My brows slam together. “What do you mean?”
He steps closer, and the heat of his chest radiates through the narrow space between us. “Your voice is raspy. And the bruises. Do you need a doctor? He might have damaged your windpipe.”
The sound he makes isn’t quite a growl but definitely in the same family. “And your jaw…” His gaze cuts there, to the bruised fingerprints on my throat, and then back to my cheek. “Little Warrior, you’ve got to take care of your battle wounds if you’re going to fight another day.”
I shouldn’t like him calling me that. It’s dumb, but I like that he’s not acting like I’m going to fall apart. Yeah, I’m hurt, but I’m still standing.
“It’s sore,” I admit. “But I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.” He opens my cabinet without asking, searching. “Did you take anything?”
“No.”
The next cabinet he opens has my glasses, and he pulls two out. “Where do you keep your medicine?”
“Liev—” But he’s found a bottle of anti-inflammatories and is already shaking two into his hand and reaching to fill the glasses he found with water before thrusting one of them at me.
I take it reflexively to keep from being splashed. I’m speechless when I feel his thumb tug my lower lip down and he places the pills on my tongue.
“Swallow.”
I’m on fire.
There’s no other description. It’s as if two years of sexual desert is now a flooded oasis, and everything he does and says is turning me on.
“What about ice?”
I stare at him as if he’s switched languages.
“Seraphina,” he says, exasperation making my name rumble from his lips.
“What?” I croak, because I honestly don’t know what he’s asking, too stunned by my body’s behavior.
He stalks to my freezer, muttering something in Russian under his breath, and grabs a bag of frozen peas. Then, his callused palm clamps around mine, and I don’t breathe as he leads me toward the sofa.
His weight dips the cushion when he lowers himself beside me, his thigh a solid line of heat next to mine. He’s too big for my furniture, for this apartment. Broad shoulders, heavy with muscle, stretch the fabric of the Henley every time he moves.
Liev nudges me to turn my face toward him and presses the cold bag to my cheek with impossibly gentle fingers, brushing my hair out of the way with the knuckles of his other hand.
My eyes flutter shut before I can stop them. The cold stings and then numbs the skin underneath. But the rest of me iselectric. Hyperaware. Every nerve is awake. I open my eyes and find him watching me, his expression unreadable.
“What?” I whisper.
He swallows, his throat moving, and the warm, rich scent of him fills my nose. He’ssoclose. The light from the kitchen reaches into this room, and I can see the tiny scar beneath his bottom lip, the heavy dark shadow of stubble along his jaw.
If he doesn’t say something, I might do something absolutely humiliating. Like pounce on him.
But he just looks at me like he’s trying to see through to my soul.
My pulse stutters, and I lean in, unable to resist the pull.
This is what I wanted tonight, right?
His eyes flick to my mouth. Heat flashes across his face, and his eyelids grow heavy, but it doesn’t scare me like it did with Colby. I just wantmore.
And then his fingers move, the bag forgotten on the floor in front of us. He trails rough fingertips feather-light from my cheekbone down the line of my jaw and over my pulse until he reaches my shoulder.
I freeze. The sensation is different than before. Because the skin grafted there is different.
