He pulled her jacket to within her easy reach from where she was sitting on the floor, but like hell she didn’t need his help. Turning away meant he couldn’t help her, so he didn’t turn away. However, he moved so that he was kneeling behind her, where he kept his eyes securely on her back and shoulders as he helped her pull her uninjured arm free from the first sleeve.
She had a splash of freckles on shoulders that were as strong as they were graceful—a swimmer’s shoulders. Her back was muscular, too. Her skin was smooth and uninjured—thank you, Jesus—as he helped pull the shirt off of her.
She may have been small of stature, and her wild riot of red curls added to her fairy-princess-like appearance, but it was all just an illusion. She was far more warrior-goddess than delicate, fragile sprite—radiating a strength that was feminine and powerful.
She made a point of holding her jacket up to her chest with her right hand and then let Thomas do the work to get her blood-soaked sleeve off her injured arm.
As the wound was revealed, his relief bubbled larger.
“It doesn’t look bad,” he told her as he finally peeled away the sleeve. “The bullet took a small bite out of you as it grazed you, so the injury’s slightly longer than a gunshot wound, but it’s shallow. Bleeding’s mostly stopped.” Yeah, there was still unpleasant work ahead, picking stray fibers from her shirt and jacket out of the wound, cleaning it thoroughly to ward off infection, but that wouldn’t be even half as bad as digging a bullet out of her flesh.
“So, wait, I wasn’t shot, I was just nicked?” She tried to look over her shoulder, but her injury was on the backside of her upper arm. She’d need a mirror to see it.
“Nicked is still shot.”
“But a bullet’s not still in my arm.”
“Correct.” He probably should’ve told her that first, but he was having a little trouble breathing—his relief was so intense and profound.
Relief combined with sheer terror at what might’ve been.
Holy Jesus. An inch or two to the right, and the bullet would’ve broken her humerus. It might’ve even taken her arm clear off. Another few inches, and it would’ve hit her in the back, near her heart, and she’d be dead.
Those motherfuckers had been shooting to kill.
The realization of how lucky she was—how lucky he was—and just how close he’d come to losing her, was dizzying.
And that, combined with all of the miles he’d just run at his full, top speed caught up to him in a rush. Now he was experiencing the dead opposite of cool, calm, and collected Navy-SEAL-firefight mode.
Yeah, he’d for sure slipped into pure caveman-brain meltdown, with tears literally rushing to his eyes. His hands shook and his heart pounded as he struggled to fill his lungs with air. He had to get her downstairs, get her cleaned up, but his legs were so weak, he wasn’t sure he could stand.
“Thomas?” Tash looked at him over her shoulder, then turned slightly to face him, still holding her jacket to her body, her eyes wide with concern. “Are you all right?”
“I’m just... um... Relief can be... hard to manage.” Embarrassed, he turned away from her, but then realized that was worse—that when he looked into her eyes, she gave him a lifeline to hold onto. “If you were dying, I’d be fine.”
Her eyes widened and she laughed a little, and okay, that was not what he meant.
“Not fine, no, that came out wrong,” he told her, his voice suddenly hoarse because those tears that were threatening to escape from his eyes were now filling up his throat, too. “I mean, I know what to do to save your life. I’ve trained to overcome the fear and the overwhelm—the panic. I push it aside. I control it so I can do what needs to be done.”
As he spoke the words, Thomas realized that he knew exactly what needed to be done in this very moment, if he could just push away the last of his lingering fear...
“Natasha Francisco, you are not my sister,” he whispered to this woman he loved more than life itself.
And he kissed her.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Thomas kissed her.
Thomas kissed her!
His lips were soft, his mouth tentative, almost questioning. Tasha was surprised by all of it—the taste of him, the unexpected intimacy, his hesitation created by some completely insane doubt that she somehow wouldn’t happily welcome his kiss.
So she laughed.
He pulled back to look at her, a very solid oh shit taking root and growing, along with the sweetest, laid-heartbreakingly-bare vulnerability that she’d ever seen in his dark brown eyes.
And Tasha realized just how impossibly hard this was for him—and that now was not the time for overthinking or analysis for either of them, so she leaned in to kiss him back.
No hesitation. No doubt. Just pure conviction that her mouth against his was absolutely, unquestionably right.
She used her sore arm to hold her jacket up against her bare chest, looping her right arm around his neck to pull him even closer. She may have been scared and uncertain about a lot of things right now, but kissing him wasn’t one of them, and she wanted him to know it.
It was as if she’d opened a floodgate, because now he was kissing her with the hunger of a starving man as he pulled her even closer, too.
This was the fairytale first kiss she’d dreamed of for years, but real life was better than any fantasy she’d ever imagined. His mouth was warm and sweet, his hands hot against her bare, chilled back as he wrapped his arms around her, pulled her onto his lap, and engulfed her with his body heat.
She wasn’t astride him, but she wanted to be. The flannel pants he was wearing were ridiculously thin, and she could feel his arousal against her thigh, and oh, God, she wanted him inside of her so badly.
She started to shift, her scraped knees be damned, except there was still a small part of her that hadn’t transformed into pure, liquid, sexual need, and that tiny, still-clear-thinking part whispered for her to slow down. This was Thomas, and yes he was kissing her like he was trying to sear together their very souls, but this was still fresh and new for him.
He hadn’t spent his entire life desperately wanting her the way she’d spent her life desperately wanting him, so maybe going from first kiss to full penetration in under two minutes wasn’t something she should push for.
Also? There were boxes of condoms downstairs.
And a shower would be nice.
She pulled back. Just a little. And of course, because he was Thomas, he instantly released her—just enough so that he could look searchingly into her eyes. He was breathing hard—she was, too—and the expression on his face was one she’d remember to her dying day. Because he wasn’t hiding anything. Everything he was feeling was all right there—his fear for her, and more—laid bare for her to see.
Tasha kissed him again—she couldn’t resist—and whispered, “I thought I’d lost you, too. I saw the rifle and I thought... I thought the worst.”
He rested his forehead against hers, his hands now in her hair. “You forgot that I’m ridiculously hard to kill.”
She laughed, just a little. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I know going outside was a mistake, but I wanted to help you, not...” Make it worse. And she had to ask. “Did you kill them?” He shook his head, so she clarified, to make sure they were talking about the same thing. “The two men who shot at me?”