Dead of Winter (Battle of the Bulls #2) - T. S. Joyce Page 0,26

others were flashing behind his eyes, and he couldn’t just keep glitching. Glitching meant the bull would come out of him ready to fight.

Maybe the tense feeling behind his sternum would feel even better if he saw Raven.

Quietly, he made his way up the stairs, careful to avoid the creaky one, and stood in the doorway. His night vision was excellent, and thank the Lord for the blessings of the beast inside him, because Raven looked so pretty all curled on her side, hugging a pillow, her full lips slightly parted, a little worried furrow drawing her dark eyebrows down. Pretty girl. He liked when she wore his T-shirt. A sense of possessiveness nearly overwhelmed him. He should get her more T-shirts. Maybe one’s he’d worn so she could smell like him.

He’d forgotten to turn off the strands of outdoor lights, and the soft glow was filtering in through the open blinds, casting her cheeks in warm lighting. Pretty, pretty Raven. A bird of a human with a monster of a longhorn inside of her. What a unique woman. He hadn’t been lying when he’d told her he’d never met anyone like her. Everything about her drew him to her and made him want to learn more.

Momma has to go meet with someone for a little while, and it’s best you stay here. Don’t want to risk taking you in public if that thing will come out of you again.

He made his way to the door, but for the life of him, he couldn’t pull the door open. He stood there frozen, caught between the memories and the woman in the other room. He wanted to go drink himself numb or turn into his bull, just to dull the remnants of that dream, but he didn’t want to leave Raven.

Maybe he had whiskey here. Two Shots had brought some over the other day. He walked into the kitchen and pulled open the corner cabinet, and there it sat—a bottle of Jameson.

But he couldn’t reach for it. He froze again as Raven sighed in the other room.

Was she dreaming, too?

Selfish creature that he was, he tiptoed into the bedroom for a fix he had never tried before. He hesitated by the bed, but his chest did feel better, and his head felt clearer. His mother’s voice was just a whisper now, and whispers, he could deal with.

He pulled up the covers and slipped into bed behind her, wrapped his arms around her, and pulled her back against his chest.

And all his tension went away as if it had never existed at all.

Chapter Eight

Raven curled back into him, stretching her legs against his. “Dead?” she murmured sleepily.

“Go back to sleep. Everything is okay.”

His voice sounded thick, though, so she twisted around and studied the grim line of his lips in the soft glow from the window. “What’s wrong?”

“Just a dream. I wanted to sleep in here if you’re okay with it.”

“Of course, I am.” She faced him fully and then massaged the back of his neck to his shoulders. “If you say a dream out loud, it won’t come true.”

“It already came true.”

“Oooh,” she murmured. She ran her nails down his arm, then to his back. He rolled his eyes closed and moaned.

“I have a theory,” Raven uttered softly.

“About what?”

“About why you’re so funny and feed off of making people laugh.”

He cracked a smile, his eyes still closed against her scratching his back. “So, you think I’m funny.”

“Hilarious. But sometimes the people who smile the most are the ones who have taken on the most damage. Jokes are your camouflage.”

When he opened his eyes, they were the dark brown of his bull’s. “You’re terrifying.”

“Because I’m right?”

“Because you look too closely and see too much.”

She leaned forward and pecked his lips, then eased back again. “I feel the same about you, so we’re even.”

And then he told her a story about how his bucking name came to be—Dead of Winter. The words tumbled from his lips in the dark like a waterfall. He told her about the day after his birthday party, how his mother had gone to meet a drug dealer who was a shifter. That night would be the first time she slipped Filsa into his meal. He hadn’t understood what was happening at the time because he’d been a scared kid, but he’d put everything together with his dad later. She’d told him her boy was dead. Her ramblings went on and on, insults falling from her lips like the