His touch slides from my lips to my chin, tipping my face toward his. “Lorien?”
“Yeah.” Fudge nuggets, it comes out like a sigh and not like the response it should.
“Are you okay?”
Not right now, I’m not. I’m pulsing and hot in all the wrong places, my boobs are freaking headlights, and both of my feet have decided to revolt against me. It’s probably best I don’t use words right now, so I shrug, just as my knees buckle.
Wrong answer.
Worse timing.
The brut scoops me up as if I weigh nothing and carries me, bridal style, into my kitchen, his boots thumping hard against the tile floors. He’s gentle as he sets me on a stool at the bar. Wordlessly, he crouches and lifts one foot, then the other, studying them.
A quick pinch surprises me, and I kick out, hitting him in the chin. “Oh, shit. I’m sorry.” I reach out and cup his jaw as if I can see through that unruly russet beard… as if I could do any damage to the burly man.
His eyes flick to mine, and the heat there singes me from the inside out. Oh fuck. It’s as if he can see straight through me. Or at least, straight through my clothes.
For a hint of a moment, he presses his face into my hand.
“I got it.” The moment is broken as he holds a piece of glass between us. “First aid kit?”
“I have Neosporin. Does that count?”
“Be right back.” With no further words, he exits the kitchen through the back door, and I’m left speechless.
My brain, though, is whirling with thoughts. For one, I don’t think he’s said anything other than three-word sentences, at least tonight. Secondly, he’s been insanely close—in an intimate way even—without being sexual. He’s a big guy, but moves as quiet as a cat, almost like he’s activated stealth-mode and can’t turn it off. Third, and worse, I’m insanely turned on by him.
In fact, I rub my breasts, and not in the good way, trying to get them less pointy. It’s ridiculous, really. It would be better if I weren’t wearing… Oh shit. A short belly-showing baby doll tee and soft sleep shorts. Yikes. I jump down, hobbling to the laundry room to grab a hoodie and am almost back in the chair when he comes back inside.
Busted.
“It’s chilly.” It’s the opposite of chilly, but anything to cover my belly button and hide my stupid nipple tractor beams.
“Is it?” He slides his leather jacket down his arms and tosses it on the bar that separates my kitchen from my dining room and returns to his squat. Lifting my foot, he adds, “You’re not going to like this.”
The cold spray that hits my foot burns like acid. “Shit. Ow. Fuck.”
“That mouth.” His words are quiet, and I can’t be sure whether they were for me to hear or not.
“That burns.”
“I know. Told you.” He stares at my foot before shaking his head. “Where are your bowls?”
He’s in the kitchen looking over his shoulder before I respond. I’m rarely the one on the back foot in conversations. At least that’s true at work. Socially, I’m a little… My face must ask the question my mouth doesn’t because he points to the cabinets, swishing his finger.
“Look in the third one.”
He bangs some things around as I cringe and yanks out a bowl. After washing his hands, he fills the bowl and returns to squat before me. He places my foot inside. The water and soap burn—of course they do—as he examines my stubbed big toe on the other foot with his tatted hands.
“This place was vacant a while,” he starts, apparently right in the middle of a conversation I didn’t know we were having.
“You’re right. For more than seven months. That’s unheard of in this market.” I clench my teeth and tighten my muscles. I have to fight not to fidget and slosh water everywhere. My feet are ticklish and even with the pain radiating from my big toe, his hands brush in places that make me want to bounce and writhe. In all kinds of ways.
“I’m right.” The corner of his mouth quirks.
Ugh. That’s what he got from what I said? Ass.
He pulls my foot from the bowl and sets the one with the stubbed toe into the warm water.
