And so triumphant, emerging with my keys—then giving me a sheepish look.
“I’ve been kind of timing leaving and coming home around Andrea,” she says, pushing the key to the lock and opening the door. “It feels presumptuous to ask you for a spare.”
I’ll make you one, I want to say. You can stay as long as you want.
You can be home.
But the words are locked up behind my teeth.
I don’t know if it’s the pain that keeps me silent, or just knowing the truth.
She’s gonna leave.
Sooner or later, she’ll go back to her cabin when I figure out who’s setting these damn fires and she’s not in danger anymore. Or spring will come, and she’ll leave Heart’s Edge for good.
She’ll leave me.
You don’t chain a girl like her down.
That’s another bitter crushing pain, keeping me trapped inside my own head, as I drag in behind her and march myself to the couch.
Forget being graceful.
I just flop down on my back, closing my eyes, letting my bum-ass leg stretch out and easing some of the weight on it.
Peace makes a soft sound that’s half amusement and half worry. I hear the door shut and the sounds of her stripping off her jacket.
“I’m not getting you up again, am I?”
“Not without at least two Vicodin,” I mutter, draping my arm over my eyes. “Sorry. I’m actually keeping off that shit. This leg always gets worse the longer winter drags on. I’m never ready for it. I just need to rest a bit.”
“What you need,” she says firmly, “is a massage. And if I can’t get you off the sofa and on my table, I’ll just have to strip you down right here.”
Is she serious?
I tense, opening an eye, peering up at her from under my arm. “Damn, woman. Can’t say I’ve ever met a girl that eager to get me naked.”
“No? So the stories they tell about you are exaggerated?” She flashes a saucy little smile and tosses her hair back, sending it slithering around to lay on the other side of her neck and pour down her shoulder. “They swear you were quite the ladies’ man in your younger days.”
I snort, closing my eyes again. “I grew out of that shit by my senior year. Think they’re confusing me with Holt. He went nuts seeing how many chicks would throw themselves at me, and then kept stealing girls I had just to get under my skin.”
There’s silence.
When I look, she’s just standing there, her hands on her cocked, curving hips, watching me wryly. I grunt, unable to help cracking a smile.
“I know. I know, it’s fucking awful, but I was a horndog teenager, and Holt treated it like a competition. I feel bad for those poor girls, honestly. We were both dicks, even if it was him who left ’em in pieces and me who let ’em down easy.”
“As long as you’ve grown up.” She settles down on the couch, her weight denting the cushions at my calves, and then those soft hands are pulling on me as she starts working at my bootlaces. “Let’s get you ready.”
I arch a brow. “You’re really gonna strip me on my own couch?”
A wicked grin makes her eyes darken and glitter.
Aw, hell. She’s serious.
Peace drags one of my boots off, then catches the toe of my sock and peels me out of it. “I’ve finally got you at my mercy, Mr. Silver Tongue. And you can’t fight back. What red-blooded girl wouldn’t take advantage of the last standing heartthrob of Heart’s Edge in that situation?”
Goddamn.
That might almost be hot in a crazy, bad porno kinda way.
If I wasn’t laughing my damn fool head off.
“Heartthrob of Heart’s Edge? Fuck. Don’t tell me that dumb Instagram account Ember’s ma runs is still going?”
“Yup! She showed me. It’s up to like a million followers. Her mama’s pretty crazy for all the hot guys around here.”
“Yeah, fuck. Doc told me all about it.” Snickering, I pull my good leg back and shove her shoulder lightly with the heel of my bare foot. “Heartthrob, my ass. I ain’t nobody’s.”
She might just be mine, though, with the way my heart skips a beat when she laughs.
“You might not think so,” she teases, starting on my other foot with an arched look my way from under her lashes. “But I have it on good authority that every single lady in town pines away into their lattes at The Nest, mourning the fact that you’re probably being taken off the market by some out-of-town witch with purple ends.”
My whole body prickles.
If she wants to take me off the market...hell, that doesn’t sound half bad.
I almost say it.
Almost slip right then and there, but I rein myself in and force a smug smile. “Nobody told them they got the wrong idea, huh?”
She’s just staying with me for safety, even if she’s getting crazy ideas in her head.
I practically put her under lock and key.
I gotta remember that.
Peace falters a second, glancing at me before fixing her gaze on her hand as she pulls my other boot off. “I don’t think it’s worth the argument. Most of them will figure out soon enough I’m just a tourist, anyway. So they can stop fretting.”
There it is.
That reminder she isn’t from here.
This isn’t her home.
I’m not her home.
It shouldn’t get me so riled up.
I bite my tongue while she drags my other sock off, then shifts her weight up to sit at my side, her hip pressing into my waist.
“Here,” she murmurs, pushing my coat open. “Sit up for me a little.”
I can’t resist her. Not even when these feelings are sinking into my gut like a boulder, and I manage to haul myself up on my hands without jouncing myself too much so she can help me out of my jacket.
Then she’s got my shirt, fingers on the buttons, peeling the flannel open.
I can’t stop watching her.
She’s so close, her mouth red and sweet, a rosebud.
Nah—more like a strawberry.
A thick, luscious, juicy red strawberry you just want to sink your teeth into for a wet bite of tart sweetness.
One taste of her lips was enough to leave me addicted, obsessed, undone.
It’s a miracle I’m even looking at her without throwing her on her back and drinking my fill, pain be damned.
She’s quiet, her eyes on her hands while she works at the buttons, but now and then there’s a glance.
Her, catching me through those long lashes that make the green of her eyes stand out even more.
Her lips part subtly, just enough to see the gleaming tip of her tongue.
And me barely breathing.
This feels too fucking intimate, her hands trawling down my body, parting my shirt. She stands, working me out of it with gentle gestures that make her fingers glide across my body.
When she catches the hem of my undershirt, I nearly lose it.
Her knuckles, her nails, skim over my naked skin as she pushes the cotton up across my abs, my chest. I lift my arms and let her peel it over my head.
Fuck. Don’t think I’ve ever let a woman undress me before.
From anyone else it’d feel diminishing.
Weird.
This helpless, sorry bastard being pampered by this knockout chick.
With Peace, though, it’s almost too powerful.