Free Skin Heat by Ava Gray

him to provide for her in a small way, even if she didn’t notice or care. She’d given him back his pride, and that was a priceless gift. Now he could afford to get the power back on and stop living in the dark. Tomorrow he’d buy some groceries and try to remember how to be a man instead of the monster they’d made him.
    Bag in hand, he scouted the place, front to back, and to his surprise, he found the asshole in a car out front. The headlights were off and he was there, sitting , hands on the wheel. His face was tight with anger, and something else. He didn’t know what to call that look; it was almost greed, but it went deeper, too. Ownership? Zeke fought back an instinctive territorial growl. Though he hadn’t been here that long, he thought of this place as his. That meant the two women who came with it were his to protect, Neva more than Julie.
    But by now she would be hungry. She often worked through lunch and he didn’t know if she had breakfast before coming to the clinic. Before anything else, he’d give her the food and tell her about the guy watching the place. Maybe she knew him and would like to talk to him. He pushed back a surge of anger at the idea, knowing he had no right to it.
    Zeke used the key to let himself in the back door. She was where he’d left her, sitting with the kittens, but her eyes shone, wet, as if she wanted to cry but couldn’t.
    “Brought you dinner,” he said.
    She shifted, obviously startled. “I thought you left. You didn’t have to, Zeke. I didn’t even give you any money.”
    “Wanted to. Need anything else tonight?”
    “I should probably take a bathroom break and get the cot set up in here.”
    “Go on then.” He took her place beside the kitten box.
    They slept now, all their physical needs tended for a little while. She moved off and he felt them in a way he couldn’t explain: tiny, questing things, scared and uncertain. They got inside his head. Loss. It was a blurry feeling, but these kittens knew they had lost something. They just didn’t know what. They huddled together and took comfort in each other while looking for something that wasn’t there.
    When Neva came back, he asked, “Got a stuffed toy to put in with them?”
    He expected her to ask why he’d suggest such a thing. Instead her face brightened. Her smile reminded him of the time he’d skipped school to go fishing with his best friend, Danny, so long ago now. It was a hazy, springtime memory. They hadn’t caught anything, but instead lay on the grassy banks of the river, listening to the birds and feeling the sun on their skin. She warmed him like that, only backward, from the inside out.
    “Good idea. I have a few plushies for sale out front. Sometimes parents bring their kids and I convince them to take home a toy as a gauge of whether they’re ready for the responsibility of a real one.”
    Zeke stayed while she got the surrogate mama cat and tucked her in the box. He wondered what it would be like if she touched him with such gentleness. But he couldn’t let himself want her. In all ways, she stood above him. Dinner at the diner proved that much—everyone had been so shocked to see her in his company. They were probably still talking about it.
    “Guy tried to get in the back,” he said then.
    “Let me guess . . .” And then she described him to a tee.
    “Know him?” Zeke could go get the guy, easy enough. He just didn’t want to. He’d rather be whipped. The angry beast stirred in him again.
    “Yes. But I’m not interested in talking. He’s my ex,” she added, as if she owed him any explanations. Still, he appreciated it. “He just won’t accept we’re done.”
    “Get that,” he said, before he could stop himself.
    She straightened, eyes on his, and they shared another of those long moments where he feared he might do something wrong. Because that look of hers tore straight through him like a gunshot wound. He had to close his hands so he didn’t brush away the