52. Angel
FIFTY-TWO
ANGEL
"Of course he’d fuck you up and then just expect me to put the pieces back together."
Of all the selfish, asinine, self-absorbed things he’d ever done, this one took the cake.
Harper clung to my neck as I scanned her body, noticing the bloody gauze on her torso, the drops of blood fucking all over her, likely from Nash.
I wondered if she got in a few scrapes of her own.
Guess it’s up to me to clean up Nash’s mess again.
The silence was damning as I made for Rowan’s private shower, considering Nash was in our shared one. Harper needed her wounds tended to, but she needed to get clean first. It didn’t register in my brain that she was naked.
Okay, well, it registered, but I was doing a damn good job at pretending it hadn’t so far.
"You’re not breaking down on us again, are you?" I taunted her, hating myself for the way the words came out. "I need advance notice if you’re planning to have a panic attack so I can plan accordingly."
You’re an asshole, Angel Blackwood.
Yeah, I knew.
But if I stopped now, I’d have to admit things to her and myself that I didn’t want to. I’d have to be weak again.
I didn’t like the feelings.
Especially since I’d been running away from them for seven years and then some.
The private shower had a rainfall head that would be gentler on her battered body than a standard spray, but when I moved to set her down to test the water, she clung tighter, burying her face in my neck.
My heart flipped in my chest as my fingers tightened in frustration. I didn’t want to be so head-over-heels out of control for her.
But it was fast becoming unavoidable.
"I’m not panicking . . . yet," she finally whispered, her lips brushing against the sensitive skin of my neck.
"Good," I grumbled, leveraging her against my knee as I reached out to turn the damn knob. "You think you can stand up for a shower?"
"I’m wounded, not broken, Angel." But the way she clung to me like she might fall apart if I let her go spoke volumes in the opposite direction.
I didn’t give her the option to do it herself. With an exasperated sigh, I thanked my lucky stars I hadn’t put on shoes or socks and then stepped into the falling water with her in my arms, shivering as the cool droplets worked quickly to drench us both.
"Reach over there and turn the heat up on the water," I mumbled, forming a plan of action in my mind.
She’d have to stand up for me to clean her. There was a small bench built into the far corner, made to lean against for who knew what, but it’d have to do for a seat for her while I?—
While I washed her body down.
Fuck.
All my life, I’d dreamed of what it would be like to have my hands on her. To feel her soft skin beneath my fingertips. I’d had sleepless nights where I woke in a puddle of my own seed, her name on my lips as my consciousness dragged its way out of dreamland. Other girls couldn’t compare to the way my body just yearned for her.
I was better than Nash and Rowan at hiding it.
It looked like even that was a losing battle, though.
The water went from chilly to scalding hot lava in a second, and I swore as I swung her out of the spray, worried for her skin. "Shit, I said turn it up, not turn all the cold off, woman. Are you dumb?"
"You’re standing in a shower in black jeans and a button-down shirt, and you’re asking me if I’m the dumb one?"
"I’m gonna stand you up, and we’re gonna move over here to this bench for a minute," I said, blatantly ignoring her sassy quip. I knew damn well I was an idiot. I didn’t need reminding of the fact.
I was an idiot for her.
Only for her.
Her long, black tresses clung to the side of her face, soaked from the shower, and I checked the urge to move them out of her way when she nodded in agreement. I had to swallow the urge to moan as I let her body slide down the length of mine, painfully aware of how naked she was in front of me.
Her shirt was ripped down the middle, her breasts exposed to the chilly air, nipples pebbling against my chest as they pressed into me through the thin fabric of my silk shirt. I could practically feel the heat from her core as it brushed against my hip, her hands still locked in place behind my neck.
Fuck me, man.
"Sit," I commanded, pointing to the nearby bench. Her eyes flashed with that bratty urge to defy me, but as if she could feel that I wasn’t in the mood to play games, she slowly eased herself against the wall and collapsed onto the bench, clinging to my arms to steady herself.
I couldn’t believe the fucking audacity my cock had to twitch in my pants at the sight of her, naked as the day she was born except for the torn, ruined shirt hanging from her shoulders like a shawl.
My hand reached out to slide the remains of her shirt over her arms, and she shivered at the touch of my fingers gliding across her skin. The soft whimper that slipped from her lips was torture in all the best ways.
Suddenly, I could see why Nash liked to cause himself pain.
Torture was sweet when you were denying yourself something this luscious.
"I can wash myself, you know," she started, but I covered her lips with my palm, reaching out with the other hand to grab a nearby bottle of body wash.
Mountain Spring Man. Ew, no, thank you, Ro.
"Do you have any soap in here that’s yours?" I asked instead, ignoring her comment entirely. If I was going to live like a eunuch, then I was going to enjoy this one moment of bliss, dammit. "I don’t want my sheets smelling like my brother."
"I could sleep in his bed, you know," she offered. "He wouldn’t mind. Besides, you act like you can’t stand me, so I don’t know why you insist on keeping me close."
"Someone has to watch you and make sure you don’t get into any more trouble." I grabbed the pink bottle hidden behind my brother’s duplicate and almost-empty shampoo bottles. "This will have to do."
The soap was cool in my hands, a contrast to the steaming hot water that cascaded over us now. I wondered if it would hurt her to have the shock of hot and cold. My hands froze as I lifted them to her shoulders, suddenly self-conscious and unprepared for the closeness of the moment.
"I . . ." Fuck. No, let’s try again. "Sit the fuck still so I don’t hurt you any worse."
She blinked at me as I knelt in front of her, head and all now under the spray, and moved to lift one of her feet from the floor.
"You look good down there," she sassed as I ran the bubbles over her ankle and calf, switching to the other leg with single-minded precision and gentle touch.
"Fuck off," I snapped back, refusing to smile as she slammed her legs closed in a small effort to preserve her modesty. "For someone who throws herself at me any time you get a chance, you sure are shy now."
"Throw myself at you? As if." That little eye roll she pulled almost made me smile.
Almost .
"See where throwing yourself around gets you?" I pointed at her torso, where the gauze had started to come loose. There was a lot of blood. And if I didn’t already have my hands full cleaning her up so she didn’t look like someone murdered her, I’d be more irate about it. "You’ve likely pulled all your stitches, bitch. And I’m no seamstress."
"I think you meant surgeon."
I shook my head, strands of my pale blonde hair sticking to my shoulders, my face, my throat, scattering the shower spray everywhere. "Same thing."
Her soft skin felt like satin under my fingers as I ran more suds up her leg, moving over the outside of her thigh achingly slowly. Every little twitch and sigh she made was like a language in and of itself, speaking to me the secrets she didn’t want to give voice to. Each time my fingers glided higher, that bottom lip of hers sucked in between her teeth so she could chew on it, just like old times, when her anxiety got the best of her.
It reminded me of a better time. A time when we were more comfortable around each other. A time when I wouldn’t have hesitated to lean in and take advantage of her nudity right in front of me.
Two perky breasts stared me in the face from less than a foot away, and yet somehow I kept my cool, reaching for her arms next. Of course, I had to lean in to grab them, and the sudden moment must have destabilized the both of us.
One second, I was on my knees on the floor of the shower, at her feet, and the next, I was between her legs, face pressed against her chest, arms on either side of her planted against the wall to keep myself from hurting her.
I don’t think either of us breathed for a minute. Maybe two.
I could feel the blush working its way up my face, and I refused to meet her gaze as I debated between pulling back or just leaving altogether, letting her do this herself. She had insisted she could handle it, after all .
"Who’s throwing themselves at who now?"
The audacity of this bitch.
She saw a thin opening in the shell I’d managed to hide myself inside of, and slid in with her sass and her slick wit, and fuck all if I wasn’t harder than a damn rock as her lips moved against the shell of my ear, teasing me with the little strength she had left.
What would it hurt to just give in this once?
Her nipple brushed against the side of my nose as she turned in place, and like a fucking senseless teenage boy in a rut, I let the demons in my mind take over just this once.
I tilted my head and let it brush against my lips instead, relishing her soft gasp as she jolted from the connection.
That gasp was all I needed to restore sense to my damn self.
"Stop playing games," I growled, knowing damn well I’d been an equal player in this one. She leaned back, as did I, and I returned to washing her like nothing had happened. "I have more important things to do than clean you up after you did something I told you not to do." I gestured to her torso again, plainly pointing out the still-bleeding wound. "He used you and abused you and then threw you away for me to deal with. Selfish prick."
I could see it in the way she refused to meet my gaze or come back at my words with a rebuttal. She thought just because he wasn’t emotional with her yet, that he never would be. That this was all she could have with him.
Nash would come around. I knew it as well as I knew my own name. My birth name. He was just afraid of his feelings, and hers. She loved deeply, intensely, like a raging fire, and until now, Nash had been his own inferno. Anytime something became uncomfortable, he just blazed it away and moved on. But when you threw two fires at each other, they warred for dominance.
That was why Nash refused to let her in. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he couldn’t. If he did, he risked burning himself out to stoke her flames.
He was scared to lose himself in that fractured mind of his.
And then there were the scars. They certainly didn’t help.
"Nash will work through this shit, Harper. But you can’t push him and expect him to give all the ground immediately. He’s stubborn." My eyes skimmed over her breasts as I worked my way up to her face, my soapy hands moving to her shoulders. "Like someone else I know."
The smile she gave me was hesitant but contagious, and I couldn’t help but grin back just a little. I let the corner of my mouth twitch up and then promptly yanked it back down, refusing to let her see I was warming to her.
I didn’t want to care for her. And yet, I couldn’t stop. The part of me I’d buried years ago had never truly been gone. It just manifested in new ways. But I didn’t have to like that.
"You know, it’s weird that you’re the bottle blonde now, and I’m the one with black hair. Feels kinda weird. Like we’ve flipped sides since high school."
Small talk felt too impersonal to my ears. Like we were strangers.
Didn’t you want to pull away?
The voice inside my head had grown pretty annoying over these last few weeks. I wanted to strangle it with my bare hands.
"High school feels like a decade ago," I sighed wistfully, wishing I could rewind to those carefree days and tell my younger self things. Don’t try beer. Don’t let Pansy Rockmoor give me my first blowjob under the bleachers after drama club. Don’t fall in love with the girl you can’t have.
But past me was lightyears away, and even with the knowledge I had today, I wasn’t sure I’d do anything different.
Don’t fall in love with the girl you can’t have.
My hands skimmed over her arms again, and then, sucking in a breath, I ran them over her tits as she hung onto my shoulders, neither one of us able to meet the other’s eyes. The only indication that she was as affected by this as me was the way her fingers tightened in the wet fabric of my shirt when my fingers skimmed her nipples, and the way her body arched into my touch unconsciously.
I realized belatedly I was still between her legs, and with what little opportunity and willpower I had left, I slid my hand down her abs, skimming around the edges of her open wound as I slipped between her thighs and brushed over her mound.
The moan that left her mouth had me twitching between my legs, and against my better judgment, I let two fingers slip between her pussy lips, grazing her clit under the guise of cleaning her up.
But we both knew what this was.
"Angel," she whispered, but I raised my free hand and slapped it over her mouth, refusing to hear her pretty words and flowery emotions. I didn’t want to hear how much she wanted me. I didn’t want to know what emotions lurked just beneath the surface of her skin.
But gods, how I wanted to touch her and mean it.
Instead, I pulled my hand back like her pussy was electric, reached outside the shower, and yanked a towel off the rack. With a practiced hand, I wrapped her in the damn thing, turned off the water, and carried her out into Rowan’s room.
"Put some clothes on while I get dry," I ordered her, setting her on my brother’s bed so I could grab her bag. "Don’t do anything stupid, you hear me?"
"I hear you," she replied weakly, her head hung low, hands already rummaging in her duffle for something to wear.
I took her at her word and rushed out of there like a bat out of hell.
Two minutes later, I found myself in my own shower, one hand pressed against the wall, the other around my cock as I pumped myself to completion, my mind a blank .
Well, except for the echoing sound of her moan for me and me alone, bouncing around on replay in the recesses of my consciousness.
I came to the memory of that sound, and fuck it all, I couldn’t deny it any longer.
I was in love with Harper Daniels.
And there was no going back.