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Though I’m pretty sure he can tell I’m trembling. That maybe I’m even close to swooning. In fact, the only reason I think I don’t is because Phone gets there before I can.

“Holy fuck,” she says from the inside of my pocket, and I’m spared.

But not from everything.

I still find myself saying, after a second:

“Yeah, I think some kindness might be okay.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

I decide to be as businesslike as possible about fixing all of his various ailments. But the problem is that none of this fixing is like any kind of business I’ve ever heard of. There are no websites called HowtoHealtheWoundsofaHalf-NakedMan.com. No corporations that cater to the Sudden Nude Dude Needs Clothes crowd. No sales at the Tubs For Immense Vikings Who Don’t Know How to Turn on a Faucet warehouse.

It’s all really weird and personal.

I have to tell him that he’s dirty and needs a good scrub. And he replies with “You wish to bathe me?” He even sounds sort of hopeful about it, in a way that makes the skin under my arms prickle. My cheeks go all hot, so much so that I know he can see it. His eyes skitter over my face, then a second later a little line appears between his brows.

I’m forced to scramble for an excuse before he can ask me about it.

“Jesus, you’re a fucking furnace,” I say—which at least has the benefit of being currently true. The sunlight has given him such a scorching that it’s still in him. Heat radiates from him in waves; his own skin is flushed practically all over. I swear steam actually rises from his feet when he steps onto the freezing cold black-and-white tiles of my bathroom.

But it still feels so unconvincing I can’t look him in the eye.

I turn my back, and pretend I need to rummage through the cupboard in the corner of the room. Like there’s something in it that I can give to him, even though there isn’t. Every single towel in there is far too small for him to use. I hold one up to his body and it looks like a postage stamp. He’d barely be able to dry one elbow with it, never mind anything else.

But he takes it anyway.

He pinches it between two enormous fingers—and not even in a sarcastic way. His expression is all naked curiosity as he studies the towel. Completely open, to an excruciating degree. “I’ll get you something larger,” I say, and practically run out of the bathroom for reasons I really don’t want to think too deeply about. Of course this is awkward, I tell myself. He’s your enemy and he’s half naked in your bathroom touching your towels. It would be weird if you weren’t embarrassed and uncomfortable and fed up of being eye level with his fucking nipples.

Though I can’t say it helps.

I’m still trying to crawl out of my own skin when I return to him.

And even more so when I see what he’s doing. He’s examining the jeans he’s wearing, his expression all bafflement and frustration. Then he tugs at the material, one hand on one side of the zipper and one hand on the other, and oh god, god, god, I get it now.

He doesn’t know how to use it.

He’s from the era of strings, eyelets, and leather straps, most likely. He’s never seen anything like this. Thank fuck vampires don’t need to piss because man, he would have made a mess over the last couple of days, I think. Though I know I only do it because I don’t want to consider anything else.

Like the fact that I have to help him undo his fucking pants.

“Okay,” I try, and oh Jesus, my voice is already going up and down like a yo-yo. “Okay, so. You have to. You’ve got to take that metal tab thing and then … and then, no, no, no, don’t yank it.”

“So I do it slowly.”

“Yes, exactly. Then move it downward.”

“Like this, then,” he says, as he starts doing just as I suggested. And so correctly, too, that I go to put two relieved thumbs up. Thank god I don’t have to touch him, I think, and get about halfway there.

And then I grasp what he looks like doing this, and can’t go any further.

Or move at all, if I’m being honest. Even looking away is suddenly beyond me. Even breathing is. I stand there, frozen, oxygen trapped somewhere around the center of my throat, as he draws that zip down, down, down. Slow as syrup, slower even than that, his free hand working the material open, eyes on what he’s doing. And then suddenly—his eyes are on me.

Really, really on me.

Searching mine, as if to ask if he’s doing it right.

Though that’s not what it reminds me of. I don’t think of simple questions, of anything practical. Instead, the word striptease flashes up behind my eyes, and once it does I can’t help it. “Stop,” I tell him, loud and frantic enough that I immediately regret it. It makes him jerk, startled. It shoots confusion through his features.