Chapter 17
Robbie was out the door almost before she’d finished saying the word “Tylenol.” He was shirtless, the damp tee he’d struggled out of forgotten by the front door where he’d dropped it.
He’d look so good standing there, so strong.
She’d had the strangest urge to lick the sweat from his chest, to bury her nose in his throat and inhale deeply the scent of grease and the woods and his deodorant and him.
The Tylenol wouldn’t do shit for her, not when she was starving to death like this, but it would give Robbie a job and make him feel useful.
He was back within five minutes and herded her into the bedroom with all the tenacity of a cattle dog. He offered her two pills in a cupped palm, and she dutifully swallowed them. They wouldn’t help, but they wouldn’t hurt either.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, tucking her into bed and racing out of the room.
He’d propped her up against the headboard, supported by every pillow in the cabin, and she rested there, her eyes closed, her body weak and feverish.
He was so close. He looked so good. He was so good, which just made it worse.
Because if she told him, if she explained what she was and what was happening and what she needed, she imagined he would be so eager to help that he’d be under her before she could blink.
They had chemistry. She could feel it, and she knew he could, too.
It would be electric. It would be no hardship at all to feed from Robbie Cain.
It was much harder not to feed from him.
She’d caught small whiffs of desire in the air, most often coming from the shower, and had all but plugged her nose to keep from drawing them deep into her lungs.
She’d be saved, she’d be satisfied, her reserves filled to the brim for the first time since…
since… ever, maybe? JJ had done so much to help her, but they hadn’t had chemistry like she had with Robbie.
She and JJ had run like steady electricity.
Robbie would cause a power surge. What would she even become after a feed like that?
But that didn’t feel remotely right or fair or, hell, ethical.
He’d do anything she needed because that was just the type of person he was. But chemistry be damned, she wouldn’t take advantage of his kindness like that.
She panted, the weakness all-consuming now.
“Okay, I’m here,” he said, announcing his reentry into the bedroom. The announcement was wholly unnecessary, however, as he moved with all the subtlety of a rhinoceros.
She smiled as much as she was able. He was adorable.
“I’ve got hot tea, and I found a book. My grandma used to read to me when I felt sick. It’s not medicine, but it’s comforting.”
She pictured Robbie as a child, gangly limbs and freckles, a blanket pulled up to his chin.
“What did she read to you?”
“When my grandpa was awake, she read the Bible to me. But when he was asleep, she read The Hobbit.”
“Do we have The Hobbit here?” she asked, hoping that he was not about to try to soothe her with Leviticus.
“Nah,” he said. “It’s an old mass-market paperback romance. Doesn’t even have a cover anymore. But it’s a story, right? Is that okay with you?”
She would listen to him read a romance. She would listen to him read sermons. Hell, she would listen to him read the phone book if it would relieve him of that panicked look he’d been wearing since finding her at the table.
“Fine by me,” she replied, taking a sip of the tea.
“Great. Now, mind you, I got no clue what this one is about. So we’re gonna be on the ride together.”
“Read on, oh fearless leader,” she said, which earned her a crooked smile. Her stomach dropped a little, the way it did when you drove too fast over the crest of a hill.
“Okay. Here we go.” He sat on the edge of the bed, one knee resting on the mattress. “Heart in a Hurricane by Cressida Buchanan.”
Robbie began reading. Nadja wasn’t paying much attention to the words, but he really did have a lovely voice. Warm and strong and full of character. She could tell he was doing the voices in the dialogue, even if she wasn’t tracking the conversations themselves.
But slowly, her senses began to wake up, which was odd. The air smelled different. The room felt different. She kept her eyes closed but harnessed her focus on what Robbie was saying, forcing herself to pay attention.
Briar pounded on Rafe’s back as he climbed the circling stairs that led to the top of the tower. “Put me down, you brute,” she shrieked, kicking her legs and struggling.
A heavy hand landed on her backside with a smack. “Quit kicking like that or we’ll both fall to our deaths.”
“You’re out of your mind if you think I’ll lie with you, Rafe MacCrae. You’re a beast.”
“Aye,” he replied. “But this beast is your husband now. And you will.”
Her eyes were cracked, watching Robbie. He canted his head on his neck back and forth before rolling his shoulders back.
He’d put on a clean T-shirt but hadn’t had time to shower yet in his frenzy to take care of her.
She smelled grease from a fryer, sweat, pine, his deodorant, and something else that she couldn’t quite place. Something sweet.
The slam of the heavy wooden door echoed through the chamber, punctuated by the metallic finality of the bolt sliding into place.
Briar stood before this man, a giant among mortals, her husband as of thirty minutes prior, and tried to catch her breath.
He was a mountain of tan muscle, on display beneath the hem of his plaid and in the vee of his untied linen shirt.
“I don’t—” she began, but then he was there, reaching behind her and clasping the backs of her thighs, hoisting her into the air as if she weighed nothing and pressing her back against the door.
She had no choice but to brace her hands against the strength of his shoulders, which tensed and shifted beneath her palms like a horse beneath her saddle. She shivered.
“Ye didnae hate me so much when we were young, when I was a stable boy and ye’d sneak out to meet me in the hay loft.” He ran his nose up the column of her neck, then did the same with his tongue, licking a long stripe from her shoulder to her earlobe, which he sucked wickedly into his mouth.
“I didn’t—” she said, searching for an argument and coming up short.
Because she had snuck out to the hayloft to steal kisses from Rafe, then a stable boy working for her father.
He’d been sweet and kind and soft, nothing like the hardened soldier who held her in the air as if she were a featherbed.
This Rafe had seen war. He’d killed men.
She’d seen him do it, in fact, just this morning when he laid siege to her uncle’s keep.
Rafe sucked hard at the corner of her jaw, and Briar gasped.
Robbie shifted on the bed, and Nadja couldn’t help but look down, to see the growing bulge at the front of his jeans. She inhaled deeply, that rich, sweet scent so much thicker now.
Nadja sucked in breath after breath, ignoring everything she knew about going slow.
She once read an article in school about how people who had nearly died of thirst had to be given water in doses as they recover or they would literally drink themselves to death.
The irony had always struck her, to go from nearly dying of a lack of water to actually dying from too much of it.
But it didn’t feel ironic now. It felt too real, too possible, as she filled her lungs to the brim over and over as Robbie read words like “nip” and “suck” and “grind,” his voice getting ever so slightly huskier and deep, the hardness in his jeans fully obvious now.
She felt a hint of strength return—not actual strength, but the suggestion of it—and, like a record scratch, was yanked out of her wandering thoughts and squarely back into her body, which was beginning to siphon Robbie’s lust right out of the air without her even realizing it. Without his permission.
“Let’s save it,” she nearly shouted.
“What?” Robbie replied, shaking himself.
“It’s getting really exciting, don’t you think? And I—I worry I won’t be able to sleep if I get all keyed up from so much excitement.”
More like fatal horniness, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. How could she?
“You’re right,” he said, dog-earing the page of the book before closing it. “The oldies don’t normally get that spicy so quick.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” she said, closing her eyes so that she couldn’t see him, couldn’t be tempted by the way the worn cotton of his shirt stretched over his shoulders, or the way the tendons in his throat worked as he talked, or that godsdamned bulge.
“You tired?” he said, placing his palm on her forehead again and frowning.
“Yeah. But thank you for reading to me,” she said. “It was really nice.”
Nice. And hell was just a sauna. But the reading had been nice. The timbre of his voice and the care that went into the gesture. But if Rafe MacCrae did one more thing to prim Lady Briar, Nadja’s self-control was going to snap and she was going to attack Robbie like a spider monkey on a branch.
“Yeah,” he said, standing and turning around, no doubt to adjust himself in his tight jeans. Godsdamnit, Robbie. He was, quite literally, going to be the death of her.
“I think I’m going to get some sleep,” she said, sliding down under the covers and pulling them to her nose, closing her eyes to block out the sight of him.
“Sure,” he said, turning off the light. “You sure you’re okay, Doc?”
“Yep! Feeling much better actually,” she lied, wincing at the obviously forced pep.
“If you insist.”
“G’night, Robbie,” she said.
He began closing the door but stopped halfway. “I’ll be just out there if you need anything.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, fully in agony over how good he looked and sounded. What was worse, she’d never felt like this before in her life. It was new and alarming and overwhelming all at once. But that was her problem, not his.
“Thanks, Robbie. Sleep well.”
“Sweet dreams, sweeth—”
Without finishing that word that just might have been her demise, he shut the door, blanketing her in near total darkness and leaving her with the panicked realization that she was far more fucked than she’d ever been before.