The Fabric of our Souls
: Chapter 7

Wynn eats a small roll at dinner.

It’s not my business what she eats or how much, nor do I care… but she didn’t have lunch. She might not feel hungry because she’s still deep in her mental fog after everything. Today’s been a hectic day for her, I’m sure. I snag a few granola bars from the snack counter before I leave. Just in case.

She looks so damn tired by the time the door shuts behind us tonight that I don’t even bother trying to joke around with her. I sit on my bed and pull my sweater off, tossing it on my desk chair and grabbing the journal from the nightstand.

Wynn’s eyes flicker at me with curiosity for a moment before she returns to her task of putting clothes away and getting what few items she has set up on her side.

I try to give her privacy, I really do, but it’s sort of hard when she’s such a lovely woman. Her mind may piss me off, but she’s beautiful. Her oversized hoodie reaches perfectly down to her knees and her long socks tuck into fluffy slippers. Long, pink hair keeps falling over her forehead and begging for my hand to sweep it to the side.

A frown tugs on my lips as I watch her somberly tuck a few pairs of jeans in her dresser. Her eyes carry a weight not unknown to me. In fact, it’s too similar to my own. The dark circles under her light-brown eyes burden my chest with desire. I want to know her completely, so much so that we’ll never be able to untwine our vines.

She’s the image of heartache—and I want the pain she instills inside my heart forever.

“What?”

My head snaps up and I refocus my eyes on hers. “Huh?” I say like a complete idiot.

Her brows furrow and she scowls at me like I’m some brute. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

Shit—my gaze lowers and I replace her nightshirt fisted in her hand. She’s getting undressed. God help me, she wears a nightshirt to bed? Please tell me she’s putting shorts on too. The thought of nothing but her underwear beneath that silk shirt sends a pulse of blood to my cock, making my sweatpants uncomfortably tight.

“Oh, sorry, I was… I don’t know, thinking.” Her scowl deepens and I feel like a complete asshole. “Right—sorry.” I roll over to face the window, pulling up my journal even though I have absolutely zero interest in reading now.

“Why did you leave that ring in my hospital room?” she asks as I hear her hoodie hit the floor.

My boner is tenting my sweats at this point. I’m regretting wearing gray—at least black would’ve sort of hidden it. “What ring?” I ask. Obviously, I know what she’s talking about, though I didn’t think she’d assume I put it there. Guess I’m not as sneaky as I thought.

She’s quiet for a moment and I instinctively turn to look at her without even thinking twice about it as Wynn is pulling the black silk nightshirt over her head. Her breasts are bare to me and, surprise, no underwear either. My mouth immediately drops open and my dick throbs painfully as new blood pulses there, begging.

Wynn pulls the collar down over her head and eyes me like the cold vixen she is. There’s a fire burning in her eyes. She doesn’t pull her shirt down right away—she slowly guides her fingers along the hem of her shirt as she pulls it down over her plump breasts and stops for a moment just over her pussy.

My expression darkens, a hunger as fucking carnal and raw as it gets settling over me. I don’t like being teased if I can’t have the prize.

“You better cover that pussy up if you don’t want me to fuck your brains out tonight, Wynn.”

Fear flickers across her eyes but she stiffens her hold on the hem of her shirt. I’m not sure what she’s doing. I already warned her, and if she wants to play games, then I will happily amuse her.

I roll to the edge of my bed and set my feet on the floor, my dick making itself known. Her eyes lower to it and the hunger that consumes my every thought crosses her gaze too.

She pulls the shirt down and narrows her eyes at me cruelly. “You looked on purpose, so I wanted you to see what you won’t be having.” Her nipples are hard and the nightshirt does nothing to hide them.

“You sure about that?” I murmur in a low, dangerous tone.

She stares at me like she doesn’t know what to say, looking down at my swollen dick more than once before she rolls her eyes and crawls into her bed. “How old are you anyway?” she quips, facing her closet doors instead of me.

I lie back down and smirk. It’s actually sort of fun having her here. “I’m twenty-nine, and you?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Tragic,” I whisper, not intending for it to come out as a snipe, but it does.

She doesn’t respond. I turn my lamp off after a few minutes of silence. It’s already past midnight and I’m fucking exhausted. The wound on my ribs that I had treated at the hospital is still sore, but the dull throb of it doesn’t really bother me now. My eyes start to shut when I hear her voice.

“Liam?”

“Yeah?”

“If I’m tragic, what does that make you?”

I think about that for a second.

“Cruel.”

She huffs, not in an annoyed way, but more like a breath of relief, the kind that you know someone is smiling after.

We don’t speak again. I fall asleep watching her body softly move with each breath she takes.