Nick limped to the seat and sank into it while Alex fetched the first aid kit. The lower part of his left jeans leg was dark with blood and a jagged piece of glass protruded from the material. He winced as he looked at it.
Alex knelt down in front of him, her head bowed. ‘Okay, hold on for a moment.’
And before he knew what she was doing, she’d pulled the glass out. The blood came faster now, pumping out. She slid her hand up his leg, assessing, and pressed hard above the wound to try to staunch the flow.
‘You’ll have to take them off,’ she said so matter-of-factly.
His jeans. Right. Of course. They weren’t loose enough to push up. And if they were going to check out the cut, she needed access. His chest heaved as he tried to catch his breath. There was so much blood.
But it was Alex asking. Alex on her knees in front of him. He swallowed hard and a wave of pain and dizziness swept through him. That voice again, that urge, Chambers, not Chambers…
‘Why not take what you want?’
No. Just no. There was nothing erotic about this.
‘Isn’t there? Blood and sex and the wild urge… Give in to it.’
She was waiting. If he left it any longer, she looked like she would do it for him and he couldn’t stand that. He’d lose himselfcompletely if she touched him there. He fumbled with the fly and shifted, standing up a little, so he could drop his jeans to his ankles. This was not how he had imagined this. Not in the slightest.
And he had imagined it… God help him, he had. In the night, in the morning, in the trees, from the first moment he saw her…
Hewanted…
He was painfully aroused. He really shouldn’t be but he couldn’t disguise it. Folding his arms across his lap didn’t help. Neither did trying to distract his mind and body with thoughts of the estate accounts…
An ocean of numbers wouldn’t help right now.
A cruel laugh echoed around his head and he screwed his eyes shut, tilting his face up to the ceiling in despair.
But Alex just ignored him, intent on the injury. Dear gods, he prayed she hadn’t noticed.
Alex cleaned the cut, the antiseptic making him wince. But while the cut had bled initially, it wasn’t deep and it had already stopped by the time she’d finished.
‘There,’ she said, pressing a plaster to the wound – a pitifully small cut really to bleed so much – and smiled up at him.
For a moment he thought he would do anything for that smile. Anything at all. The wild need eased off, the edge softening suddenly, and the scent of flowers wound itself around him again, the wild winding surrounding him, protecting him again. Just like Sally.
‘All done,’ she went on. Her hand brushed his thigh as she got up, sending shudders of need through him. Her touch…oh fuck, he needed her touch…
He tugged up the jeans again as quickly as he could and fastened them, taking care to turn away from her as he did so.
This was not going in any way like he had imagined. Nothing about Alex was how he imagined.
‘Right, wine,’ she said, pleased with herself, and grabbed the bottle again, heading off back to the drawing room.
And God help him, all he could do was follow, like a predator with a scent.
CHAPTER 43
ALEX
The storm outside was getting worse. An update on Alex’s phone told her that the storm warning had been raised to red overnight. There was a string of messages from her team, but she honestly didn’t have the energy to deal with that right now. She was exhausted. All she wanted to do was sit in front of the fire they had lit in the fireplace and drink her wine. Then sleep. But the oppressive sense of the house still weighed on her. And the storm meant they were trapped in here.
She watched Nick cross to the windows and stare out into the night. She wasn’t even sure what he could see. The rain lashing against the panes obscured even the darkness outside, pressing close as if trying to get inside.
‘Everything okay?’ she asked. The cut on his leg hadn’t been bad but it had bled a lot initially, so much so that she’d feared it was much more serious. And then it had just stopped. Still, it worried her. After everything that had happened…
‘They’re unsettled,’ he murmured. ‘Scared.’
