She huffed a weak laugh. “Like you know anything about roughing it.”
His sly glance out of the corner of his eyes startled her. “I was a Navy SEAL, Sarah. I am practically feral. I lived off the land for months sometimes. Having a roof and a bed is an indescribable luxury as far as I’m concerned, but I’m also content sleeping on the ground with my rucksack for a pillow.”
“Maybe you aren’t such a city boy.”
“Oh, I can be a city boy, too.” He paused to help her into the warm, shallow bath that lapped at her hips and soothed her raw bottom, and he dunked a washrag into the water and squeezed it out in his fist. “I was born and raised in Minneapolis.”
“Oh, that’s abigcity,” Sarah said.
He shrugged. “Sort of.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Sarah said, gesturing to the bath and the washcloth in his hand. “I can take a bath.”
His voice came out like a growl. “I take care of what’s mine.”
Well, okay then.“You’ve never mentioned Minneapolis.”
Blaze nodded as he smoothed the washcloth over her skin, washing her like she was a toddler. “That’s where they killed my father.”
His father had been murdered by other dirty cops for skimming too much money from their drug ring. He’d mentioned that while they’d been driving. “I’m so sorry.” She needed to add more. “About both of them. Do you have anyone else?”
He shook his head. “I did one of those DNA tests, but I appear to be a genetic dead end, the result of too many only children. My family tree is a stump.”
“Me, too. On my mom’s side, everybody died when I was little. I remember going to a lot of funerals. I think they were all old. My dad wouldn’t let us go to New York to meet that side at all, and the Russian cousins all fell away over the years.”
“Do you know why?”
She shook her head. “My dad was a hard man to like. If anyone was around him enough, he’d drive them away.”
He held out a hand and helped her out of the tub, then toweled the bathwater off her. “That must have been tough.”
Thoughts ground in her head. “He was conflicted about his family situation. He stressed over and over that his side of the family were all criminals. Whenever someone stopped talking to him, he’d yell that his father had ‘consolidated’ them.”
“Oh, Sarah. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It was a long time ago. It felt like his whole family unified against us, and we had no one. I’m scared to think what would have happened if one of us had needed a kidney or something.”
Blaze led her, naked, through her own house and lifted the covers of the bed in his guest room for her.
She slid between the sheets, and he swiped his duffel bag onto the floor, saying, “Rest. I’ll be back in a minute.”
And Sarah was alone again.
The sheets scraped against her sore backside, and yet she didn’t care. The tension straining at every nerve in her body was gone, replaced by a floaty sensation of not caring.
Within moments, Blaze returned, wearing loose basketball-type shorts and a tee shirt stretched across his broad chest. “Are you warm enough?”
She shoved the sheet off her shoulder. “A little too warm, actually. Summer is hitting hard.”
“Good.”
Oh, dear Lord, his voice had lowered to that gruff commanding tone again.
He yanked the sheet and thin blanket off her. “Roll over. I want to see my work on your pretty little bottom.”
“I do not know what to make of that,” she said, but she rolled over, facing away from him and resting her head on a cool spot on the pillow. Fresh air from the open window feathered over the sore skin on her backside. “Do I have welts?”
“Yes,” Blaze growled deep in his throat, and his hand ran down the back of her leg to her knee. “Perfect.”
