Chapter Thirty-One Patrick #3
She gasped, huffing into the cold air, and lifted her fists again.
The next blow was a little heavier. Enough to rattle teeth if it landed on someone’s jaw.
But she was too easy to rile up. And it was too easy for Patrick to fall back into this temptation.
“Would it help to picture Arlo instead of me?” he said.
She punched again, grunting. “Keep talkin’, and it’ll be inspiration enough.”
And there was the slip, back into that tongue she’d had when he’d met her. He hid a grin.
Another punch. This time, he caught her hand and threw it away. “Ah, come on, Scurry girl. I know you got some of that Eastern blood in you somewhere.”
This time, she advanced before he put his hand up, and he had to lean away to avoid her fist. She advanced again, this time aiming for his jaw. He had to block it. “Whoa.”
Her leg kicked out, her boot aiming for his groin.
He hit it away, smiling, and had her wrapped up in the next second, colliding against the inner walls of the smoker’s hole, one of her wrists trapped in his hand and pinned beside her head.
The other caught between his chest and hers. His arm all the way around her waist.
The tin walls rattled threateningly, and all the breath punched out of her. Her eyes were wide with surprise, then unshrouded humor.
“The last rule is to not tell the man you’re fighting that you’ll kick him in the groin. Otherwise, he’ll know to anticipate it.”
He watched the planes of her face, the flakes of snow stuck in her hair, lips turned upward in a smile that couldn’t last. After a few moments, it descended again. A sinking raft. Nothing, not even he, could hold her afloat for long.
She let her forehead fall to his chest, giving in to gravity. She gasped in and out, her whole body slackening. She was all around him, and he all around her.
Patrick made himself retract. He dropped her waist, let her hand fall from his grasp. He stepped away from her and cleared his throat.
His mind churned with indecent images of all the things he could do to her here. Now. He turned his back to scrub his face.
His heart hammered, blood washed his veins, and he almost turned back. Almost.
“You were wrong before,” she said from behind him.
He stilled.
“You said I didn’t trust you. But I did. You were—you are—the only person I trust.”
She didn’t move, and neither did he. Better that he remained facing away, where the sight of her couldn’t overthrow him.
“But I didn’t plan for you, either.”
He sucked in a breath. No, she hadn’t planned for it. They were both cogs in a machine neither of them had much control over. Faulty parts trying to change things.
“But I know I wouldn’t have fallen for you if not for your heart.”
He turned slowly, raised his eyebrows mockingly. “My heart?”
“Yes,” she said, obstinate. “It’s in there. I saw it.”
“Bet it weren’t a pretty picture.”
She sighed. “You’re not nearly as wretched as you think you are.”
“You don’t know the half of it, Scurry girl,” he told her. “You only know what I could stomach tellin’ you.”
“Then tell me,” she said, stepping toward him. Imploring him. “You think I’ll flinch? Tell me what you did to those coppers.”
“Burned them alive,” he relented, his voice now ice.
To her credit, she didn’t flinch. Instead, a wildness came over her. He thought she was seeing, once more, those hundreds of corpses waiting in the snow. “I hope it was slow,” she said. “I hope they felt every second of it.”
The ground beneath their feet gave the softest of tremors. She eyed the newsprint discarded on the ground, and her breath pulsed out in clouds. “They should all burn.”
He felt caught up, suddenly, in that same fervency. A longing to descend into the madness of it with her.
Her eyes were closing. She was pacing in a tight circle now, shaking out her arms. He took several steps in her direction but stopped short of her.
“Sometimes I want to tear off my own skin,” she said, tipping her head back, snatching cold air into her lungs. “I feel so angry.”
“You sound like a miner.”
“How do you tolerate it?” She was practically begging for an answer, pulling at her own clothes like they were suffocating her.
“Booze,” said Patrick. “Brawling. Sex. Whatever takes the edge off.”
She looked up at him, urgency flooding her. Intent.
And goddamn if his cock didn’t side with her, but Patrick forced himself to shake his head. “Ah, don’t look at me like that, Scurry girl. That’s not what I meant.”
She bit her lip, and he suffused a groan.
She came close enough to touch his chest, to run one torturous hand over his shirt and up to his collar, then the other.
Sense had flown her body. “And if I begged you?” she said, her mouth closing in on his.
Erringly close. And already his lips were parting.
His cock pulsed painfully. He held himself as still as he could and closed his eyes.
But she was all around him.
“Please,” she said, her body vibrating. He felt the stiff peaks of her nipples rub against his chest and he imagined teasing them, running her to the edge with just that touch alone.
She looked up at him once more, her hazel eyes enveloping him.
Lord, help him. Soft lips pressed against his, her tongue swept gently across the tips of his teeth, and he felt half his resolve melt.
She was too sweet to resist. Too much a torment for any one man.
A growl left him, and he pushed her back into the wall again.
He had a mind to spin her away from him and pin her hands above her head, to make her forget her own name.
She gasped in relief against his mouth, her body undulating already. Her hands slipped down the length of his torso toward his belt.
He caught her wrist before it could descend any farther. Moved his mouth out of reach.
For a moment he simply held still, waiting for the throb of his blood to slow. Waiting for the night to cool them. He pushed his forehead to the wall over her shoulder. “You don’t play fair,” he groaned. Counting his breaths.
Her voice rasped when it came. “It doesn’t have to be about love,” she said. “You… you can still have me without loving me.”
He went cold. His eyes snapped open.
He dropped his hold on her body abruptly and leaned away, pain lancing him. He made sure Nina looked at him when he said, “If it wasn’t about love, then you’d be bent double right now, do you understand?”
Her breath stuttered. She nodded.
Patrick shook his head and exhaled, looking out to the night. “With me and you, Nina. It’s always gonna be about somethin’ other than fucking. It’s too late for that.” He wished now that he hadn’t discarded that cigarette. He closed his eyes. “It’s distance you and I need.”
“Because you don’t trust me?”
“Because I don’t trust myself when I’m with you,” he said. “And you fuckin’ hurt me.” He was split open, his heart swinging by its tendons, the meat of his chest on display. He went to the bench by her side and collected his coat and cap.
He paused before passing her, leaning down close enough to speak into her ear. Finally, she flinched. “You ever offer yourself to a man like that again, and it’ll be the last thing he ever hears. Got me?”
She nodded, eyes misting.
He went back out into the night, the wind corralling him, whistling in his ears. He wished he could go back and strip them down of all the things they had done, the things that made them feel ashamed.
He wished he’d kissed her when they were twelve and led her onto a train home with him, and they’d both forgotten idium ever existed.