Embry’s wild gaze bored into me, scanning every inch of my face, tension in every lithe muscle until a harsh breath escaped him and he sagged a little. “You were shaking when I got home. I thought something was really wrong until I realised you’d got into the edibles.”
I winced. “Yeah. Sorry about that. Had myself an accidental exorcism.”
“Did it work?”
“Think so.” I lay back, tugging Embry on top of me as much as he’d allow. “I didn’t realise not smoking would mess with my head so much.”
“That’s what you think happened?” Amusement warred with scepticism in Embry’s sparkly eyes, though now he knew I wasn’t dying, sleep had caught up with him again. “Weed withdrawal?”
“What else would it be?”
“Years of unprocessed trauma catching up with you.”
“You sound like Locke.”
“Locke’s wise. You should listen to him if you won’t take me seriously.”
“I do take you seriously.”
Embry rolled off me and flopped onto the carpet again.
It was easy to follow him. Harder to compute what he was saying. I kissed him instead, the surge of arousal pulsing through me another clue I was a different man to whatever jabbering mess I’d been last night.
Em’s mouth was my fucking home. His warm, scarred skin my fucking sanctuary. I hadn’t woken him up with sex on my mind, but I couldn’t seem to get enough of him. A deep ache woke up inside me, a familiar ache, a longing—acraving—and I knew what it was.
It was that shit I found so hard to say, but if Embry had taught me anything—if Saint had—it was that talking was more than words.
We’d had some of our best times on the floor, as feral as the day we were born. But we’d had mindful times too, when as hot as I’d been for him, the reality that he was fragile had never entirely left me.
That had eased in recent months. Watching him regain the strength his injuries had stolen from him, the weight, the flexibility, had chased those worries away, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d fucked him with anything but love in my heart.
And fuckinglust.Before Embry, sex had been a rare distraction from the world of terror grinding me down. Faceless. Detached. A means to a fucking end. With him, it had become a drug that brought my every sense to life. I wanted him so much, just a glance from him across a crowded room was enough to burn me alive.
Him putting me on my back and looming over me? I was scorched fucking earth until I realised he was backing off, taking his weight from me and his heated skin with it.
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere.” Embry settled next to me, lacing our fingers together, his chest rising and falling as fast as mine. “Just trying to remember you had surgery a week ago. You’re too good at pretending it never happened.”
I snorted. “That’s why I couldn’t stand up without stacking until this morning.”
Embry peered at me from behind the arm he’d dropped on his forehead. “That’s better now?”
“Yeah.”
“As in, it’s gone?”
“Think so.”
“You think?”
I cursed in Spanish, a habit I’d picked up from Juana—one that made it hard to believe I’d never spoken Spanish around my brothers at all until she and Lili had found me here. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to be okay.”
“I am okay.”
“Really? You seem agitated.”