“Is that you?” he asked, and even though I knew he was just behind me, the proximity of his voice distinctly rolled down my spine.
“I’d have to have a pretty big head to get a self-portrait on my back.”
“Not you, then, but what you represent.”
My eyes whipped up, drilling a hole into the inky sky as though, if I stared hard enough, I could see what lay behind it.
“No.” My voice was hoarse.
The air shifted when he moved closer, and my body spasmed when his finger met the skin between my shoulder blades.
“You’re freezing,” I bit out.
I didn’t tell him to move.
“A dark angel,” he spoke quietly, almost reverently, as his fingertip traced along the figure of a man in the middle of my back, then up over the black wing across my shoulder before skirting over to do the same to the other side. “Beautiful.”
I shook my head. “Intimidating.”
“Protective,” he countered.
“Destructive.”
“Powerful.”
I spun, catching his wrist before his hand could pull away. Ignoring the way my thumb and forefingers met around the circumference of his flesh and bone, I held tight, drilling my eyes into his. “Dangerous.”
His delicate chin tilted so his silvery eyes could war with mine. “The capacity for violence but also love.”
Whew-weee,was it getting hot? Maybe I was coming down with his fever.
“You don’t know me,” I retorted. No one knew me. Thatwas the way I liked it.
“I know you saved me more than once. I know you could have left me in that box, but you didn’t. You could have left me alone in this room, but you stayed.”
What was it about his stare, the way he used his own vulnerability to try and find mine? This one might be small, but he was lethal.
“I’m leaving in the morning.” I informed him.
“Okay,” he replied, not even trying to dislodge the unrelenting hold I had on his wrist.
“It’s cold. Go back to bed,” I ordered, dropping his arm and turning to close the window.
I half expected him to still be up my ass when I turned back, but he was crawling under the covers, his slim, bare legs disappearing one at a time.
I swallowed hard. “I’m leaving for work. Going out of town. I’ll be gone for weeks, maybe months.”
His swallow echoed through the room. “What kind of job do you have?”
I didn’t answer.
I heated up what was left of his soup and brought it toward the bed. “Eat this.”
“Thank you,” he said, accepting the offering.
“Don’t thank me.”
“But I’m grateful.”
