She was still barely doing anything.
“You’re not falling asleep again, are you?”
“I’m absolutely not. I think it would be impossible to, while trapped inside this medieval torture device. Or as it probably looks to you—this ‘jacket’.”
“Well, since I’m so kind and decent, I could probably help you out.”
“Are you also super strong? Because I think I’m welded into it.”
She couldn’t help giggling. “Has it shrunk?”
“I think it’s shrunk. I took a dip in the ocean before coming here, and apparently that’s an ill-advised move while wearing leather.”
“Good thing you didn’t go with the same material for your whole outfit, huh? Your junk would be pretty unimpressed right around now.”
“Did you just say junk?”
She wished she hadn’t now. It had seemed okay before, but once he flagged it her face flamed red. What had possessed her to say junk to Holden Stark? He probably thought she was thinking about his famous penis, and how she would love him to rub it all over her body or some other weird thing.
And the worst part was—she kind of did seem to be doing that.
She had to pretend to be breezy just to get it out of her head.
“I guess I did.”
“And you also suggested I might actually choose to wear an entire suit of leather. Is that what movie stars are in your head?”
“Well, they’re certainly not like you.”
“And what am I like?”
“Funny. Self-deprecating.” She paused, considering. “Not an asshole.”
“Hey, there’s still time for me to be an asshole. Get me my tea, I only like chamomile with gold leaf in it, stop looking at my face—no, look at my face more!”
“See, all of that just makes you less of an asshole.”
“Dammit.”
“I know, it’s a pain.”
“This jacket is a pain.”
She watched him shrug around inside it for a minute or so, obviously trying to escape and obviously failing. He was starting to sweat under the effort. She had to help.
“You know, I could cut you out of it, if you wanted. I was actually going to suggest that earlier, only I thought it might be too weird. But I see now that you actually are weird, so I’m not sure it matters as much.”
“You’re right, it doesn’t. Cutting me out sounds awesome.”
“I’ll get the scissors. And the tea with the gold leaf in it. While looking and not looking at your face at the same time,” she said as she stood and walked toward the kitchen. It was a good place to end it on, she thought. It left her looking cool and light, instead of obsessed with his penis.
Or at least, it did until he shouted after her.
“I think you’re kind of doing that anyway!” he called out, and she was suddenly very grateful for the kitchen wall that now stood between them. Her face had gone all hot again at the thought of him figuring her out so easily. He knew she wasn’t really interested in everything but him.
He had seen her trying to glance and not glance at the same time.
But that was okay, that was fine. She could be cool about it.
“Can you blame me? Your face is what magic would look like, if it were real. Harry Potter could probably use your jaw to destroy Voldemort.”
“Did you really just say that?” he asked, and it was the strangest thing. She didn’t have a single solitary urge to say no. She just wanted to carry on doing this, even though her face was hot and he might get the wrong idea. It felt like coming to a really tall and impassable wall, only someone was there with the best kind of ladder.
She suspected that someone was him.
“Yes, I did. Harry Potter does your face with a wand.”
“I think I could be arrested for that.”
“Nah, there was that whole epilogue at the end where he was an old man married to Ginny. So at worst, you’d be an adulterer.”
“My face can’t be that great if the best you think I can do is an old wizard.”
“Yeah, when you put it like that it sounds really bad. Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry about anything in this conversation. It’s probably the most amazing one I’ve ever had.”
She thought about telling him how ridiculous that was, but somehow pulled back at the last moment. If she didn’t say anything he might let her hold on to it for a little longer. She was a proper person, having a cool conversation. And she was doing well at it. She was climbing up that ladder with no problems.
Then in a little while, she could take him tea. She had no idea how to brew tea and didn’t have a kettle, but he never had to know that. He couldn’t see her filling a pan with water and putting it on the stove. And he had no idea she was about to use teabags she’d been given years ago in a gift basket from Atlantic Airlines.
She was sure tea tasted just as good, after so long under cellophane. Plus, the box was completely sealed. It made a little pffffing sound when she broke it open—like the casket of a mummy, she thought—but that seemed like a good sign. And the teabags turned the boiled water a good brown color once she’d dipped them in.
That was the color tea was supposed to be, wasn’t it?
“Um...how dark do you like your...” She checked the box, quickly. “Earl Grey?”
“How dark do I like it?”
Uh-oh.
“Yeah.”
“Is Earl Grey supposed to be dark at all?”
“I’m pretty sure it is.”
“Medium then, I guess.”
“Okay, this is medium.”
In truth she had no idea, but when she sipped it none of her limbs dropped off. She didn’t have the urge to immediately vomit, and he didn’t seem to either once he’d taken a drink. He did, however, say the following.
“You’ve never made tea in your life before, have you?”
“No, I have not.”
“It’s okay though, because I’ve never drunk it. So in all honesty this could be poisonous, and I wouldn’t know.”
“I’m hoping it’s not.”
“But there’s a chance it is?”
“I just found some old brown stuff in the fridge and stirred it around.”
“I thought it tasted meaty.”
“Actually it’d be really cool if it tasted meaty. This is disappointingly fragrant.”
“Like sipping a flower.”
“Right.”
“With a hint of old man in it.”
“Definitely.”
“So you were going to cut me out of my jacket.”
She’d been clutching the scissors ever since she’d brought them in from the kitchen, but didn’t register how tightly until now. The metal had made an imprint across her palm, though not for any reason she could think of. She wasn’t nervous about doing this. Who’d be nervous about doing this?
“Are you nervous about doing this?”
God, he was really good at knowing things. That was the second time he’d guessed stuff about her, despite the fact that people so rarely did. Her first shrink hadn’t realized she didn’t like coffee, until one day he’d discovered her pouring it into the potted plant. And she was pretty sure her second one thought her fake name was Anne.
He’d always paused before saying it, then fumbled the last part.
So how are you feeling today, Arglebargle?
“Maybe just a little, tiny bit.”
“Here. I’ll hold out an arm. Make it easy.”
“I’m sort of afraid I’ll accidentally lop off an ear.”
“I don’t think you’re going anywhere near the ear area.”
“Maybe not, but I could shear off an elbow,” she said, though she took hold of the cuff anyway. She pulled it taut in a good and businesslike fashion, then lined up the scissors ready to cut. No muss no fuss, she thought, despite how mussy and fussy it sort of felt. They were very close together now—much closer than she’d imagined. If he shifted his other arm just a
little, this would practically be an embrace.
And he was really looking at her too.
He was looking at her so hard she couldn’t pretend he wasn’t. She could feel his eyes stroking over the side of her face before she’d even started.
“Plus this jacket looks really expensive.”
“That’s why it’s going to be soooo satisfying when you snick those blades together,” he said, and he was right too. It was satisfying. They made a sound like a too-tight dress splitting up the seams, and she almost let out a relieved breath to hear it. As though the dress had been on her and she’d been wearing it far, far too long.
And then she cut again, and again—always feeling the meat of his arm on one side, always aware that she could cut him if she went too fast or moved too erratically—and after a while he was actually making that sound that she’d imagined. “Ohhhh,” he said, when she got to the elbow. “Oh man that’s so good.”
She understood what he meant. The material was near unbearable. It felt like the pelt of a dead seal peeling away, soaking wet inside and too thickly textured. The whole thing slopped against his upper leg as she eased it off, and forced her to think of weird and unsettling ideas. Would she find a man underneath this second skin?
Maybe he was something else, inside. Something dark and twisted, from a fairy tale she only half-remembered.
“What are you thinking of?”
She wished he hadn’t whispered that. His whisper was even better in person than it was in the movies—sort of husky, with a hint of sensuousness that didn’t really fit this situation. She was just cutting him out of a damn coat, for God’s sake.
Why didn’t it seem as if she was just cutting him out of a coat? She could feel his breath on the side of her face now, as she tried to negotiate his big, bulky shoulder. And all this heat was coming off him in long, slow waves, even though he should have been freezing. The outside of the jacket was freezing.
Maybe he was developing a fever?
“I’m thinking that I’m going to find a weird creature under here.”
“I promise it’s just me,” he said, but he was lying.
He absolutely had to be. Holden Stark wouldn’t get as close as he was currently getting. Something else must have been stirring the strands of hair that curled against her right cheek, because it couldn’t possibly be him. If it was that meant he was nearly touching her, and not with something simple like his fingers.
He was doing it with his mouth. That lush, ripe mouth of his, and he was nearly touching her with it. She could tell he was, without even turning her head. She could make out the near-sulky curl of his lower lip and the pout of the top one...could almost see them out of the corner of her eye.
Plus, he was breathing on her, oh God he was breathing on her.
Did he realize he was?
She doubted he did. He probably exuded such enormous amounts of raw sex appeal that some of it was always spilling out—even at completely awful times. In fact, wasn’t this the worst possible time in the world? He’d just been through a terrible, terrible ordeal and yet all she could feel was the heat rolling off him and the pressure of his big body. Her hands were starting to shake. Her face felt red-hot.
Any second now, and he was going to notice. She had to get herself together, but how to do it without revealing several embarrassing facts? She couldn’t say, I’m not used to a man being this close to me—please go over there. And she definitely couldn’t tell him to stop breathing hot, humid breath on her. It would sound like a complaint, when really it was anything but. The whole thing was a bit like being inside a tea-scented sauna with a lot of naked men—which was nice, in one way. It was very nice, in fact.
It was just also very hard to escape.
She swapped sides and started working on his other sleeve, only to find that this strange pressure had infected everything. It was in his stare, which looked both amused and oddly defiant, whenever she dared to glance up at it. And it was in the slow, steady cuts she was making. She couldn’t help thinking of the word undressing now, as she slid the scissors ever upward.
Even though that was insane.
He still had his t-shirt on, underneath the jacket—as thin as it was, and as near transparent. She could make out the actual curve of one pectoral muscle beneath, but she paid no attention to that. She paid attention to the picture on the front, instead—a smiling octopus, surrounded by a faded sunset.
“Almost done,” she said, just to break the silence. It had gotten very thick in the last few minutes, and the longer she let it go on for the more it seemed to be building into something else. Something coiled and ready to crush her. If she didn’t do something quick she was going to wind up smothered, or at least inadvisably excited.
She could already feel it starting to blossom between her legs, in this terrible tingly way. Every time she moved, this sensation threatened to get more intense, and that just seemed really bad of her. It was important to cut it off at the pass, but all she could manage was a jittery, jagged finish to this arts-and-crafts project, followed by a blurted, “There. Now you can stand up and leave it behind, like a leathery outline of yourself.”
It didn’t help in the slightest. The moment he stood she knew she’d misjudged. He emerged from that soaked cocoon like a brand-new man, all bare arms and broad shoulders. Of course they’d been broad before, when he’d been inside the jacket. But there was something much rawer and more real about them now. She could make out things through the thin material—jutting, rounded things.
Tempting things, she thought, then quickly pushed the thought away.
She focused instead on the jacket, which also proved to be a mistake. She’d been right about how it would look. It was weird but she had been right. She could actually see the shape of him in the mess of material he’d left behind, and it wasn’t a soothing sight. It made her think of stories about goblin shapeshifters shedding their skin—as though this weren’t the real him anymore.
This was the thing that had taken him over. The real man had dissolved down into that sagging thing on the sofa, and now she was left with the creature. Funny then, that this creature didn’t seem so bad. In fact he was sort of better than the one he’d been when she first encountered him on the rug.
That guy had seemed like a hard-partying probable jerk face.
This guy was sort of awkward and unsure of himself. He kept brushing at his bare forearms, as solid as the rest of him but somehow vulnerable now without their layer of leather. And when he looked at her finally, that same vulnerability was in his gaze. All the silly, weird talk was done, and there was just veiled blue, like something lost at the bottom of the ocean. There were just the words he hadn’t said—Why I did this, why I still want to, why it felt so bad I thought I had to.
She could see it all, because those things were in her too. They made her want to hug him—though she knew what would happen the moment she dared. Of course it was possible that he would talk and talk and talk about himself and never expect a word from her. But it was equally possible that he’d do the opposite.
He’d already done the opposite in so many ways. She’d thought he’d be arrogant and aggressive; he wasn’t. She’d thought he’d be bemused by the weirdest thing she could say; he hadn’t been. There was a chance he’d listen.
But all that did was make her realize something, for the first time...
She was absolutely terrified to say anything about herself at all.
Chapter Three
She woke with a start at some time past dawn, in the cold gray light that usually heralded the day’s arrival. From where she was laid she could see the mist pressing its fingers against the broad living room windows, faint here but heavy farther back. The ocean was pretty much concealed in a way that always disturbed her—as though she’d somehow found herself in some strange hell, and nothing beyond her front door actually existed.
The movie star she was lying on didn’t really help matters, in that regard. He s
eemed like the most unreal thing of all. Of course, rationally she knew that was his thigh she was feeling beneath her cheek. She could see his enormous knee out of the corner of one eye, and that salt-sweet smell of him was very clear, here. But she couldn’t really process it.
Until she realized what had yanked her out of sleep.
She shouldn’t have done it. She’d meant to stay awake and keep talking to him all night, in case something unthinkable happened. Then somehow...somehow she must have started sinking on the couch—and maybe he’d settled her in this position out of kindness, without thinking what that might mean for him.
Hell, maybe he had thought about what that might mean for him. He’d encouraged her to lapse into unconsciousness so he could too—only he didn’t want to simply sleep. He wanted to die, she thought, you’ve let him die, and Jesus, the panic that followed was near unbearable. It was just like before, in that terrible doctor’s office. She could almost hear him telling her that she had to calm down, she had to stop thinking about people dying all the time. It’s not healthy, he said, in her head.
But right now she didn’t care if it was or not. She just wanted him to be alive, and if he wasn’t, by God, she was going to punch him until he returned. She sat up in a fumble, ignoring the horrid stiffness of her limbs and the weird pain that shot through her bad arm. She’d slept on it when she shouldn’t have, but what did that matter?
His eyes were closed. And in this ghostly gray light he looked so lifeless, so stiff and pale. It made her almost afraid to touch him, but fear forced her the rest of the way. It pushed her until she’d laid her hand on the side of his face, and oh she thanked the heavens to find it warm to the touch.
Not hugely so, but it was enough to give her back some hope. She was able to swallow again, around the salty, great lump in her throat. And she could breathe instead of panting, as she pondered how to next deal with this. She had to wake him up, but he wasn’t responding to gentle taps and tentative shakes.
What came after gentle taps and tentative shakes?
Shoving his ass until the National Enquirer takes a picture, her mind offered, but only because her mind was a jerk. She had been forced into touching his ass. She hadn’t wanted to do it. And she didn’t want to spiral the way she was currently doing, either.
Beyond Repair (Deeper Than Desire) Page 3