He’s right out there,a traitorous little voice said.He’srightout there, and he said that you could wait as long as you want to, but what if you don’t want to? What if you want to sneak over there, see if he’s as restless as you are, find out if he sleeps nude, kiss those beautiful hands and his arms, and oh that delicious place at the base of his neck, mustn’t forget that one...
Ros uttered a strangled groan, burying her face in the pillow. It hadn’t even been that long since she'd last gotten laid. Honestly, if it was just the getting laid part, she would have been relieved. Teagan was ridiculously handsome. Of course she wanted to climb him like a tree.
No, it was more than that, and themorewas the part that was giving her pause. He was so very clearly more than just a pretty face (and amazing arms, and muscles and broad shoulders, andaugh). There was something about him that felt like stepping into the first crisp day of autumn after a long, hot summer. It was an full-body kind of realization and the gladness of change that was to come, and Ros realized, rolling on her back, that that was the source of her unease.
Teagan felt like change, and no matter how good, she had had a lot of changes lately. She’d lost her job and her boyfriend and a lot of her belongings, and now Teagan came, with his sweet smile and patient eyes and gentle hands, and it was overwhelming.
“It’s too much,” she whispered to herself, pressing her face into the pillow. “It’s just way too much, right?”
The problem was that she didn’t believe that. When she laid out the facts on a table, spread out so she could observe them independently, of course it was too much. Of course she needed to take things slowly and make sure she didn’t dive into something new too fast. Of course.
And then there was everything else in her that apparently took one look at the facts, swept them off the metaphorical table and imagined Teagan lifting her up onto it instead, maybe coming to stand between her spread knees, pushing her down on her back, and–
No. That was absolutely not helping, and she would go take a freezing cold shower if she had to. She had known the guy for less than a day.
But it doesn’t feel like that, does it?
She had to give the little voice in her head credit. It was right. Ros thought of herself as a reasonably friendly person. She had plenty of old friends, and she made new ones very easily. However, there was something about Teagan that felt less like a meeting and more like a reunion. Something in her, probably the part that was having all the fantasies about tables, was convinced that she knew this man, trusted this man, and that everything would be all right.
Ros snorted to herself. As if anything had been all right for weeks now.
Beyond her door, she could hear the other bed creak, probably Teagan turning over in his sleep. Suddenly the urge to go to him was intense, and she quelled it brutally, burrowing deeper into the sheets.
You can keep it in your pants for at least another date, can’t you?Ros asked herself, but abruptly, she realized this was only partially about sex. No, the sex would probably be amazing, but it was more that she wanted Teagan himself. He brought a kind of peace and joy to her that left her reeling, and she didn’t want it to go.
Ros shut her eyes tight. It wasn’t happening tonight, and she firmly put the thoughts out of her head.
Time to sleep.
*
She woke up the next morning to an unholy racket. She sat bolt upright in bed, listening in horror to the sound of someone trying to force-feed a fork into a garbage disposal, and then she realized it was coming from outside.
For some reason, hot panic seized her throat, squeezing until she bolted out of bed. She ran to the living room when the garbage disposal scream came again, and she wheeled to face the deck door.
Out the window, she could see the murderbirds, glinting gold in the morning light, rise up and come around in a tight circle, all attacking a huge gray bird.
Is that an eagle?
It looked like an eagle, if eagles were a speckled gray from head to tail, but even to her inexperienced eye, it looked too big, with an enormous wingspan that should have been able to knock at least one, maybe two or three murderbirds out of the sky with a single swipe.
Between the wingspan and the sharp hooked beak, the eagle should have been more than capable of defending itself, but instead it was only evading the other birds’ beaks and claws, trying to get away.
That poor thing. But I can’t go out there, right? We’re not supposed to interfere with nature, and Dag said the birds were really fragile, and–
Then the eagle gained the deck, heavy claws digging into the rail and heaving its bulk forward so it fell onto the plank flooring. It slipped to the wood in an awkward heap, its head twisted toward the sliding door, and Ros launched herself towards the glass, crossing the dining room so fast that it felt as if she teleported.
Somehow, sheknew, and she bit a scream between her teeth as she flung the glass door open.
As she watched, the murderbirds rose up for a final strike, and the eagle stood up on its two feet, and kept standing up, stretching in an instant into Teagan’s full height, and then it wasn’t an eagle at all, it was Teagan, except of course he was the eagle, and he was barreling through the sliding doors, catching her in one strong arm to make sure he didn’t knock her off her feet and turning as neat as a ballet dancer to slam the glass door shut behind him.
He slammed it so hard that it shook in the track, and for a moment, Ros imagined explaining a broken glass door and a house filled with endangered dangerous birds to Tabbie. The glass held however, and outdoors, the birds screamed back into the sky, deprived of their prey.
As Ros and Teagan watched, they wheeled away, winging into the woods, all except one, which stood outside the glass, peering in. If Ros didn’t know better, she would have said it was the same one that had looked at her so intently before, and with a shudder, she lowered the blinds against its gaze.
It wasn’t until she had gotten the blinds closed that she realized that Teagan still had an arm around her waist, and she found herself laughing a little shakily.
“Are you planning on letting me go?”