Page 120 of Bound
He did his best not to look now. As he tugged her free of the last of what could chill her through—made easier when he looked at her still face. She trusted him. He knew she did. Perhaps not entirely, but each measure was hard earned and he treasured every inch of it.
He’d find her something else to wear.
He would enjoy looking at her when she was the one to remove her clothing. To smile at him shyly and beckon him to her. Or maybe she would need him to do that. To come to her and pull her into his arms. To promise she was safe, that she was loved, and he would never, ever leave her.
That he would make sure she never wanted him to.
The hope of that, the dream of it, made it easier to wrap her inside the warm bedding. It took a bit of jostling, as he wanted it above and below, and in the process he caught a glimpse of her back.
He swallowed.
She’d said that the joining of two kinds was not always gentle. He hadn’t known what she’d meant. But where wings and feathers should softly merge into pliant skin, hers were gashed—angry and red. Had she mentioned pain? He could not recall, and the ever-growing knot in his belly tightened further. Then there was the wing itself. Small. Too delicate. It hadn’t always been at such an angle, had it?
He wasn’t taking care of her. Not enough. This had proven that.
“Things have to change, Wren,” he murmured to her, rubbing at her through the quilts, willing warmth into her. “I know you don’t like it. You always think it’s bad. I heard you. But it won’t be. I promise you that. Just... please trust me when you wake up. Or don’t. If you can’t. But...” A shuddering breath, and he pressed his lips to her hair—her tangle of wet hair that wasn’t braided like it should be. Wasn’t being tugged on and abused, but lay limp and cold across her, the cord gone to keep it properly together.
“You can be as cross with me as you like, when you wake up. But things will change.”
They moved downward. Across the curve of her cheekbone. Just once. More a whisper than a kiss. And he should not have done even that, but what if... what if she didn’t wake? What if she slipped away and then...
She grimaced.
Which was not at all the expression he had imagined when he’d allowed himself those hopeless sort of thoughts. The ones where his kisses might be welcomed, when she’d perhaps even want to return them.
But it was so perfectly her.
And he laughed. A bright, desperate burst that meant that maybe... maybe she would come back to him after all.
“That’s it, lovely. You wake up and chide me for taking liberties.”
He kept at his rubbing, watching for any crinkling about her eyes, her nose. Some sign that she was waking up truly.
It felt an agony. The waiting. Perhaps in his youngest years he would have felt a fool for what he murmured to her, the promises he made. But they felt right. And if she heard him, so much the better.
He’d never hurt her. She had to know that by now. There would be no unwanted hands in the dark. No talk of locking her away in a tower that might or might not have stairs enough for her to move about as she pleased. There would no selling of anything that mattered to her, whether animal or material.
It would be a good life together, couldn’t she see that? Her happiness mattered to him. Her wellbeing too, which would mean a rather difficult talk once she was lucid enough to have it with him.
It did not take long before Merryweather appeared. Tail up straight as she jumped deftly onto the table, sniffing about Wren’s form with suspicion.
“She’ll be all right. You’ll see.”
Merryweather did not appear to give his opinion much credence, for she moved to her favoured chair and sat, joining him in his vigil.
When she did wake, it was with a gasp.
And a shove.
And it might have been glorious, had her face not been twisted in pain.
19. Stay
Wren did not want a head anymore. Not if it was going to throb like this. The wings could go too, particularly the left one that screamed at her until she lurched off of it.
Eyes could go too, because it hurt to see.
Hurt to breathe for that matter.