Page 57 of Bookish Girl’s Emergency Contact Is a Lycan King

I’m not.

What I feel, impossibly, is found.

12

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Fable

I wake up the next morning tangled in him.

For a moment, I don’t remember where I am or how I got here. There’s a warm weight against my back, an arm draped possessively over my waist, breath stirring the hair at my nape in slow, steady rhythm. My body is pleasantly sore in interesting places, and there’s a smell, pine and something deeper, something wild, that makes me want to burrow closer before I’m even fully conscious.

Then memory floods back.

The bookstore. The creep. The door exploding. His mouth on mine. His mouth on…

My eyes snap open.

I’m in my apartment, on my couch, and Orion is curled around me, a very large, very warm parenthesis. At some point during the night, we migrated from the awkward arm-perch to actually lying on the cushions, his back against the backrest, my back against his chest, our legs tangled together in a way that should be uncomfortable but isn’t.

His face is relaxed in sleep. Softer than I’ve ever seen it. The hard lines of his jaw have smoothed out. His lips are slightly parted.

He looks younger like this. Peaceful.

He’s three hundred years old and he looks like a man in his thirties and last night he made you come so hard you forgot your own name.

The thought makes heat flood my cheeks.

What are we doing?

What am I doing? Falling asleep in the arms of a supernatural creature I’ve known for two weeks? Letting him touch me like that, make me feel like that, when I don’t even know what we are to each other?

You’re temporary, my anxiety whispers, right on schedule. You’re a novelty. He’s three hundred years old, do you really think you’re the first human he’s done this with?

He said he’s spent most of his life alone. He said he’s been waiting.

For WHAT? He never finished that sentence. He never explained.

He’s a…

I don’t have a word for what he is. Wolf man. Lycan king. Supernatural stalker. The person who broke down my door to save me and then worshiped my body like I was something sacred.

None of those are relationship categories. You have no idea where you stand. You have no idea what this MEANS.

My heart rate picks up. I can feel it pounding in my chest, can feel the familiar spiral beginning, the thoughts chasing each other faster and faster, each one sharper than the last.

What if this was a mistake? What if he regrets it? What if he wakes up and realizes you’re just a messy human with ADHD and anxiety and nothing special…

“Your heart rate just tripled.”

His voice is sleep-rough, barely awake, and it sends a shiver down my spine even as it startles me.

“What’s wrong?” He’s more alert now, pulling back just enough to look at my face. “Nightmare? Pain? Talk to me.”

“I’m fine. I just…” I struggle for words that aren’t pathetic. “I don’t know what this is.”

“This?”