Chapter 10 #3
Instead, I stood there bathed in the beam of light, muscles rippling under the heavy weight of his eyes. The silence encapsulating the room suddenly seemed loud, and I fought the urge to fidget. Seriously, I’d faced guns with a lot less fucks than this.
“Is that you?” he asked, and even though I knew he was just behind me, the proximity of his voice distinctly rolled down my spine.
“I’d have to have a pretty big head to get a self-portrait on my back.”
“Not you, then, but what you represent.”
My eyes whipped up, drilling a hole into the inky sky as though, if I stared hard enough, I could see what lay behind it.
“No.” My voice was hoarse.
The air shifted when he moved closer, and my body spasmed when his finger met the skin between my shoulder blades.
“You’re freezing,” I bit out.
I didn’t tell him to move.
“A dark angel,” he spoke quietly, almost reverently, as his fingertip traced along the figure of a man in the middle of my back, then up over the black wing across my shoulder before skirting over to do the same to the other side. “Beautiful.”
I shook my head. “Intimidating.”
“Protective,” he countered.
“Destructive.”
“Powerful.”
I spun, catching his wrist before his hand could pull away. Ignoring the way my thumb and forefingers met around the circumference of his flesh and bone, I held tight, drilling my eyes into his. “Dangerous.”
His delicate chin tilted so his silvery eyes could war with mine. “The capacity for violence but also love.”
Whew-weee, was it getting hot? Maybe I was coming down with his fever.
“You don’t know me,” I retorted. No one knew me. That was the way I liked it.
“I know you saved me more than once. I know you could have left me in that box, but you didn’t. You could have left me alone in this room, but you stayed.”
What was it about his stare, the way he used his own vulnerability to try and find mine? This one might be small, but he was lethal.
“I’m leaving in the morning.” I informed him.
“Okay,” he replied, not even trying to dislodge the unrelenting hold I had on his wrist.
“It’s cold. Go back to bed,” I ordered, dropping his arm and turning to close the window.
I half expected him to still be up my ass when I turned back, but he was crawling under the covers, his slim, bare legs disappearing one at a time.
I swallowed hard. “I’m leaving for work. Going out of town. I’ll be gone for weeks, maybe months.”
His swallow echoed through the room. “What kind of job do you have?”
I didn’t answer.
I heated up what was left of his soup and brought it toward the bed. “Eat this.”
“Thank you,” he said, accepting the offering.
“Don’t thank me.”
“But I’m grateful.”
It pissed me off that he was grateful for nothing. “Don’t look for me. Don’t wander into alleys. I mean it. I won’t be here to—”
“Protect me?” He finished. When I said nothing, he burrowed farther under the blankets until he wasn’t visible at all. “Don’t worry about me. I’m used to being alone.”
My instincts recoiled before my brain caught up, and I stood there in the middle of the impersonal, cold motel room, battling back instant anger. Fuming, I yanked down the corner of the blanket so his head was visible.
“Hey,” he complained.
“Don’t hide from me.” I don’t have much time left to look at you.
His face popped up. “I was trying to get warm.”
Stalking into the bathroom, I turned on the shower, setting the water to hot. Back at the bed, I pushed my arm beneath the covers and grabbed hold of his foot.
I jolted, and he stiffened. “Holy hell, is your internal thermometer busted?” I asked as I towed his icy body toward the side of the mattress.
“What are you doing?” he wailed, trying to kick me away.
It was a pitiful attempt. I’d seen cockroaches scurry better. With one last tug, I had him in my arms, bare legs locking around my waist like he was afraid to fall.
Me too, Pip. Me too.
“Hiro.” He said my name like it was the breath in his lungs, an answer to a prayer. Like he was uncertain and trusting all at the same time.
It was napalm for my insides. Instant wipeout, total decimation. In that moment with him in my arms, I realized I’d come here for battle, but he didn’t know there was a war.
Innocence like that didn’t crumble the walls I’d built. It simply unlocked them.
His fingers were gentle when they pushed a strand of hair away from my face, and my gaze settled on his as though I’d been looking for him all my life.
Found you.
You can’t stay.
I kept the war he knew nothing about locked tight in its cage.
“I’m taking you to the shower to get clean and warm.” I didn’t recognize the sound of my own voice, something about it nothing more than a stranger.
“I’m tired,” he pouted.
“I’ll wash you.”
Leaning in, he pressed our chests together to rest his narrow chin on my shoulder. The contented sigh he released created a bruise inside me. “Can I wash you too?”
“I thought you were tired,” I retorted as I carried him into the balmy bathroom.
“For you, I could find the energy.”
Oh, it was going to sting when I walked out of there later.
Lucky for me, I was accustomed to pain.