And Kit just prattled on about his day. Always in that calm, steady voice, the hot water falling around us. In the midst of an already fairly epic freak out, I had no time to freak out about the fact that I was in Kit’s arms in the shower. I also had no time to freak out about the fact I was in Kit’s arms in the shower having a freak out.
And slowly, as he just talked about seemingly nothing and held me, my heart calmed down, the nausea abated and my breathing evened out. My skin even lost that crawling feeling; I’d taken layers upon layers of skin off in the past because of that crawling feeling and it made me mad to ignore it, but I knew it would be better in the end.
Kit obviously realised when my breathing was back to normal as he rubbed my back and dropped his face towards mine. “Better?”
I nodded against him. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For…that. It hasn’t been that bad for a…long time.”
He tipped my chin up to look at me. “How often does it happen?”
“It used to be pretty regular. But it stopped a couple of years ago.”
He frowned and I hated the pain I saw in his eyes. I hated even more it was because of me. “Hawk never mentioned it.”
I looked down again. “He doesn’t know.”
“How?”
“I’m fine, Kit.”
“Amber, I know a sign of PTSD when I see it…”
I didn’t doubt he did.
I rested my head on his chest again. “We didn’t want him to worry. You guys were so busy. Risking your lives. He didn’t need to be thinking of me at home.”
Kit scoffed and held me tighter. “He always thought of you at home. We all did. Fucker would have died fifty times over if we weren’t thinking of you.”
I pushed away from him enough to look at him properly. “What?”
He smiled, but there was still sadness in his eyes. “All Hawk cared about was coming home to you. And we all cared about Hawk, so we all cared about him coming home to you. I lost count of the times I did the polytrauma stint and the rehab instead of him.”
Horror flooded me. “No. No. If I’d known.”
He took my face in his hands and smiled at me. And this time, it reached his eyes and it felt like my heart re-started. “None of us would ever have had it any other way. We were brothers and we looked after our own.” He brushed my hair back and dropped his hands to wrapping around me again.
“Gratia dei per chao…” I whispered, reverently. By the grace of chaos.
“Exactly. I was nothing without him anyway.”
“That’s not true,” I said before I could caution myself.
“What?”
I’d started now. “That’s not true. You’re plenty without him.”
“Like what?”
Damn. I couldn’t very well tell him that he’d been the world to me for years. That he was in danger of becoming the world to me again if I didn’t remember who he was, who I was. It didn’t matter if there was another side to him or not. He was off-limits.
“I don’t know,” I said softly.
There was a shift in the mood.
“Do you want to talk about?” he asked.
“About what?”
“Whatever happened that gives you these episodes.”
I huffed a laugh. “My boyfriend and my best friend went behind my back.”
His hand ran up and down my back gently. “Before that.” It was a reprimand but I could also tell he wouldn’t push me if I didn’t want to be pushed.
“Did you work with hostages or something?” I blurted out.
“Sort of. We dealt with a lot of people. And most of them were terrified and hurt and in so much pain there was nothing we could do. But we never gave up.”
We found each other’s eyes again and I wasn’t sure exactly what I saw in his, but I could see something had changed him. There was pain deep inside now where before there’d only been…emptiness and a different sort of pain. Before they’d left, Kit had been trying to find his place in the world. Now he looked like he’d found it, but the truth was much too real.
“I was attacked,” I told him.
I felt his hands tighten on me. “What?”
I nodded. “Uh. It was a little after you guys finished your special ops training I think. Pat said you were off to Beirut maybe?” I huffed a small, humourless laugh because it was better than crying. “Dannie, Farrah and I went to a party at Travis’ house. And uh… There was this guy there. We… We danced and drank. I don’t remember how we got to the bedroom…but, when I realised what he wanted, I tried to fight back. I got a fair few bruises for my efforts and I still have a couple of scars. But I kneed him before…” My breath hitched and I couldn’t go on.
But I was pretty sure Kit didn’t need me to.
He pulled me closer to him and it was the most accepted I’d ever felt.
On the rare occasion I’d told anyone that story, they’d looked at me like I was broken or dirty and they’d avoided touching me. It had been obvious in the way they withdrew. Dannie had witnessed the last bit of it all, so she’d known everything. But even she’d had trouble dealing with it.
Apparently though, not Kit. Kit, who stories said went through every girl in his year, half the ones above and below and all the teachers under thirty-five by the time he left school. I never knew how many of the stories were true, but some of them had to be if he’d got the reputation in the first place.
But that guy, on hearing my story, only held me close, kissed my hair and said, “I’m so sorry, Amber.”
I sniffled. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“No. It wasn’t. But I’m sorry Hawk and I weren’t here to help you, to beat that sorry excuse for a human being to a fucking pulp.” He paused. “Is that why…?”
I knew was he was asking and I didn’t mind that he was asking. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think yes. Sometimes I think the right guy hasn’t come along. Sometimes I think maybe I’m just broken in all sorts of ways.”
He squeezed me tightly. “You’re not broken, Amber. Not…” He sighed. “Not when you’re still looking, when you haven’t given up.”
I felt like I knew what he wasn’t saying there.
“Not like you?” I asked.
I felt his breath catch. “Not like me,” he finally agreed.
“You saw some terrible stuff?” I asked.
I felt him nod. “Saw it. Did it. Had it done to us.”
“Would you change any of it?”
He shook his head. “No. We did some really amazing things, met some really amazing people. But it’s the price you pay. You can’t get something for nothing.”
I nodded. “I guess not.” Then something caught my eye and I pulled away.
“What?” he asked.
“Are you bleeding?”
He looked down at the pink smudge on his shirt. “Ah. No. That’s not mine.” He frowned for a moment. “I don’t think.”
Without thinking, I started undoing his buttons.
“Woah, what are you doing?”
“I’m going to rinse this out so Carmel doesn’t yell at you again.”
He grinned at me ruefully as he helped me get him out of the shirt. It stuck to his skin something shocking with all the water. But we finally got it off him and I shifted slightly to hold it under the stream of hot water.
“Cold water!” Kit laughed and I looked at him quizzically. His smile softened as he took the shirt from me. “Cold water or the blood will congeal.”
“That’s something I didn’t realise I didn’t need to know,” I replied, not even bothering to fight my return smile.
Our eyes locked again and my heart fluttered. My mouth went dry. My teeth caught my lip like they knew I was going to say or do something stupid. It wasn’t just that Kit was gorgeous. It wasn’t just that the humour in his eyes was infectious. It wasn’t just that being near him did funny things to
my entire being. He’d understood me in a way no one else had. It was this insistent feeling I had that something was zinging between us. It was this niggling sensation that something had changed between us. But what? And was it all just me?
“Carmen’ll yell at me if she finds out you rinsed it for me anyway,” he said softly as his eyes searched mine lingeringly, and I entertained the notion he felt the same way I did.
I sniffed away a laugh. “Well, are you going to tell her?”
He shrugged. “No, but she just knows these things.”
I smiled. “You know you would have thrown it in the hamper and forgotten about it.”
It seemed one of Carmel’s favourite talking points; how often she had to get blood out of Kit’s shirts. I’d had a lengthy conversation with her about earlier in the day when she’d come by.
“Yeah, probably.”
I suddenly started to feel self-conscious and I looked down. Which only made me more self-conscious as I realised my nipples were standing loud and proud through my t-shirt. And I knew it wasn’t just the chill of the air to blame. I felt my cheeks heat and took a deep breath.
“Right. Uh… I think I’m good.”
Kit nodded. “All right. Count of three.”
I took his shirt back from him in confusion. “What? Oh!” I yelped as his hands were on my hips and he somehow managed to get me to standing.
I squished myself against the wall as he jumped up. He took my face in his hands again and looked at me seriously. My stomach clenched and my heart skipped. And it was only doubled when he spoke, his voice fierce and passionate.
“You’re not broken. You’re all the more amazing because you kept going. If you need anything – anything – I’m here for you, okay?”
I could only nod as he searched my eyes and I hoped he couldn’t tell my heart was fluttering madly. Finally, he seemed happy with my answer.
He kissed my forehead much like Patrick was wont to do, then reached behind me and turned the taps off.
“You want to go first or shall I?”
I looked up at him in panic.
“Well, we’re going to want to get out of these wet clothes. There are plenty of towels, but I assume you want to go one at a time. I’ve been told I have a cute arse, but you might feel self-conscious about me seeing yours.”
I smiled and swatted him with his shirt. “You can go first then. I’ll close my eyes.”
His grin was totally swoon-worthy. “I’ll forgive you if you peek.” His eyes trailed down my body quickly, he winked, then got out of the shower.
I am slightly ashamed to admit I did peek a little and he did in fact have just as nice an arse in nothing as he did in his suit pants. He put his shirt in the sink and turned on the tap. Then he waited in my room with the door closed while I struggled off my wet clothes, dropped them with his in the bath, dried off and wrapped a towel around me. I turned the sink tap off and opened the bathroom door.
“I don’t need babysitting,” I said to him when I saw him sitting on my bed, looking at his phone. Although, I didn’t hate that he was still there.
“No. You don’t. I just didn’t want you to feel abandoned.”
My heart warmed unnervingly. “Oh…”
“You right to get to sleep?”
“Have you eaten?”
He grinned at me. “You know I haven’t.”
“I’ll get dressed and join you?”
He nodded and stood up. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
Just before he left, I said, “Kit?”
He turned and I forced my eyes off the way the towel hung low on his hips. “Yeah?”
“Maybe… Maybe Tank could teach me self-defence?”
He looked me over carefully and I wondered what was going through his head. “Will you let me?” he finally asked.
My chest fluttered. I’d read enough trashy romances where those sorts of training moments turn sexual. But I hadn’t met Tank despite all the stories I’d heard of him – he was the huge monster out of them, rampaging through everything and scaring even the hardened terrorists – and I trusted Kit.
So I nodded. “Of course.”
A smile lit his face. “Great. I’ve got most of Saturday off, shall we start then?”
I nodded again. “Sure.”
“Okay. I’ll see you out there in a bit. Want a whiskey?”
I smiled softly. “Yeah, thanks.”
He gave one nod and headed out while I got changed.
8
Kit
I’d woken up to hear noises in the kitchen.
I rolled over and saw it was barely seven on my alarm clock – not that I ever used it as an alarm. I frowned and pulled myself out of bed. I stumbled out of my room to see Amber in the kitchen in nothing but one of my huge bath sheets, her wet hair tumbling around her shoulders and a flash of red at her shoulders. I stood outside the kitchen and just watched her. I don’t think I’d ever seen her with her hair down. Not in…at least ten years.
She was cooking and…was she dancing?
Yes, as she was moving around the kitchen she looked like she was singing to herself and she was swaying her hips. She was the most relaxed I’d seen her…ever.
“Morning,” I rasped.
And that wasn’t just desire’s effect on me. My brain might have worked as soon as I was awake, my voicebox less so.
She jumped and turned, her hand flying to her chest. She looked me over and her lips parted. For a moment, I was convinced she was thinking what I was thinking. There was a flash of something very like desire on her face and something deep in me felt it. Then she huffed self-deprecatingly and I felt like I must have still been dreaming.
“Hi. I…uh…” She looked around and waved the spatula in her other hand. “I thought I’d… For last night…” She coloured and looked down.
I smiled. “You didn’t have to.”
“No, I know.” She threw me a smile. “But I wanted to.”
I pulled myself onto one of the barstools and ran my hand through my hair.
We’d talked for a while the previous night over a couple of glasses of whiskey. Dinner had been a comfortable silence, but then we’d slowly started chatting. As in, we actually chatted and she’d legitimately laughed out loud a couple of times and she’d teased me the same way she teased Hawk. It meant we were both running on very little sleep, but I could live with that.
For the first time in years, we’d got along. I was going to say, with almost complete confidence, that she didn’t hate me anymore. I still wasn’t confident she liked me. But she didn’t hate me.
I hated that that was the moment we’d shared that got us to that point. I hated that she was hurting. I hated what had happened to her. But I was happy that I’d been able to help her, I was happy that she’d let me, I was happy that she’d asked for more, and I was happy that it had got us to the point where she looked almost completely natural in my kitchen.
“Oh, yeah. Sorry about… I was up later, then showered longer… And I wasn’t sure what time you’d be up. So I wanted to…before you were up,” she rambled and I couldn’t help but smile.
“It’s fine. You live here, too. Be comfortable.”
She shot me a quick, sincere smile before she got some milk out of the fridge. As she closed it and stepped away, the towel fell off. Well it obviously got caught in the fridge door and, as she stepped away, it was pulled off her. The semantics, at the time were lost on me, though.
And I think the sight I got was actually worse than if she’d been completely naked under there. She was wearing this skimpy little bright red lingerie and it fit her to perfection in every way.
Last time I’d seen that much of her skin…she would have been… Fuck. Maybe fourteen? She’d barely had boobs and certainly hadn’t had hips. Nearly ten years later, she had both in abundance and I couldn’t drag my eyes off her.
Her hips were wide, curving up to a gorgeous waist
. Her breasts were large, firm and perky. It had been a while since I’d had to worry about inconvenient boners. But this wasn’t just inconvenient. She might not have hated me, but she certainly didn’t like me and there was the small matter of her being my best friend’s little sister, so there was nothing appropriate about it even if it was just a purely biological reaction. I might have envisioned a few moments in the last few days, but that was hardly justification.
She’d closed her eyes and held up a hand to stop me saying anything. But I don’t think I would have been able to anyway.
“I know. I know,” she sighed. “But it’s all I had left. Okay. No. It was the least scandalous of what I had left.”
Because that was going to help the raging hard on in my pants.
I was over trying to tell myself it was inappropriate. Amber wasn’t just an attractive young woman, she was also sweet and witty and had a razor sharp mind, and she’d survived something horrible with all of that intact. So I wasn’t going to torment myself for being attracted to her. But I was a grown arsed man and I could keep them to myself – I hoped.
She bent down and grabbed the towel, wrapping it back around herself.
“I just wasn’t thinking when I stormed out of there. I, for some reason, cleaned out my lingerie drawer, grabbed a few pairs of pants and some jumpers.” She rolled her eyes at herself.
“The rest of your stuff is there still,” I said and I hadn’t heard my voice that strangled since I was about seventeen. I wasn’t even sure if it was a statement or a question.
How the hell did I not know that Amber was hiding that under all those oversized jumpers? How the hell had I not noticed last night? And more interestingly, I’d still been thinking inappropriately about her before I knew it was there…
She looked at me from the corner of her eye as she went back to breakfast. “Yeah. The rest of my clothes, my books, my console, my…everything…” she huffed, then was sliding two plates full of bacon and eggs towards me before she finished coffee.
Chaos & the Geek (Grace Grayson Security Book 1) Page 8