Chapter 6 #2
Her gaze zeroed in on his hand.
Was that …?
“You’re bleeding,” she accused, storming toward him. “What happened? What did you do?”
“It’s fine,” he said dismissively, only it didn't look fine from where she was standing.
“Men. Special forces men,” she added. They thought they were infallible, downplayed everything, and acted like bleeding out was the same thing as a paper cut. “Come and sit down, let me go grab a towel and some bandages.”
Not giving him a chance to disagree, Chelsea took Josiah’s elbow on his good side, guided him to the couch, and then hurried off into the kitchen.
Beside it was the laundry room, and under the laundry sink was the first aid kit.
She grabbed it and a couple of towels, then paused in the kitchen to fill up a bowl with some water.
When she returned to the living room, she found Josiah right where she’d left him. His back was ramrod straight, and that wasn't the only thing hard and straight. His erection stood at attention, and there was no way she could tend to his wounds or have any sort of conversation with him like that.
“Okay, I can't talk to you like this,” she informed him.
“Like this?” Josiah’s brow furrowed like he had forgotten the fact that he was naked, although she had no idea how that was possible.
While his thighs were thick and muscular, his erection impressive, and she had no doubt that beneath the Kevlar he was absolutely ripped, she felt a little uncomfortable seeing him naked. Not because she wasn't wildly attracted to him, but because she was.
And he wasn't attracted to her.
Although the erection did hint otherwise.
“Can we do something about Mr. Woody?” she asked with a giggle, indicating his thick length. If she stared at it for much longer, she was going to start dreaming about how good it would feel thrusting inside her, and once she went down that path, she wouldn't be coming back.
“Oh.” Josiah looked down, shrugged, grabbed a throw blanket from the armchair beside the sofa, and tossed it over his lap. “Better?”
“Uh, yes.” Chelsea nodded, but she was still picturing that huge length of his. Already she’d had a vivid imagination, spent hours daydreaming about her and Josiah in bed together, now her dreams were going to be a whole lot more accurate. “I can't believe you came down here naked.”
Another shrug. “Wasn't even thinking about it.”
“Well, your little buddy was obviously thinking about something,” she muttered as she sat beside him and reached for his injured hand.
“You.”
“Huh?”
“You. It was thinking of you.”
Her cheeks heated in what she knew had to be one pretty major blush. “You think I'm pretty?”
“I think you're gorgeous.”
Her gaze snapped to his, needing to see if he was just messing with her.
From the way he didn't shy away from meeting her gaze, she didn't think he was.
That Josiah might be attracted to her was more than she could ever hope for. It took pretty much every bit of self-restraint she possessed not to strip off her clothes and crawl onto his lap, take him inside her, and make him fall in love with her.
Since she absolutely could not do that, Chelsea began to clean away the streaks of blood on his hand so she could assess the damage.
“Sorry I answered your phone. I didn't mean to upset you, I just didn't realize it was a big deal. I'm sorry, though, I won't do it again,” she assured him. If she’d known that it was going to make him so angry, she would have ignored the call.
The hand she wasn't working on clenched into a fist. “I'm sorry I scared you. I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”
“I'm not afraid of you.”
“I yelled at you twice today. Once at Dr. Wood’s office, and once in the bathroom, I saw the way you looked at me after.”
There was so much recrimination in his voice that she abandoned her work of cleaning away blood, and did climb onto his lap, although she ignored the erection prodding her side. Framing his face with her hands, she feathered her fingertips across his temples.
“Look at me, Josiah.”
Somewhat reluctantly, he brought his gaze up to meet hers.
“I am not now, nor have I ever been afraid of you. I was confused in the doctor’s office because I was expecting you to think bringing along surveillance equipment was a good idea, and yet you freaked out. Is that why you were hiding from me in the gym? You were worried I was scared of you?”
He gave a slow nod.
“Could never be scared of you,” she assured him. “Upstairs just now, in the bathroom, I wasn't scared of you, I was worried about you.”
“Worried?”
Letting her hands drop lower, she ran her palms over the thick Kevlar vest. “Of course I'm worried about you. I care about you, Josiah. You know that. Everybody knows that. This isn’t normal. I mean, I can guess why you’re wearing it, but I don’t think it’s helping you. Does your mom know? Anyone else?”
Since she was sitting on his lap, Chelsea could feel the way his entire body went tense. “I don’t talk to her.”
“You mean like very often?”
“I mean like at all.”
“You don’t talk to your mom at all? Is that why you got so angry with me?”
“They call all the time. My mom, my dad, my brothers, but I can't … I don’t … since what happened, I haven’t seen them or spoken to them.”
“Josiah, that’s six years,” she said, her heart breaking for him. How could he deny himself what he so badly needed? His family was willing to rally around him, and he was shutting them out the same way he shut out her, their team, and everyone at Prey.
All he did was shrug, and Chelsea threw caution to the wind and wrapped her arms around Josiah, hugging him tight. He didn't return the hug, his arms hanging stiffly at his sides.
But he didn't push her away.
And to her poor little heart that loved this man with everything it had to give, that was everything.
“I'm extra sorry about answering your phone. I didn't realize you didn't speak with your mom. Josiah, she seemed worried about you.”
“She was worried about you.”
“About me?”
“Told me she’d find out where I was and come and spank me if I had hurt you.”
“You’d never hurt me,” she said with confidence she felt down to her bones.
“You don’t know that, Chelsea.”
Was he really worried he might? He had to know himself better than that. “Yes, Josiah, I do know that. You wouldn't hurt me. But would your mom really spank you?”
Her question surprised a bark of laughter out of him, and he shook his head. “Never. Not in a million years. When I was a kid, she usually lectured and then gave us a time-out or grounded us. She was always fair, though.”
“Because she loved you.” As much as she’d be happy to stay right where she was, Chelsea knew Josiah would hear her better if she slid off his lap and returned to cleaning up his hand.
“She still loves you. You have so many people who care about you.
You're not alone. Even if it feels like you are because we don’t understand, you're not. We might not have lived through what you did, but we all care about you. Please try to believe that.”
The only way she was ever going to get her shot with Josiah Fleet was if he could accept the fact that he deserved to be alive, that he deserved to live a long, full, and happy life, and got out of his own way.
She just didn't know how to convince him of that.