His voice was a rasp. “I don’t remember.”
She glanced at him. His eyes had not moved from her face. She looked back to his arm. When her fingertips reached the large bone of his wrist, she slid her hand back up. At the pit of his elbow, she extended her index finger and traced the coiling serpent around his biceps, under, over the top again, under again. The buckles of muscle in his arm felt like knots of thick rope. When her finger reached the widest point of his biceps, she stretched out her hand. Her hand spanned less than half of his arm.
“Dr. Cornwell was correct,” she whispered. “You are improved today.”
The truth was, he seemed hardly sick at all. The bandage around his torso had been wrapped fewer times, and the dressing on his wound was considerably smaller. He was warm and muscle-hard and tightly coiled. He seemed like an animal that had been sleeping but was now very much awake. She gave his biceps a small squeeze, testing the hardness. The latent strength mesmerized her. She was intrigued by the hair on his forearm, the smooth skin of his upper arm, the rock of his shoulder.
“Sabine,” he said.
She looked up.
Ever so slightly, he shook his head.
“What?” she said lightly. His denial could mean a hundred things, all of them applicable to this moment, but Sabine hated being told no.
“You don’t want this,” he said.
“Don’t want what?” She could not put specific words to what she might want, but she knew she did not want to stop. Curiosity and something akin to... well, it felt like a new stretch of terrain into which she wanted to properly venture, to make note of the landmarks and unique features, to measure and admire and map. He wasunexplored.
She slid the cuff of her fingers down his arm, jostled them around his wrist, and grazed them back up again, marveling at the sinewy landscape of his muscles.
“Stop,” he said, his voice agonized.
Sabine narrowed her eyes. She felt her familiar stubbornness rise like a blush. “Am I hurting you?” Her voice was matter-of-fact. In no way was she hurting him.
“Yes,” he said, but he sounded breathless, and not the kind of breathless that came from pain. She glanced at his face.
No, not pain.
Dubiousness had left his expression. Now she saw shock. Bright, excited shock. She sucked in a small breath and smoothed her hand up his biceps and over the hard rock of his shoulder.
