my bicep and when he yanks, I tumble into his lap.
“Not on me,” he complains.
I’m a hot mess of limbs. I try to scramble off him but end up elbowing him in the throat instead.
That wasn’t on purpose, but consider it payment for pulling on me again.
The gruff noise he makes when I knee him in the midsection only makes me smile.
“Stop! Just stop moving already.”
I freeze with a knee pressed to the dirt beside his hip, the other leg thrown over his, and a hand on each of his shoulders.
Blindness does nothing to dim the intimacy of the moment.
“I can’t just stay like this.” My body is sore from the crazy crawl into this foxhole and my legs have started to shake.
Bending my head, I suck in a frustrated breath of air, then instantly regret it.
Rather than the cool dirt-scented musk from the caves, Steel’s masculine aroma fills my lungs.
Sweat, cheap dude shampoo, and the faint echo of detergent.
I want to be grossed out by the typical guy odor, but I’m not . . . and that irks me.
I don’t let myself take another hit of his smell.
“Here, do this.”
Warm hands guide my bent leg to the side and turn my body so my back is pressed against the wall perpendicular to where Steel sits. Drawing my hands from his shoulders, I place them against the dirt floor and ease my body down. Now fully seated, my legs are squished up against my chest so tightly it’s hard to breathe.
I’m not about to complain.
“You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”
I wheeze out a laugh. “Isn’t that,” half-breath, “something you should have,” another half-breath, “asked me before?”
I yelp when my legs are pulled forward and draped across him. Without room to straighten, everything from ankle to mid-thigh is pushed against Steel’s chest. He’s forced to wrap his arms around my lower body in an awkward embrace.
This is so much worse than before.
I squirm and wiggle, trying to free myself, when his arms clamp around my legs, pressing them even more firmly against him.