“Deserve it. Deserve it all.”
“Please, don’t say that,” I begged as I lifted his shirt higher.
It exposed his chest, and I was struggling for air.
Fighting my senses.
The sorrow at him being hurt this way. The love that had refused to die. The arousal that stirred just being in his space.
I wanted to reach out. Touch him. Caress his flesh. Kiss it better the way Pete had implied.
The man was magnificent. Wide, bristling strength. Solid muscle carved from a stony cliff. Jagged and hard, destruction below if you didn’t hold on tight enough.
But it was the wounds covering almost every inch of him that shook me to the core.
“Tell me these assholes got arrested?” I peeked up at him, praying he couldn’t read everything I was thinking. “I can’t believe what they did to you.”
He gave me a grim shake of his head, and his body slumped a little to the left. “No. I’ll get ’em. Don’t be scared, Izzy. Won’t let nothin’ happen to you. Never.”
I didn’t want to point out that he’d hurt me worst of all.
Swallowing down all the confliction, I peeled his shirt the rest of the way over his head, careful of the gashes on his face. I tugged it free, dropped it to the floor.
My eyes drifted.
Catching.
Hooking.
It pulled a gasp out with it, and I tried not to gape, tried to keep my eyes from racing to take in every inch of his bare shoulders and upper arms. The designs he’d marked there.
The man a hardbound book.
Grief almost cut me in two.
I ached, and I wanted to reach out and turn the pages.
Read everything that was inside.
“Izzy,” he grunted, feeling the fever of my gaze.
I shook the reaction, fought to maintain a semblance of control. Of decency in this moment. “Why don’t you sit on the toilet so I can tend to your wounds.”
A frown pinched his brow, but he nodded, backing away as I stepped toward him. My trembling hands reached out, tentative, hovering, before I wound them around to his back to support him.
His massive arms wrapped around me way up high.
I could feel his heart. The pound, pound, pound.
While mine ached and ached and ached.
He eased to sitting, and his arms that had been around my upper back slid down, hot hands landing on my sides.
Tugging me close, the man searched my face before he leaned in and ran his nose along the exposed flesh above my blouse.
Shivers flashed.
A river of gooseflesh that ate up my body.
“So good, Izzy. You smell so good. Like a field of wild jasmine. Want to lie in it.”
Oh, he needed not to be sayin’ those things to me.
“Don’t, Maxon. You’re drunk,” I begged, trying to quiet him, to stop this from happening, my mind from taking a jaunt into lurid thoughts
I set my hands on his shoulders and peeled myself away. I fumbled over to the sink and turned on the faucet so I could warm a washcloth under it, trying to gather myself while I was there.
You can do this.
You can do this.
I edged back over to him, and he lifted his face, those eyes on me.
Energy sizzled in the tiny space.
I swallowed around it and focused on cleaning up his wounds.
Gingerly.
Tenderly.
What he really needed was a shower, but I knew there was no way I could hold him up, and I had an inclination that getting this man naked would be a bad, terrible idea.
So, I just kept rinsing the cloth, ringing it out, going back time and again.
Caring for him, a stupid part of me wishin’ it’d always been my job. That he’d returned it. Been there for us when we needed him most.
A heavy sigh pushed from his mouth, and his head kept sagging forward, the man close to passing out. I was pretty sure that was more from the alcohol than any of the injuries he’d sustained.
Tipping his chin up, I dabbed at the biggest cut over his eye, his striking face right there.
He opened his eyes when I did.
Potent blue gazed up at me. Intense and wild and running to places neither of us could afford for them to go.
“Izzy Baby,” he grated.
I struggled to swallow around the lump.
“You’ve got to stop.” The words shook as fiercely as my hand.
His head rocked to the right side, and his mouth was tweaking up again, arrogance sliding free. “You remember, Little Bird? Bein’ with me?” Big hands gripped me by the thighs. “Sneaking away so we could get lost? How fuckin’ perfect I fit in this body?”
A flashfire of memories sped through my mind. Incinerating everything. All rationale. All logic.
He grunted. “Never have had a woman that felt so good. Nothin’ has ever felt so good as Izzy Lane.”
Redness clawed and streaked, a fire lapping higher.
I struggled to fight them. To extinguish the flames.