Because I Love You✔️

Chapter 124: Beating around the Bush - or not

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty Four: Beating around the Bush - or not

Ella lay tensely on her back for a good thirty minutes.

During that time, Sinmir had become completely unresponsive to everyone's attempts to speak and had stalked off into the woods to be alone, Amelia was working on healing Gus's broken wrist with Vrael's help, and Vordt was leaning back against a tree with his eyes shut tight. 

Everyone was dealing with the aftermath of the barrier in their own way.

Ella watched the clouds drift across the sky.

She tried not to feel uncomfortable with the sensation of having Xaphile's arm up her dress, but the heat made her skin prickle like a million roving fireflies, and his steady breathing on her hip made the fine platinum hairs on her arm rise to attention. 

His very presence made her belly tingle with warmth.

She didn't move an inch as she lay there, listening to him breathe, thinking about everything that had just happened to them. She could still see the frantic desperation lacing Ella Richardson's face in her mind's eye, and it got her thinking about the existence of his world.

Thoughts of people's doubles, of how hers had died and how the boy sleeping beside her right then didn't really belong to her own world... what did it all mean? She'd greatly questioned things and worried over things for a long time now, but there were no answers to be found.

She'd even occasionally wondered if the person he'd been on Atlas before the strange intermingling of his two selves would have loved her as much he'd loved Earth Ella. She wondered if things might have played out differently if she'd met him as a child.

But wondering couldn't give her any clear answers.

Ella was sore from lying on the ground for however long she'd been there, so she sat up and raised her arms over her head until her shoulders cracked. She wasn't chilly thanks to Xaphile's touch, but she really wanted to get his arm out of her skirt and away from her underwear. 

She turned toward him, thinking about how she could make him let go of her so she could get up and leave, but he hadn't moved since he'd grabbed her, still lying on his back with one arm wrapped around her thigh and face turned toward her hip. His lips were parted, and while his closed eyes were as gaunt as they always were, his cheeks were handsome and hollow.

She was so used to seeing his horns, and fangs, and fur, and the ears, and the claws... seeing his face as a human's made her realize just how young he was. He was still just a boy, but even though he wasn't fully grown, he acted more like a man than some adults she knew. 

She stared at him for a minute or so, just trying to take him in and revel in the steady, unlabored sound of his breath. He looked peaceful, worry-free, and... well, cute. Very cute, despite the grumpy, depressed, negative pessimist behind the sleeping face.

Unable to help herself, her eyes traveled over the muscled expanse of his chest with a hungry sweep, and as she traced the curve of his elegant collarbone and neck, something else caught her eye with a sharp golden glimmer.

The locket from the other world. 

Leaning forward, she reached out and touched the braided golden chain that trickled sideways across his neck just under his jaw. She shivered when she grazed his hot skin in the process of carefully hooking a finger under the slim metal chain and dragging it forward, pulling it down the planes of his bare chest until it made a 'v' ending just below his sternum. 

A small weight on the hidden part of the chain made the process more difficult than it seemed, and she carefully reached behind his head with her other hand and found what hung there. The pendant tangled with his hair, but her fingers were gentle and she brought it into the light.