“Well, now.” His voice was low, almost a growl; she hadn’t heard him move but he was standing right behind her, and the timbre of his words was a stroke along her exposed nerve endings. “That changes things.”
Blindly she shook her head. Anything he said now would seem like pity, and she couldn’t bear that. “No. It doesn’t.” She pulled on her arm again.
“Sure it does. Let me show you.”
He released her arm but closed both of his hands around her waist, turning her around to face him. She didn’t want him to see her face, to know how devastated she was; quickly she ducked her head, and found herself with her forehead resting on his chest. He smelled of soap, of man, of heated skin. She could hear the beat of his heart, muted but strong and steady, luring her to nestle her cheek against him so she could feel as well as hear. She resisted the lure, too shattered to do anything other than endure.
Slowly, almost cautiously, he eased her body against him.
She felt more of that heat. She felt his chest and abdomen, like ridged iron covered with warm flesh. She felt the grip of his big hands, sliding down to her hips. She felt the long, muscled thighs. And she felt the thick ridge pressed against her stomach, felt him move her hips and rock her back and forth against that thick ridge.
Whiplashed first by rejection and now this, strung out on nerves, she shook her head. “I—no. I don’t understand.”
His left hand stroked from her hip up her back, fisted in the hair at the back of her head and tugged, tilting her head back. The expression in those sharp green eyes mesmerized her, like a rabbit being frozen by the predatory gaze of the wolf creeping up on it.
“Understand this.” He kissed her—and nothing about it was anything like how she’d been kissed before. He kissed her as if he wanted to devour her, possess her, wipe the memory of every other kiss out of her mind forever. The kiss was hard, almost bruising; his lips were firm, his tongue in her mouth before she had quite realized what he was doing. He ate at her mouth, holding her head back to give him complete access. He kissed her as if he was about to strip her clothes off, pick her up, and put her against the wall.
The taste of him . . . oh, the taste of him.
A small part of her wanted to push him away and yell at him. He’d said no, and the single word had gutted her. Now he was kissing her as if he intended to never let her go. She wasn’t good at this man/woman stuff and being jerked back and forth like this was so upsetting she wanted to punch him.
Instead she put her arms around him and clenched her fists in his shirt, returned the kiss with her own hunger and fervor, reveling in the strength she could feel under her hands, against her body. That wasn’t enough; she released the fabric, dug her fingers into his back, tried to squirm closer because the only thing that would be enough was being naked with him, under him, having him inside her where she ached with emptiness.
Her hand was wet. And sticky.
The discordant sensation took a while to sink into her consciousness, to register as being not right. He finally lifted his head and she caught her breath, staring up at him. Absently she rubbed her thumb against her forefinger. He was bending his head down for more when her brows drew together in a puzzled frown and she said, “Wait.”
He went still, sensing that something had fractured her attention. He cocked his head, listening, alert for an unusual sound. The dog lay panting contentedly under the table, though, not showing any sign of alarm. Ben looked back to her. “What? Did you hear something?”
“No.” She withdrew her arms from around him, stared in puzzlement at the red stain on her hand. “What is that?”
He glanced at her hand and his expression cleared. “Blood. Mine, to be specific. Nothing serious, just a little cut, but it must have started bleeding again.”
Her mouth fell open. “You’re kidding.”
“About what?”
“It’s started bleeding again, but it’s nothing serious? Turn around, let me see.”
He got that impassive look, the one that said he wasn’t going along with whatever other people wanted him to do. Sela got that, understood that he didn’t want to be fussed over, but . . . but she was shaky inside after what had just passed between them and she needed something else to focus on, and checking on his wound was that something.
“You kissed me,” she said fiercely. “That gives me rights, and sorry if you don’t like it. Now turn around.”
The impassive look morphed into something close to amusement. “A kiss gives you rights?”
“That one did.” She’d never been kissed like that before, but on a cellular level she knew that something was happening between her and Ben that went beyond anything she’d imagined. She’d never been so pushy before, either, but she’d had twenty-four very rough hours and she seemed to be making a habit of doing things she’d never done before. Knowing she was so far out of her comfort zone, and was still functioning, made her both giddy and terrified. What the heck, she might as well keep going. “Pull your shirt off and—” She made a circle with her finger. Then she waited, barely breathing, to see what he did.
Chapter Fifteen
Those black eyebrows went up, but he began unbuttoning his shirt. With every button that was opened she saw more and more of his chest, his stomach, and she went breathless again. A diamond of hair centered his chest, then more lightly spread across his muscled pectorals and in a narrow line down the ridges of his abdomen. She wanted to put her hands on him, stroke him, but his eyes were still a bit feral with arousal and she knew if she did the cut on his back wouldn’t get taken care of.
He tossed the flannel shirt across the back of a chair, and turned so she could examine his back. She caught a soft breath. At least he’d put a gauze pad over the wound, though it had bled through. The pad was small, about three by three inches; discolored skin surrounded it. The cut itself might be small, but the impact hadn’t been. She reached up and gently tugged at the pad, but though the edges were free the center of it was stuck.
“What happened?” She continued lifting the edges of the gauze, leaning close in an effort to see the actual wound.
“I was cutting firewood and a tree kicked out, knocked me down. It isn’t much, nothing that even needs a stitch.”
“But it’s still bleeding.”
“I can’t reach it to put clotting powder on it.”
“Well, the gauze is soaked through, and it’s stuck to the wound. I need to soak it off with warm water. Where are your first-aid supplies?” Yes, she agreed with him that the wound obviously wasn’t serious, or he wouldn’t be moving as easily as he was, but his shoulder still needed to be properly bandaged.
“The bathroom,” he replied, after a long pause that told her he was teetering on the edge of telling her to back off, that kiss notwithstanding. Sela began working up her determination, because damned if she was going to leave here without first taking care of him.
“Lead the way,” she said, and held her breath.
For a few seconds he didn’t move, then she could see him mentally tell himself “What the hell,” and led her through his bedroom to the bath. She stayed right on his heels, not taking the time to stop and look around because a delay might prod him to change his mind. His well of patience with people was woefully shallow. She did get a quick look around; her impression of his bedroom was the same as his living quarters: spare, functional. Even the area rug was more for function than decoration, helping keep the cold from his feet. His bed was covered with a dark green blanket, no bedspread. There was one pillow.