Survival Instincts, page 28
“What the hell, Skeeve.” Lynn glared at the dog and lowered herself back down with a deep breath meant to settle the dizzying rush of adrenaline in her system. She accepted a doggy hug and buried her face in his fur to hide the blush heating her cheeks. After a few moments, she dared to put into words what had just transpired, at the risk of making the experience feel even more real than it obviously already was. “You kissed me.”
“No,” Dani countered instantly. “We kissed.”
“There’s a difference?” Lynn found the courage to look up and sent Skeever away with a pat on the flank.
He ran off, chasing a bird he spotted.
Dani’s gaze didn’t lift from her. “There’s a big difference.” Her pupils had dilated, making her eyes seem darker.
“What’s the difference, then?”
The same tongue Lynn had tasted wet Dani’s lips and drew Lynn’s gaze away from Dani’s eyes.
She glanced back up.
“That you wanted it too.” It was supposed to be a statement, but the way Dani struggled to hold her gaze made Lynn suspect Dani wasn’t too sure about that.
Lynn chose her words carefully. “If I told you I did, then what?”
Dani finally couldn’t hold eye contact anymore and dropped her gaze to her hands. “Then it would complicate things.”
You’re not wrong there. “I know. So…do you want me to say I wanted it too? Or do we end it here and never mention it again?” Lynn watched Skeever swallow the bird in large chunks. The gruesome display did nothing to distract her from the conversation.
“Is that what you want?”
“What I want hasn’t changed.” Lynn licked her lips and tasted Dani. Need flared. “It just got more…” She trailed off. “More.”
“For me to come with you. To travel together.” Clearly a statement this time.
With a casual shrug, Lynn tried to make this conversation less of a walk through a wolves’ den. “It’s why I came after you.”
“If I say that you can say that you wanted to kiss me too—” She spoke slowly as if to construct the sentence correctly in her head. “Then does that mean I’m promising to stay?”
“No.” But I’d like it to.
“Then you can say it.”
Lynn swallowed down a lump of nerves and looked back at Dani. “I wanted to kiss you too.”
Dani didn’t outwardly react to that. She paused for a few seconds, seemingly pondering something. Then she drew her gaze up and locked it with Lynn’s. “Do you want to do it again?”
When they shut the bedroom door on Skeever, he whined loudly, but Dani smiled.
Lynn turned toward her. It was awkward now, mostly because they hadn’t actually discussed what would happen next but also because preparing the camp for the night had taken enough time for Lynn’s mind to provide her with enough scenarios of doom to make a second round of kisses—or maybe even more—a very bad idea.
She had romantically kissed exactly one person in her life—and that person was in this room. She hadn’t felt the need to be close to another human being since everyone she’d considered family had died. Lynn didn’t touch others, and others didn’t touch her; that was how it had been for more than half her life.
Dani stood in the center of the room, didn’t move, and just…watched. She didn’t give any indication of what she was feeling or thinking.
Clearly, Lynn would have to make the next move, which was terrifying. She wanted to kiss Dani again. Even if Dani went back to the Homestead, even if she lost her some other way, she had enjoyed kissing Dani and the way kissing her had made her feel. There was hesitance now too, though. Despite what Dani had said earlier—that Lynn admitting she had wanted to kiss her wouldn’t affect Dani’s decision once they made it back to the Homestead—it undoubtedly would, and Lynn felt the pressure to perform.
She’d also had plenty of time to think about why Dani had kissed her. The most logical conclusion was that Dani had been confronted with the reality of death in a very brutal and personal way today, and she was just kissing her because it chased the fear of dying and the memories of Richard’s corpse away. Lynn hadn’t thought of dying when they were kissing. In fact, she’d never felt more alive. If they both felt better while kissing each other, then there was really only one thing to do, right?
While Skeever scratched at the door to be let in, Lynn closed the distance between her and Dani and kissed her again, squarely on the lips.
It wasn’t exactly a skillful or gentle coming together. Dani’s eyes widened just a touch before Lynn closed hers, but she took a hold of Lynn’s shoulder to keep herself from swaying and just…connected. Then she wrapped her other arm around Lynn’s back and pressed herself against her.
They were of roughly equal height, so Dani’s breasts pressed against Lynn’s and her pelvis connected with her too. Even their legs brushed; Dani was that close. It felt very odd, and Lynn had to fight off insidious thoughts like that Dani could reach for her tomahawk and brain her with it. Once she succeeded, Lynn exhaled and relaxed.
With Dani’s hand on her arm, the hand of that arm could only go to Dani’s hip or side. She settled on her side. The other one could go anywhere. She chose to trace the braid in Dani’s hair after lifting it from the curtain of her hair. It felt smooth and tight, with a small bone bead at the end that she could feel was engraved, but she couldn’t visualize the pattern. Dani’s tongue slipping over her lips and drawing her attention away might have had something to do with it. She parted her lips, but Dani had broken the kiss already.
Lynn chased those lips blindly and met them again, this time instantly connecting with Dani’s tongue. The sudden touch had her whimper—which was a sound she had literally never heard herself utter.
With an appreciative hum, Dani rolled her tongue a little more firmly along the edge of Lynn’s.
A shiver coursed down all the way to Lynn’s toes. When she gently tugged Dani’s braid, Dani tilted her head and their mouths connected fully, parting wider instinctively to allow a very real, very firm, very nice kiss.
Another million thoughts popped up, but far less intrusively this time: Is my tongue cold too? What’s that taste? Should I do something else? They popped up at the rate of one per heartbeat, but once her heartbeat slowed to a regular pace and she could no longer keep track of the times they’d broken apart and come back together for more, they disappeared. Kissing Dani became familiar and fun faster than Lynn had thought possible.
Dani stroked her arm with her fingertips, so Lynn used her thumb to stroke Dani’s side. She discovered little kisses anywhere on Dani’s lips made her smile. Teasing the corner of her mouth with her tongue made her moan.
Lynn discovered things about herself too: the back of her elbow was extremely ticklish, for example, something Dani noted with glee. When Dani traced her top front teeth with her tongue, she developed goose bumps, but she instantly hated it when Dani pushed her tongue under hers and against the connective tissue between her tongue and the floor of her mouth. She wasn’t quite sure how to tell Dani that, so she just sort of fumbled her tongue under Dani’s when Dani’s tongue seemed to go for the spot. These minor inconveniences did nothing to dampen her enjoyment of the activity. She was probably doing things Dani didn’t like and misinterpreting the signs, but Dani didn’t seem to mind either.
Slowly, Lynn broke another kiss.
After pecking Lynn’s bottom lip, Dani leaned back and continued to scratch the nape of Lynn’s neck, where her hand had ended up. “My feet are killing me.”
It took a little time for Lynn to realize they were no longer kissing. She enjoyed the rasp of Dani’s nails on her skin very much, she’d discovered. When she opened her eyes, enough time had passed for the world to darken considerably since the last time she’d had her eyes open. “Oh.”
Dani very distinctly giggled, which was such a foreign sound to Lynn that she dropped her gaze to Dani’s lips to watch it happen. They were puffy and red and curved into a big smile.
“Oh?” Dani shook her head, but her eyes were filled with mirth.
Lynn’s sluggish brain picked up speed, but not fast enough to come up with anything useful. “Sorry. Um…food?”
Dani watched her for a five count, then burst into laughter. She hugged her, which was somehow a completely different experience than kissing. “Yeah, Wilder, let’s eat.”
Chapter 17
“Is this something we have to talk about?” The long, intense kissing session in question made Lynn dangerously giddy whenever she thought of it, but if they talked about it, they would have to face the consequences of this sudden shift in their relationship. She didn’t feel emotionally steady enough to listen to Dani repeating it didn’t change anything between them—because their kissing had changed a lot for Lynn, even though she wasn’t entirely able to grasp how and how much, nor did she want to.
Dani stretched out her legs and wiggled her toes. The skin of her feet was still riddled with blisters, but the fire seemed to help dry out the popped ones. “I don’t know. Do we?”
Lynn plucked at her meat. Skeever had caught a rabbit this morning, and they’d roasted it without much talking but with a good deal of smiles and little touches. “I don’t know. If it’s going to be a problem then yes, if not, then I guess we don’t have to.”
It was dark now. The crescent moon and the fire provided the only illumination, but that was more than enough to watch Dani clean the rabbit’s juices off her plate with a piece of flatbread. She kept her head down. “It’s been a long day.”
“Yeah. True.” Lynn’s leaden arms and aching back reminded her of that with every move. “Does that mean you don’t want to talk about it?”
Dani nodded and finally looked at her. The little smile tugging at the corners of her mouth was soothing. “I know we’ll have to eventually, but with everything that’s happened today, I’m just…” She didn’t finish the sentence.
“Tired. I get it. Me too.”
Dani’s smile spread. “Thanks.” After a pause she added, “It was good, though.”
Lynn’s heart did a somersault. “Yeah?”
Dani’s eyes finally lit up with a spark. She sat a little closer on the pavement. “Yeah. Maybe we can do it again sometime.”
Lynn laughed and brushed her arm against Dani’s. “Yeah, that might be nice.” Potentially stupid, but very nice.
“Come on, Skeeve, I want to go to bed!” Lynn held the door open for Skeever, who had decided another bathroom call was in order before bed—well after Lynn and Dani had taken care of that themselves.
Dani stood in the doorway of the makeshift bedroom, arms crossed, waiting with a grin.
“Skeever!”
He finally looked up and ran back from the bushes, then shot past her and headed straight for the bedroom.
Once Lynn had bolted the door and joined them in the bedroom, Dani closed the door behind them all.
Skeever settled on Lynn’s bed with a happy sigh.
“Ass.” Lynn pushed him gently with her foot as she stripped off her jacket. “Go sleep with Dani.”
“And that’s not mean?” Dani grinned and got under her covers.
Very little light made its way into the back room, but Lynn could see that Dani’s face was turned toward her. “Well, a little.” She spread her jacket out by the door. “Come, Skeeve. Come here.” She patted the leather.
Skeever took his time walking over, then whimpered pathetically as he lay down.
“Whiner.” She scratched his neck and side, kissed his nose, and left him to his own sleeping. She lowered herself down on her bed, kicked off her boots, and rolled onto her back with a groan. Every single part of her body was sore, and relaxing her muscles felt like agony. When she brought her arms up to lay her head on, a sharp stab of pain flashed from her wrist to her elbow. She hissed.
“You okay?”
Lynn brought her arms back down and massaged her pulsing left arm. “Yeah, I just keep forgetting about these damn bite marks. All that digging and hauling messed that whole area up.” The pain faded slowly.
“Sorry.”
Lynn looked toward Dani’s general area. The whites of Dani’s eyes caught a little light, and she focused her gaze on that. “Don’t worry. Really. I’ll be fine. I knew it was going to happen and it did.”
“Still. I’m grateful. Also for…after. I haven’t been thinking of…of Richard half as much as I thought I would be.”
Lynn didn’t quite know what to think of that. “Was kissing me only a distraction?”
“No!” Dani sat up. “No. Definitely not. It helped, but—” She paused and ran her hand through her hair. “Now we’re talking about it anyway.”
Lynn smiled in the dark. “Yeah, sorry, I’m just a little out of my league here. We went from playing each other to, well, this, literally overnight.”
“Two nights, and a lot happened in between.”
“Like?” Lynn shifted onto her side so she could watch Dani more easily.
“Like…” Dani lay down again and looked at her too. “Like not dying because you were with me, and you being there when I…struggled.” She sighed. “And you’ve been wearing on me with that ‘come with me’ bullshit.”
Lynn considered that. “Why is it bullshit?”
Dani groaned. “I don’t know! It just is. It’s…stupid.”
The blankets suddenly felt constricting. Lynn pushed them down to her waist. “But you’re thinking about it anyway.”
Dani didn’t reply for a long time. Finally, she said, “I need to talk to Kate. If you’re right, I don’t like what her plans are. And I still think you should come with me.”
“I’m no—”
“I know what you said. Skeever, shitty scout, I got it.” Dani seemed to wave her hand in the air, but it was hard to tell in the dark. “It would just be easier if you did come with me and if you wanted to take over Richard’s job.”
Lynn didn’t reply. She knew down to her bones that wasn’t going to work—for anyone.
Dani seemingly got tired of waiting for input. “If she forces me to go out alone like Richard did, well, I have just as much of a chance of dying as I would have with you.”
“You wouldn’t be alone if you came with me. You’d be safer.”
Now it was Dani’s turn to pause again. “Unless you left me, then I’d be in just as much danger—more, because I wouldn’t have anywhere to go.” Her voice trembled.
“I can’t make promises.” Lynn watched what she thought was Dani’s shape as they talked. “Well, I could, but you’d have to trust me to stick to it, and I wouldn’t take your word for something as important as this, so I get that making promises is useless.” She took a deep breath and let it out again. “It’s your choice. And you have to make it. All I can say is that…” Damn, why is it so hard to get this out? “That kissing you only made me want you to come with me more.”
Only Skeever’s breathing filled the silence.
“This is why I didn’t want to talk about it.”
Dani sounded sad or confused or scared, maybe. Without visual input, Lynn couldn’t tell for sure. “We don’t have to. We’ll stick to the plan: go back, you talk to Kate, you either show up or you don’t.”
“And you’d be okay with it if I don’t?”
Lynn swallowed down a ball of nerves. “I wouldn’t be happy,” she eventually said. “But I’d understand, and I’d survive. It wouldn’t change my plan.”
“What plan?”
“Head south, stay warm during the winter. Figure out a way to stay safe.” Lynn rattled the list off with ease. It was a simple survival strategy, but one that encompassed all that she’d always thought mattered most. It terrified her that maybe that wasn’t enough anymore now that she’d gotten a glimpse of what else life had to offer.
“Did you ever plan for someone else to join you?”
“No.” She admitted it honestly. “Well, once I picked up Skeever, he got added to the mix.”
“And you’d just as easily fit me in?”
Lynn was instantly presented with a vision of a little farm, fenced off and secure, with Dani working the field as Lynn walked out into the sunlight beyond the patio. Dani looked up and gave her a smile and a wave before wiping sweat off her brow. It was an entirely unrealistic vision of a future that would not—could not—exist in the world they lived in, but it made her smile regardless. “Yeah. Definitely.” Her voice was raspy, courtesy of a lightning bolt of longing that tore through her chest.
Dani sighed and turned. “We should sleep.”
Shit. Lynn nodded, then realized Dani couldn’t see her. “Yeah. Good night.”
There was no verbal reply, just the shifting of blankets and a soft sigh.
Lynn wasn’t sure if she’d done anything wrong or if it was just Dani struggling with her own thoughts and emotions, but Dani was definitely struggling. Knowing that left her wide-awake, and she tried to work through a confusing mix of anxiety and hope. Here she was, not even sure they would make it back to the Homestead and already worrying about what would happen if Dani didn’t choose to come with her.
And what if she did choose to come? What if they ended up butting heads? Especially now this romantic—or maybe just sexual—element had been introduced, the chance of catastrophic failure of their potential partnership was even higher. Or it’ll make us work harder at it. This whole thing was doing her head in!
She tried to make out Dani’s shape, fighting the urge to get up and join her. It felt wrong to know Dani was having a hard time yet to stay away. Then again, maybe Dani liked being apart right now. Maybe some distance was exactly what she needed.
Lynn squeezed her eyes shut and threw her uninjured arm over her face in frustration. See? This is exactly why this is all a bad idea! You have no clue how to be with another human being—let alone be involved with them. She moved her arm just enough to peer past it at what she assumed to be the back of Dani’s head. This is stupid! You stare down wolves every other day. Just ask her the damn question and let her decide. “Dani? Do you want me to come over? Like…like two nights ago?” The seconds that passed before Dani replied felt glacial.
