He agreed. Just like that. It was completely irresponsible and dangerous. Clearly, he couldn’t be trusted to take care of himself.
My God, he’s just walking around in this world, ripe for the picking.
Thank God I found him. If I hadn’t, who knows what kind of derelict would have? I could barely sleep, lying here wondering how he survived all these years.
An orphan.He’s an orphan, for Christ’s sake.
I was going to kill whoever abandoned him.
The urge to murder wasn’t something I often felt. If it were, I’d be a terrible hitman. To assassinate professionally, you had to be calm, organized, and unemotional. I always made clean kills, and it was never personal.
But this was a special circumstance. The unadulterated rage burning through my veins at whomever deemed him worthless was nothing but personal. This time, a mess just couldn’t be helped. That’s what bleach was for anyway.
The body beside me shifted for the thirtieth time in the past hour. Beneath the sheets, his foot connected with my shin,sending a crack of pain into my bone. Cursing, I rolled onto my side and glared in his direction.
I could barely see him, nothing but a blob of wild hair, which I’d carefully washed before we got out of the bath. Considering the dried blood that had been matted in the strands, he couldn’t be trusted to do it. I even combed through it, making sure it was neat, but you wouldn’t know it now.
The body pillow I’d put on the other side of him, between his body and the edge of the bed, made a larger lump than he did buried beneath the pristine white down comforter. He would have been practically invisible if not for that hair.
He thrashed again, the sudden movement accompanied by a garbled moan, his arm flinging free of the blankets. I caught his wrist just before he clobbered me in the face.
“Fuck,” I spat, pushing his arm away, ready to read him the riot act. “Just what in the?—”
“Nooo,” he wailed.
He’s having a nightmare.
I leaped up, kneeling over him, and ripped away the blankets. He rolled to his side, attempting to curl into a ball. I grabbed his shoulder and pushed him flat on his back, noting how pale his skin seemed in the dark.
Another heart-wrenching keen ripped from his throat.
“Hazard,” I snapped, grabbing his arms to hold him in place so he couldn’t thrash around.
His eyes flew open, wild yet unfocused. “It’s storming,” he rasped. “Lightning and thunder.”
I pulled him from the mattress and into my lap, curling my body around him like a shield. “It’s a dream.” I reassured him, gently dragging my fingers through his bed head. “The accident is over. You’re safe now.”
His trembling body stilled, and a deep breath moved through him. “Kieran?”
I hummed.
“I don’t know where my car is.”
I stroked his hair again. “Don’t worry about that right now, baby doll. You need to rest.”
“But, I?—”
“Enough.” I was harsh. “I’ll find your car tomorrow. Go back to sleep.”
His fingers curled into my chest, and, in a voice smaller than his body, he asked, “Will you hold me?”
I’d never held anyone at night before. I’d never shared my bed. “I guess that’s one way to keep you from clobbering me again.”
He sprang up from my chest, eyes wide, hair mussed, and the corner of the bandage covering his stitches loose and flapping. “I hit you? Are you hurt?” His stare roamed my face before dropping to my bare chest. My heart constricted painfully when he looked up again. “I’m sorry.”
It was a night of firsts for me, it seemed, because the indulgent, coddling sound that came out of me was one I’d never heard before.
Maybe I was sick.I should check myself for a fever.
