#2
I choke out a snort and tug my hand back from his grip.
Not even because my heart is bleeding and I’m too cowardly to tell him why, but because I need that hand to draw.
“You could sit right there if you want to. Probably drop to your butt before your legs scream out in pain.” I reach across, intending to tap his shoulder and push him back, but he captures my arm instead and yanks me clear out of my seat.
He uses the momentum and falls to his butt, then to his back, and all along, he places me on his hips so I’m straddling his broad body and using his bent knees as a backrest. “I like it when you draw like this.” He sits up and reaches past me, grabbing my book and whatever pens are within reach, then dumping the lot on his chest, he lies back and grins.
“If you want me to be still for hours and not complain about the scratch of a pen, then these are my terms.” He walks his fingers along my thighs and exhales a happy grunt of pleasure.
“Exactly like this. I’m all yours, Princess. For as long as you need me.”
“Forever?” I open my notebook and find a page where I’ve already begun sketching his face.
I didn’t tell him what I was doing, and he didn’t seem to mind lying still.
But then again, we’d been intimate shortly before, and he’s always content to chill the hell out after that.
“If the world was burning and everyone was calling your name, would you stay here anyway?”
“Mmhm.” He unclips the radio attached to his shoulder, switches it off, and then he tosses it a dozen feet across the room.
“If the world was burning and everyone was calling my name, and I wasn’t with you?
I’d come looking for you.” He licks his lips and strokes gentle patterns against my thighs.
“Once I’d found you, that’s where I’d stay.
I’m not even gonna attempt to seduce you.
” His lips curl up at the side and show off a playful smirk.
“For as long as you wanna draw, I’ll be good. ”
“Very chivalrous of you.” I scan the pens available to me, select my favorite, and then I lean forward and bruise his poor chest with the points of my elbows.
He never seems to mind. Tilting my head to the side to study the lines of his nose, I wonder how the professionals do such good work.
But then I remember I’m no professional, and I never will be, so I put pen to paper and simply do my best. “It’s fun not assuming the worst.” I nibble on my lip, since doing so helps me concentrate. “I don’t like fighting with you.”
“Thank fuck. Because I hate fighting with you, too. I mean,” he chuckles.
“I enjoy our verbal sparring matches, since bratty princess looks fuckin’ delicious on you.
But I don’t like the real fights.” He inches higher and drops a kiss on the center of my forehead.
“I don’t like the fights where my stomach hurts at the end and you look really, really sad. ”
I don’t like those either.
“Have you seen your mom today?” I’m not using a pencil, which means I don’t get to draw and erase, draw and erase.
So once I’ve added the shape of his nose as best as I can, I move on to the stubble framing his lips.
“Did you explain why I left the table last night? I know I probably looked rude, but I—”
“Nobody thinks you were rude.” He massages my thighs, squeezing and releasing as if he needs something to do with his hands.
“And yeah, I saw her earlier. She’s spending her day with Uncle Bas, since dinner last night completely wiped him out.
She asked how you’re feeling this morning.
” A soft tinge of pink warms his cheeks.
“She’s actually really cool, Princess. I know you don’t believe me, but she’s more than this cranky, mean jerk you’ve met. She’s—”
“I believe you. Keep still.” I brush the tip of my pen across my page and try to copy the exact shape of his jaw.
So strong. So firm. “I’m not dumb, and I know this thing between me and her isn’t personal.
She’s protecting her family.” I peek up at his eyes; scared, when they’re usually hard.
Wary, when they’re typically fearsome. “If I thought my brother was in danger, and if I thought Nova was the reason for it, I’d probably behave the same way.
We do what we must for the people we love.
” I force my focus to his stubble, not my heart.
On his steady pulse, and not how much this whole mess hurts.
Arabella can’t stand to be in the same room I’m in for more than five minutes, and even if she could, if the world went to shit and he chose me over her, it would hurt him anyway.
Irreparably.
Which means we both lose no matter what.
“I’m not mad at your mom.” I bring my eyes back to his and add, truthfully, “I’m really not. Intimidated by her,” I clarify with a nod. “Yeah. And a little scared. But she’s not wrong for protecting her family.”
“Scar—”
“Have you dropped in to see Bas this morning?” I mess up on the line of his neck and the bulge of his Adam’s apple.
It’s not quite right. Not proportionate.
So I study the real thing again, then go back to my page and attempt to alter the lines.
“It’s really great he could come to dinner last night, but I hope it wasn’t at the expense of something more important. ”
Like his life.
“Yeah, I visited him.” Taking my hint, he allows us to move away from his mother and onto more pleasurable topics. Like death. “That woman,” he rasps. “Serena? She’s one of his nurses.”
“Oh?” So you’ve already met up today? Cool, cool, cool. “That’s nice. Is she good to Bas?”
“Mmm. She’s competent, and Uncle Bas says she takes good care of him.” He brings his hands to my hips and massages. “Bas was asleep when I swung by this morning. But my mom was there, and Serena too. They said he’d been awake earlier, and though he’s tired, he’s doing alright.”
“Did he wake while you were there?”
Disappointed, he shakes his head and grunts out a nuh-uh. “I’ll go over again later today. Maybe poke him a bit, see if I can wake him up.”
I snicker and mess up the line of his handsome jaw. “Not supposed to poke patients just because you want them to be awake for you.”
He chuckles. “Yeah, but I already told you I’m a selfish motherfucker, didn’t I?”
His phone chirps with an incoming call, so he digs it out of his pocket and studies the screen. Instantly, his eyes turn hard and swing my way.
“What?” I feel the nervous thump of his heart beneath my arms. Straightening my back, I search his guarded expression. “What is it?”
“I have to take this.” He brings it to his ear with one hand, and sweeps me off his lap with the other. From languid and happy, to on his feet and charging toward the door, he leaves me behind to rub my butt where I landed with a lung-rattling grunt. “Yeah? What happened?”
What happened? The world caught fire, and you promised to stay with me… but didn’t.
“No, I’ll come to you. Give me ten and I’ll call you back.” Ending his call and spinning, his eyes sizzle with grief. With pain. Worse, with undeniable proof he’s about to walk out that door and leave me here. “I’ve gotta go out for a bit, Princess.”
Yep. There it is.
He stalks back across the room and lowers into a crouch in front of me. I still have my pen in my hand. My book, splayed half across my leg. That lock of hair he tucked away earlier, now covering one eye, because he didn’t just move me.
He discarded me.
Cupping my jaw, he plants a dry kiss on my lips and hovers for a beat longer than usual. “Stay here. Be good. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“Hours?” My pulse thunders wildly against the side of my neck. “Where are you going?”
“Out.” He straightens his legs and turns away.
Just like that.
“Where?”
“Into town.”
“Can I come?”
He strides into his closet and comes out again with two more guns than he had a second ago. “No. You can’t come.”
“Who are you going to see?”
Circumspect, he glances across the room and studies me, crumpled and splayed on the carpet.
Kind of like a length of boiled spaghetti.
“I can’t tell you right now. But I’ll be back in a little while, then we can talk.”
“Ah… no.” I bound to my feet and toss my pen to the floor. I fix my sweater with jerky movements and whip the annoying lock of hair off my face, then I stalk forward and crowd the man unaccustomed to being crowded. “Tell me now.”
“No.” He slips a fresh magazine into the handle of his gun, then the gun into a hip holster just waiting to be filled. Grabbing my chin and yanking me forward, he smacks an infuriating kiss onto the line of my jaw. “Stay here. Be good. Once I get back, I can tell you what’s happening.”
He releases me again and stalks across his room.
Through the door.
Into the hall.
To the right.
Out of sight.
The world is on fire, someone else is calling his name, but instead of coming to me like he said he would, he walks away. Which is, ironically, what he said would happen way back in Lincoln and Nova’s kitchen while I was reeling from yet another soul-crushing nightmare.