When the blade got stuck, she had a moment of panic and tried to yank it back, but Aux was there in an instant. He had been ten feet away watching her, and then in a blur he was right there, his gloved hand over hers. She released the lever in a rush and stood there frozen, her face inches from Aux’s.
His eyes were intense, swirling with that strange silver color as he studied her face.
His shoulders heaved with his breath, and inside her chest, Gwen’s heart was beating a hundred miles a minute. She looked at his lips. What would it feel like to kiss such a gruff man?
Snowflakes were hitting their faces, and for a moment the whole world stood still.
Gwen leaned in slightly, and her movement broke the spell. Aux leaned back and turned the side of his face to her. “Let go of the chainsaw. I’ll get it out.”
Feeling the sting of rejection, she did as he asked and gave him space. She backpedaled a few yards and then wrung her hands. She was wearing a pair of his huge gloves and one of them fell off into the snow with her motion. “Oh, sorry,” she apologized. To the glove? Good grief, she was a mess around this man.
Aux made quick, professional work of the pallet, then left abruptly with his chainsaw in hand. He disappeared into the snow in the direction of the barn.
She’d messed up with a closed-off man by trying to kiss him. Dumb. They were having a good day. He had been open with not being interested in her and now she’d made him leave.
She made everyone leave.
Aux reappeared through the haze of the snow storm and handed her something. He’d taken off his glove, and in the palm of his bare hand were two pain killers. “For your face. If it’s hurting,” he said in his gravelly voice.
He held a bottled water in his other hand, the lid already removed.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“You don’t have anything to apologize for,” he said, his eyes on the snow.
When her fingertips brushed his skin as she took the pain killers from his palm, he jerked his eyes to hers. As she took her medicine, he stepped back and rubbed his palm over and over where she’d touched him. She’d mostly seen curiosity, anger, and annoyance in his eyes, but in this moment, she saw something different.
She saw uncertainty.
Chapter Four
She didn’t know.
Aux jogged down the snow-covered porch stairs with the blankets in his hand.
Gwen didn’t know.
She didn’t know how huge that touch of her skin against his had been. She couldn’t. She was human. Touch didn’t mean as much to humans. But for a shifter like him?
Touch changed a monster’s life.
He wasn’t supposed to do this. He wasn’t supposed to talk to her, or get to know her, or teach her, or touch her. He wasn’t supposed to let her get to know him. He wasn’t supposed to allow her to like him, but when she laughed, or complimented him, it felt so good to his dead insides. Like a high he’d never known existed.
He wasn’t supposed to do this on pain of death, but that small touch of her fingertip made it seem worth it.
His skin still tingled where she’d touched him.
Never in his life had he allowed a human to do that. Shifters only, and that had just been to keep the bear steady. Or as steady as he could. Shifter females couldn’t procreate. They were safe. He had a job to do. He and his brothers—the last three of their kind.
Their job was to die off and end the bear shifter line.
Human females could bear shifter sons. They could be Turned.
They would extend the line.
Humans were untouchable.
Those were the rules.
“I’ve seen these before!” Gwen exclaimed from where she stood in the bed of the side-by-side.
She had her legs splayed and was holding onto the roof of it, like he was going to let her ride there. Humans died too easy. She needed to be buckled in and keep all her arms in legs inside the vehicle and he was going to go like three fuckin’ miles an hour.
The pretty creature still had the price tag hanging off her new snow boots. He’d wanted to yank it off a few times today, but he’d resisted. It was actually pretty cute and now he had turned it into a game. How long would it take Gwen to check herself in a reflection somewhere and notice the tag? So far, she’d kept her mind on the present. Even her phone had stayed in her back pocket all day. She hadn’t pulled it out once, not even to check the time.
He wasn’t trying to put tests on her, but if he were, she would’ve passed a few big ones already.
Hard worker. Check. She hadn’t complained once today, and he hadn’t gone easy on her.
Zest for life that was so damn contagious. Check. She was currently bouncing and testing the shocks of his side-by-side as he wiped snow off the seats.
Resilience. Check. Her story of her choosing herself earlier had touched his cold heart.
Vanity? She passed that one too. Oh, the woman was a fuckin’ stunner. A sight to see. Curves in all the right places, tall, with long brunette hair she’d piled up in this adorable messy bun. Those pretty green eyes that could stop a man’s heart. A monster’s, too. The bruising and bandages on her face were easy to look past for a man like him. He was always healing something. She hadn’t fussed over the bruises or talked about them, though.
Toughness? She had to be hurting, but she didn’t act like it.
And her heart was clearly kind. The way she’d looked at her pig while she’d fed it had done something strange to his innards. He hadn’t been able to look away from her. The graceful arch of her neck as she’d looked down at the critter. The flyaway strands of hair that had come undone from her hair band and framed her face. The curve of her lips as she smiled.
That shit was good for a man’s soul.
Danger, danger, danger.
The woman was carving out a hole. When she left, she would leave the damage too, and he would be left to feel that void. To ignore it while it ate him alive. To try and fill the hole with work and distractions, and fail, because when the sun set each night, he would feel the emptiness again.
That’s how it worked for shifters who got too interested in a woman.
He’d fucked up so bad by bringing her here.
“Get on in before I change my mind,” he told her.
“We are going on a snow ride!” she yelled. Her volume often hurt his ears, but explaining that she needed to use her inside voice would only make the excitable woman louder.
She hopped over the bed of the side-by-side, and on reflex he turned and caught her before she broke an ankle or a leg or exploded her liver or whatever else could happen to these fragile creatures. He settled her on her feet and she went scrambling into the driver’s side. Sitting behind the wheel, she asked, “Can I drive?”
Good God, it was going to be a full-time job keeping her alive. “You just got into a car wreck yesterday.”
“But not a side-by-side wreck. I’ve never wrecked one of these.”
“Because you’ve never driven one of them.”
She pouted her bottom lip out and made her gorgeous eyes really big like a puppy dog’s. He tried to remain stern, but lost the battle in three seconds flat. “Fine. You can drive in low gear. It tops out at about fifteen miles an hour in low, and is even slower in the deep snow.”