Page 31 of Bound

As he released the air, he grimaced deeply. She did too, feeling like the dirty salpu who had wielded the merciless knife. But not enough to let him out of this. Not enough to retreat from this path, feeling more important now that it was illuminated by his openly clonky response.

“Asha? What does she have to do with—”

“Anything?” Jayd cut in. “Or perhaps you meant everything?”

“Jayd—”

“Because when your mind decided to disappear in the middle of the Montmartre Cemetery, you called out for her. Then again, at least a dozen times, during your fever dreams as we flew here. And then on the second day I visited you in the infirmary, and Twylah asked me who she was…”

“Jayd.”

“Brickham.” She unclenched her teeth long enough to amend, “Do you truly want me to believe I was more than a convenient crotch for you? To see past your ugly rocks? Then pull a few out of your damn walls and talk to me. Have you not learned by now that I am not a delicate teacup? That I will not shatter if you tell me there is someone back at home, waiting—”

“Whoa.” He whisked up a hand. “There’s nobody waiting for me, okay?” He stabbed out a brutal stare. “Least of all Asha.”

“All right,” she replied quietly. “So she is someone from your past, then? And you still harbor feelings for—”

“No. No.” He jostled everything on her vanity again. His fist was rigid, all his veins nearly popping from the knuckles. “I mean yes. Fuck.” His inhalation swelled through his chest, tightening the T-shirt’s fit around his bulging muscles. “She’s from my past. Far in my past. But she was never—” He hitched short, taking another of those unnervingly distracting breaths. “She and I were never—well, we didn’t share things like you and I did.”

She slunk to the lip of the tub, weighted by her troubled curiosity. “But…you wanted to be, yes?” She ignored the new rise of his tension. Maybe he had to confront all this as much as she did. “Brickham. Nobody cries out for someone in so much pain and need unless they are yearning for some kind of a relationship or connec—”

“Or unless that person’s dead.”

Well, there was a new kind of fist. Only his statement didn’t rock the vanity. It shook the air itself. And all her nerve endings. Every inch of the new crack in her heart. Jayd’s mouth opened but no sound came out. Her mind yielded nothing but mental lint. A useless blank.

“And for the record, I don’t yearn for relationships,” he finally bit out. “Because I don’t do them. Period.”

“Because of her?” Jayd rasped. “Asha?”

“Jesus wept,” he muttered, clawing both hands to his thighs. “No. Because of me.”

She shook her head, hoping to line up the point she was obviously missing. “You? Why?”

“Damn it.” His shoulders hunched, joining the clench of his knuckles. “I simply don’t go the distance, sweetheart. I’m not that guy. You don’t want me to be that guy. Don’t tell me you haven’t gotten that part yet.”

Jayd surrendered to a scowl, matching his own. “Sure,” she retorted. “I have completely gotten it, Brickham. That is why I went ahead and asked my silly question anyway. Just to irk you, right?”

The sarcasm was thicker than gourmet peanut butter but did the job for which it was intended. It stuck to him with stubborn tenacity—to the point she almost prepared for another of his hoarse apologies.

Almost.

Instead, he stretched the very threads of his shirt while hauling in a new breath. He slid his hands higher up his thighs, dragging with such force that Jayd was compelled to follow along with her gaze—until she could not. Well, not without confronting the prominent bulge between his legs. The medical scrubs were a sad substitute for his dark jeans in terms of hiding the dimensions of his body. Especially right…there…

“You do a lot of things to me, Pixie, but irking me isn’t one of them.” He had the sense to refrain from asking why she had not gotten that yet either. “Do you test my sanity sometimes? Well, yeah. But do you also surprise me, enchant me, and occasionally turn every cell in my brain upside down? Oh, hell yeah. That too.”

He tilted his head to one side as the opposite end of his mouth notched higher. Jayd liked the warmth that spread through her chest, rising to make her own lips twitch.

“Every brain cell?” she jibed. “But only occasionally?”

He chuffed with low sensuality. “Gotta spare me a few for stuff like breathing, walking, and shitting.”

The smoky tendrils in her chest became floating sparks through her body. Her lips twitched again. “That sounds do-able.” But then she gave in to a small smile. “Maybe even go-the-distance-able.”

So much for the smile. Or anything like it that might have been coming from Brickham.

She had counted on a change in his demeanor. She just didn’t know how huge. The darkness that took over his features was like night clouds across the moon. His subtle push away was just as gutting. If he wasn’t still clinging to his thighs, which kept her connected to him in some odd way, she likely would have gotten up and given up, no more questions asked.

They passed the better part of a minute, locked in that tense hell, before he broke the air with his serrated rasp.