Chapter 5 #4
“What crawled up your butt and died?” she asked as she moved to step onto the runner at the back of the van, and found there wasn’t one, at least not where she thought it was. And she tumbled out, face first onto the gravel.
No sooner had she hit the ground, no sooner had she registered pain in her knee and her forehead, than a strong arm was lifting her up into the air and setting her on her feet. “Are you okay?”
Embarrassment, fury, and about a hundred other emotions filtered through her body. She had been doing so great. She had been so cool. But all the guys were walking toward the path that would take them back to the hotel, and they hadn’t seen it. Hopefully.
Which was when she realized that her forehead and her knee really, really did hurt.
“Shit,” Nolan said. She found herself being propelled toward the raft barn. “We have a first aid kit in here.” She was pretty sure Nolan was the one saying that, but her head was jarred.
She actually kind of wanted to thank him, because he had gotten her out of sight so quickly. “Jason didn’t see me fall, did he?”
“That’s what you care about?” Nolan asked, looking at her like she was crazy. He looked furious. And he smelled really good.
His arm was hard around her waist, and she suddenly felt short of breath, and she didn’t know if it had to do with the fall she’d just taken and the delayed realization of what had happened, or if it was because of him.
“Yeah, it’s kind of what I care about. That was embarrassing as hell.”
“For God’s sake,” he grumbled as he pushed open the bathroom door and closed it firmly behind them.
It was a single-person bathroom, and it was tight in there.
She stood against the wall while he opened up the cabinet underneath the sink and produced a first aid kit.
“I—”
And then, his large hands wrapped around her waist, and just like he had done back at the barbecue, he lifted her up like she was an inanimate object and set her on the counter by the sink.
He opened up the first aid kit, hand moving down behind her calf, pulling her leg upward so he could look at her knee.
And suddenly, she was very aware of his hands on her leg. He had touched her there yesterday. Jason had touched her there today.
But Jason’s hands were nothing like Nolan’s. Rough, large. Hot. “That’s deep,” he said, breath hissing through his teeth. Then he opened up a bandage and put a bit of Neosporin on the pad. Then he slapped the bandage over the scrape.
“It’s not a big deal.”
He moved closer, now he was standing between her legs, and the position was so intimate, so jarring, that she nearly fell right off the sink, and for a moment, she couldn’t move.
He cupped her face, eyes intent on her forehead.
All he was doing was looking at the cut because she was nothing to him.
Because she was a thing. Something that he picked up and moved around. Because—
“So, I’m your brother?”
The question stung her, along with the touch of his thumb on her forehead, the press of his thigh against hers.
He leaned in, his breath on her cheek as he positioned the Band-Aid slowly. “I thought you thought I was hot, in spite of being a pain in the ass.”
Those words were like a shot fired in the room. Panic ricocheted through her like a bullet and before she could think, before she could make a decision about what she might do next, she’d launched herself off the counter.
“Don’t touch me,” she said, pressing both hands to his chest and shoving him backward. He stumbled, probably only because he was surprised, shoulder blades hitting the wall.
“I mean it. Don’t touch me,” she continued.
“You don’t need to have your hands on me for any reason, and you’ve had them on me too much recently, and I’m done with it.
” Her face was hot, she could feel it, this kind of reckless rage and need all building and pooling in her cheeks.
She knew that he would be able to see it too, and there was nothing that she could do about it.
Nothing she could do to stop it. “I can put on my own goddamn Band-Aid. Just leave me the fuck alone.”
“Fine,” he said, both hands up in surrender. “You know, I have been nice to you for your entire life. And you have been nothing but a vicious, rabid asshole to me. I’ll work with you, Lila, but don’t expect me to treat you nicely.”
He walked out of the bathroom then, slamming the door behind him, and with shaking hands, she put a finger to the cut on her forehead.
Her knees were shaking, and it was no longer from the adrenaline of falling.
It was him, standing between her thighs like that, his face so close to hers, his hands...
No. No. Jason was going to call her. Jason was going to call her, and she was going to fuck him.
Because she had to do something. She was losing her mind, she did not have control over this.
And if there was one thing she would never be able to respect in herself or anyone else, it was a lack of control with men, with sex, with need.
Lila needed to lock it up and quickly. There was no other option.