Chapter 42
SHAWN
Kara’s blue-gray eyes settled on me when I stepped out onto the back deck overlooking the creek. Was she aware how much better the view was for me when she was standing there?
“Oh, my God,” she said. “You own a pair of jeans? Careful, someone might mistake you for an American.”
Yes, I felt more comfortable in a suit, but did she have any room to judge? She liked her professional clothes, too. But I preferred her now, the American girl in leggings and a casual t-shirt, her blonde hair pulled back to reveal her slender neck. The marks were faint, nearly gone.
I told her in German what I’d like to do to her.
“You remember I don’t speak your language?”
“Sure you do,” I said, skating my lips over the soft skin of her neck, drawing the tiniest sigh from her, proving my point.
“I need to ask a favor.” She twisted out of my embrace.
“What is it?” Her cup of coffee rested on the railing, and I took a sip. It was so sweet it bordered on undrinkable, but I was too lazy to go back inside and make my own.
“Take out my stitches.”
I paused. “Isn’t it a little soon?”
“I don’t care.” Her voice was filled with fire. “He put them in me. I want them gone.”
I set her cup back down, my gaze not leaving hers. I couldn’t do anything about the scar, but I was happy to help her remove this final piece of Juric.
She must have laid it out while I was in the shower.
On the coffee table rested needlepoint scissors, tweezers, and liquid bandage. I hadn’t noticed the scent of rubbing alcohol that hung in the kitchen from where she’d sterilized the tools when I’d walked through looking for her.
She shed her shirt and lay down on the couch, facing me, waiting as I washed my hands at the wet bar nearby.
“Do you know how?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Jason had played American football in high school, gotten a laceration once, and had been too lazy to go back to the doctor for removal.
She inhaled sharply when I placed a hand on her waist to hold her steady. “Your hands are freezing!”
“Hold still,” I whispered.
It was easy enough to slide the scissors under and to the side of the knots and snip them open, one by one. I returned with the tweezers and tugged from the knots until the thread was free. Then it was done. I tossed the last physical thing Juric had done to her into the garbage.
I opened the bottle of liquid bandage and brushed it over the cut, inadvertently making her jump, then blew softly on it to speed the drying process.
When my breath rolled over her skin, it sexually charged the air.
She flicked her gaze to me, her blue eyes beautiful and clear, and I had to maintain an ironclad grip on my self-control.
“Don’t put your shirt back on until that’s dry. Shouldn’t be but an hour or two.”
She flashed a knowing smile. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.” When I tried to stand, her hand shot out and grabbed mine.
“For everything. I don’t know how I would have . . . without you.”
That was nice, but the voice in the back of my mind grumbled. I was still waiting to hear something from her, something I felt confident was true, but I needed to hear her say it out loud. To admit it to herself.
A few minutes later, she sat up and disappointingly slipped on her shirt. “Do you have a plan for the day?”
I’d had some this morning, but she’d woken before me and was in the shower when I rolled over and discovered her gone. So much for staying in bed all day. “I got us here. That was the extent of my planning. We could watch something.”
I picked up the remote and turned the television on, only to have CNN come on screen. With my dumb luck, it was an update on the brewery bombing and the American hostage who had been taken. I shut it off before she could ask me to, and I searched for something else to distract.
“There’s a deck of cards. We could play a game. Strip poker?”
She acted unfazed, but I could see she was trying very hard not to think about that night on the lawn, or what followed. “We’ve already seen each other naked.”
“You’re saying you don’t want to see that again?”
Thankfully, her smile reappeared. “I don’t need to beat you at cards for that. Something tells me all I have to do is ask.”
She was so very right.
Yet she didn’t. Instead, she suggested we go for a walk, to enjoy the weather and lack of civilization around us. Delicious and torturous anticipation built throughout the day, like she was waiting for something. For me to do something.
After dinner, she sat across from me at the kitchen table, and her icy gaze narrowed.
“What is it?” I said.
“I meant it when I told you to stop being nice to me.”
I put my glass down. The bastard inside me was desperate, but I wasn’t ready to release the gag. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
Her face went blank. “A good idea? Since when did you care about that?”
The muscles in my jaw tightened. I knew what she was doing, that she wanted to push my buttons like I did to her. She rose from her seat so she could loom over me, her breathing rushed.
“Where’s that arrogant prick I like so much?”
Shit, if she wanted him, she could have him. I deliberately came to my feet so now I could loom over her. Well, kind of. I’d forgotten that she was tall, so her eyeline wasn’t that much lower than mine.
“I’m right here,” I said.
“I want you to make love to me.”
An involuntary laugh burst from my lips. “Sorry, I don’t do that.”
She put her hands on her hips, her sexy mouth twisting in frustration. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I’m not interested in sweet, tender lovemaking.” I loaded my voice with as much honesty and sex as possible. “I like fucking. The nastier, the dirtier, the better.”
Color bloomed across her face, and it turned me on so much I pushed her hands off her hips so I could put mine there.
“Why?” she asked, turning away from my impending kiss.
The simple question gave me pause. “What?”
“Why aren’t you interested in making love?”
Since I was terrible at it, that was why. It was the one skill I hadn’t mastered in the bedroom. “I’m not capable of that.”
The thought went through her visibly and I saw myself reflected in her eyes. Her voice was unsure but determined. “I can prove you wrong.”
“You won’t.”
But she wouldn’t accept that. She was already backing up to the bedroom, pulling me along. “We’ll try it your way, and then mine.”