Leave Me Breathless

‘Warm water.’

‘That’s it?’ My alarm can’t be hidden. ‘Just water?’

She looks timid now as she nods her confirmation.

Exasperated, I rise. ‘Wait there,’ I order, pacing back to the house to fetch my first-aid box. ‘It needs seeing to before it becomes infected.’ I ditch my towel and drag on some jeans before opening a few cupboards in search of my supplies. As soon as I lay my hands on the box, I fill a bowl with some warm water and antibacterial liquid, and head back outside. She’s still perched on the log, gazing around, and I have to stop myself from taking a moment to admire how fucking lovely she is.

I set down my things as she straightens out her injured knee. ‘How’s your shoulder?’ I ask. ‘You were rolling it the other night.’ I bend and wring out the cloth, taking it to the graze and dabbing gently as I wrap my hand around the back of her knee to hold her still. Her leg tenses.

‘Stiff,’ she whispers.

Stiff. I shift in my crouched position, trying in vain to make room in my jeans, my eyes firmly rooted on her knee. Until they’re not, my gaze dropping down the length of her shapely leg. My hand jerks, as well as my dick. I’m breaking out in a sweat. ‘Hold still,’ I order, a bit harsher than I meant to.

‘I didn’t move a muscle. You moved.’ Her hands push into the tree stump on either side of her body as I realign my focus and continue cleaning her wound. ‘Ow, ow, ow.’

‘You’ve got bits of gravel in it.’ I reach for the tweezers and get closer, unreasonably annoyed. I shouldn’t have let her refuse my help the other night. I would have removed all the dirt and dressed it properly, and it would be healing by now. ‘Don’t move.’

‘Shit, shit, shit.’

‘Shh,’ I hush her, picking out the small stones and flicking them away. ‘You shush,’ she retorts through gritted teeth, and I can’t help but smile down at her knee, trying to concentrate. ‘I haven’t seen you around here,’ she says, her teeth clenched as I work on her wound. ‘Not before you ran me over, anyway.’

I ignore her dig, since I suspect it won’t be the last poke I receive about that. ‘I just got back to town after finishing a job.’ I lift a small flap of skin to get to a larger piece of grit.

Her leg jerks, and I force it still again. ‘Youch!’

‘Got it.’ I toss the tweezers aside and grab the cloth, wiping away the rest of the blood.

‘You said you work in protection.’

‘I did work in protection,’ I reply.

‘And you don’t anymore?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

I look at her on a smile. ‘Anyone would think you want to get to know me.’ Does she? Do I want to get to know her?

Her cheeks flush again. ‘Just trying to make conversation.’

Intrigued by her apparent interest, I decide to feed her curiosity. ‘I joined the army when I was eighteen. I was pulled from the ranks at nineteen and put through a gruelling recruitment process. By the time I turned twenty, I was working for MI5.’

‘Oh my God, were you a spy?’

I laugh a little. ‘No, I wasn’t a spy.’ I’m not lying. I wasn’t. I was an intelligence officer. So what if it’s technically the same thing. ‘I worked in protection.’ Not lying again. I was protecting national security.

‘So why’d you leave?’

‘Change in circumstances,’ I say, looking up at her, not feeling the need to tell her about Alex. God, I can’t wait to see her. ‘I started working for a private protection agency.’

‘And now you’ve left there?’ she asks, and I nod, seeing the desperation in her to ask why that is, too.

But before she can, I point to her knee. ‘Does it sting?’

‘Not too much.’

‘You’re so brave.’ I peek up at her, seeing her nose wrinkle. That’s cute, too. She’s just too damn cute. ‘So I haven’t seen you around here before.’ I throw her words back at her.

‘I moved into town a few weeks ago.’ She gingerly flexes her knee when I prompt. ‘I have an art shop in town. It’s kind of a gallery, but I sell craft stuff, too.’

Ah, the new shop. She looks like the creative type. But if anyone was going to set up a new business, especially in such a niche field, why on earth would they do it in Hampton? We’re miles from civilization.

I don’t have the heart to rain on her parade, though. Not after spotting the extra glow in her face when she mentioned her shop. ‘I wondered where that shop had come from,’ I say, reaching for a bandage. ‘What’s your area of expertise?’

She laughs a little, and, God damn me, it stirs my dick to the point I cringe at my body’s reaction. ‘I wouldn’t say I have a specific area of expertise. I just have a passion for painting. I’ll paint anything.’