himself still while she pinched the edges of the wound and placed a generous row of butterfly bandages. By the time she finished—by the time she stretched her arms around him to wind the self-sticking elastic around his torso—that pain was a thing of the past, and her touch was again the only thing of the present—light, skimming his flesh with authority, patting the whole arrangement into place. Lingering, while her scent permeated the air around him—his shampoo and her own personal perfume, mingled into something that felt so very much like possession.
She stood, fumbling the bandage onto the counter—hesitating, when she might have been stepping away, her face flushed. She visibly hunted for words, her teeth lingering on her lower lip before she found them. “I don’t know how long that’ll last, but...try to take it easy?”
He barely heard her. From behind the static, a sweet melody flowed, winding through Lannie like the vines winding along his window. He leaned into it, breathing it deeply into his body, his eyes closing as he absorbed that brief purity.
When he opened them again and found her so very close, so visibly trembling, he had nothing to say—nothing he could say. Not when enthralled in such a deep thrum of underlying need. Mine. A singular thought, threading through sensation. Mine. Not as alpha, not as Sentinel. Just as man.
Mine.
Holly’s eyes opened wide; she stood taller and straighter, and her nostrils flared. “I am not yours.” She looked right back up at him, her pupils grown big within a narrow ring of darkening brown. She might even have stood on her toes, leaning into him physically just as he’d breathed in the song of her. “I am not Sentinel and I am not yours, and nothing you can do will change that.”
The song stuttered back to static, staggering him as much as the connection had done. Holly slapped the remainder of the elastic bandage on the tiny breakfast bar and turned on her heel, going down the steps with the same authority with which she’d come up.
And Lannie stood there with his side aching from her touch and aching for it, and knew she was exactly right.
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