“I stubbed it getting out of bed.”
“Don’t do it again,” he ordered, voice hard and cold. But the way he lifted my foot and gently kissed the injury was anything but.
I gaped at him, not quite sure I believed what I’d just seen. Did this combative, demanding man just gently kiss my hurt?
My belly swooped so hard I felt seasick. At least, I thought this was what being seasick would feel like. I’d never been on a boat.
“If you wanted me to listen, you shouldn’t have done that.”
As he lowered my foot, his eyebrow rose.
“Kissing me is not a deterrent. If anything, I’ll want to do it again just to get more comfort.” I heard myself blabbering. Yes, blabbering. This was his and his lips’ fault. “If you really wanted to stop me, you’d hit me instead.”
The temperature in the room dropped about twenty degrees, and the look on his face would have turned Medusa herself into stone. “Who’s hit you?”
He was intimidating. Maybe even a pinch scary. That little warning I’d felt the night before tried to creep back. “W-w-what?”
“Someone has obviously abused you in an attempt to control you. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have thought that,” he surmised. Blue fire blasted in the depths of his eyes. “I want a name.”
I shook my head.
“Hazier.”
I flinched. His eyes narrowed.
“Geez!” I burst out. “I don’t have one name. I have a list. I told you I grew up in foster care. Those people weren’t exactly warm and cozy.”
“Give me the list.” He was serious.
My mouth dropped open, and my eyes about rolled right out of my head. I pictured them circling the sink before trying to squeeze down the drain.
“If I’m late for work, I’ll get fired,” I told him, forlorn. “The Neon Reef is my favorite job.”
“This Neon Reef is a place where people buy fish as pets?”
I nodded. “Fish make the best pets.”
The look on his face wasn’t just disagreement but full-on mutiny. Instead of arguing, though, he asked, “How many jobs do you have?”
“Four.”
He made a rough sound. It made me feel like I’d done something wrong.
But taking care of myself wasnotwrong. If I didn’t do it, no one else would.
I hopped off the counter and darted around him, snatching my T-shirt as I went.
“Those clothes are filthy. And they smell,” he said.
“I’ll change when I get home,” I tossed over my shoulder.
All the breath whooshed out of my lungs when he pulled me back against him. His body was like a furnace, his closeness nearly scalding my skin. He wrapped around me the same way the tattoo did around his leg. Like a second skin. Like a shield.
Like a claim.
“Are you forgetting who you belong to?” he rumbled right beside my ear.
“La-ast n-night w-was,” I stuttered, trying to tell him I understood last night had not been real. Call it the heat of the moment or the fantasies of a man with a head injury. Whatever it was, I knew what it definitely wasnot.
