Emins’ Mate(7)

The woman stared at the shirt, frowning in confusion. She looked down at her own body. “You want me to be covered?”

Emin swallowed hard. Refused to cough. “Let’s wear clothes,” he answered as best as he could, carefully avoiding the question she’d asked.

She shrugged, took the shirt from his hand. Emin was absurdly grateful that their skin hadn’t touched. He felt so strange. Like he was trying to run across a patch of ice. An unusual feeling for a man like Emin. He had lived his entire life on solid ground.

The woman shrugged into the shirt and it was long enough to hit her mid-thigh. Emin took a deep breath and again tried to look directly at her. But - gah - it was like staring directly into the sun. Somehow, seeing her in one of his old soft t-shirts was even worse than seeing her completely naked.

Pants. She needed pants.

Emin turned and went back to the dresser, taking the opportunity to put himself together while he rummaged for something that would fit her.

“Your name,” he said, selecting some flannel pajama pants. “What is it?”

“Glory,” she replied and he slammed his eyes shut against the tightening in his chest. Of course. Of course the sunnybeautifulrevelation behind him was named Glory.

“What’s your name?” she asked. He could hear her padding softly around his cabin. Picking her way through his things.

He took a breath and turned back to her, sliding a shirt over his own head and then handing the pants to her.

“Emin Malashovik,” he said firmly, taking the opportunity to remind himself of who he was. A man who didn’t act like a schoolboy when faced with a pretty girl.

“Emin,” she said, trying out the name as she wiggled into his pajama pants.

Emin couldn’t fight the growl that rolled out of his chest, unbidden. How much was a man expected to take in one ten-minute span?

She didn’t notice it as she turned back around toward his canvasses. “I’ve never seen real art before.”

He furrowed his brow. “You have never lived around humans?”

She shook her crimson hair and it shone in the dim lamplight. “I have only ever lived in the forest. I’m only in my human form when I have to be. Or when I want to touch pretty things,” she said, trailing a finger over the corner of a painting.

“You live alone?” he asked, something hot and sharp slicing through his gut at the thought of her living with a mate.

She pulled her hand back from the canvas as if it had cut her. Turning to Emin with eyes large and sad, she nodded. “Now I do. I used to live with my mother. You’re actually one of the only other people I’ve ever spoken to. You know, a hiker here or there. But we mostly kept to ourselves. In the mountains. Where we were safe. Where we could be ourselves. But then everything got - got lost.” Her large green eyes filled with tears and Emin took an involuntary step toward her.

They both jumped as the kettle on the stove began to sing.

“You want tea,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

She shrugged. “I’ve never had it before.”

Emin and his family were the only shifters that he had ever met in person before. They’d learned that more of them existed in the world, but he’d never seen proof. He realized for the first time that perhaps many shifters lived the way that Glory and her mother did. More in their animal forms than not. Not bothering to blend into civilization at all.

He poured out two cups of hibiscus tea. Jesus. She was an innocent. She’d barely ever spoken to another human besides her mother before? She’d lived in the wild? Wow. This was virgin territory. In every sense of the word.

Emin cleared his throat and motioned for her to sit at his kitchen table that he almost never used for eating. He sat there for coffee in the morning, painting in the afternoon, and reading in the evening. Eating was something he did at his mother’s house. Or at his brothers’, in a pinch.

And now he sat at that table with a cup of tea steaming in his hands, looking across at the most stunning beauty he’d ever seen.

Her face was somehow round and long at once. Her cheeks soft and shadowed, curving down into a pointed chin. Her nose was just a little too small and angular, accented by her springtime green eyes, the size of half dollars. Her eyebrows, as orange as her hair, were unsculpted and in a soft arch that made him want to rub across them with the pad of his thumb. And then there were the lips.

He decided not to think too closely about those lips right now. He already felt as if he were sliding down a very steep mountain. He needed a handhold. Not another shove.

“So pretty!” Glory breathed in delight as she peered down into her cup of tea. Emin looked down into his own and watched the deep magenta curls in his glass as the hibiscus steeped.