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I bit my lip and hesitated, sensing a trap. “I don’t know,” I said. “I couldn’t say why. I’m not the poetic type. That’s Nell’s area of expertise, not mine. I just think they are.”
He tucked it into the vase and stroked a petal with his fingertip. “That’s my point. You don’t have to be poetic. Just look at them. Shut up and really look at them. And you feel it. Right here.” He put his hand on his chest. “They just are.”
I gazed at him, feeling almost hypnotized as his finger stroked the gorgeously purple curve of the orchid petal. I took a deep breath … and tried it.
I did exactly what he had suggested. I just shut up. The nervous talking, the worries, the fear, the clamorous noise in my head. I just watched Liam touched that flower.
His clear eyes were endlessly patient, gentle. He looked willing to take his time. Willing to wait for me to get it, even if I was slow, or thick. He was in no hurry at all. He reached out, touched my cheek, stroking it as softly as he’d touched the flower petal.
And I got it. Right in my chest, just like he said.
Oh, yes. He was beautiful. The realization pierced through me like a knife.
This was against all my rules, all my better judgment. The power dynamic was whacked, wrong. He was the one who had saved me. He was the one offering protection and comfort. I was the one who was desperately in need of it. He had everything, I had nothing. And for fuck’s sake, I couldn’t even guarantee him a good time in bed to compensate him for his trouble, not with all my sexual hang-ups. That was a crass assessment of the situation, but I called it how I saw it.
I preferred to have something concrete to offer a man, something that would keep him connected with me after the initial flash of desire flickered and went out, as it inevitably did. Not that the trick had ever worked before, considering my track record.
Liam didn’t need me. I had nothing to offer him but myself. When he lost interest in that, I would be destroyed.
Liam sensed the direction my mind was running. I saw it in his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” he asked warily.
He sounded exhausted. I didn’t blame him. I was nothing but problems, traps, tangled knots, thorny difficulties. My mind raced to come up with a plausible lie. Letting him see how small I felt would embarrass us both.
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
He let out a quiet sigh, and leaned back, laying his head against the back of the futon couch. Covering his eyes with his hands, which made me notice his hand.
Crap. His knuckles were torn and raw, encrusted with blood. God, I hadn’t even given a thought to his injuries, his trauma, his shock. I’d just zoned out, floated in my vacuous bubble, and leaned on him. As if he were a mighty oak.
But he wasn’t an oak. He was a man. He’d fought like a demon for me, and risked his life, and gotten hurt. And I was so self-absorbed, I hadn’t even noticed.
I was mortified. I didn’t even like to imagine what Lucia would have said. “Liam, your hand! Let me get some disinfectant, and some?—”
“It’s okay. Forget about it.”
“The hell I will! You’re bleeding!” I bustled around, muttering and scolding to hide my discomfort, gathering gauze and cotton balls and antibiotic ointment.
He let me fuss, a martyred look on his face. After I finished taping some gauze over his hand, I looked at his scraped, battered face and grabbed a handful of his sweatshirt, tugging it upward. “What about the rest of you? Let me see.”
“Just some bruises,” he hedged.
“Where?” I persisted, tugging at his shirt. “Show me.”
He wrenched the fabric out of my hand. “No.” His voice was grim. “If I take off my clothes now, it’s not going to be to show you my bruises.”
Oh … my ... goodness. I blinked, swallowed, tried to breathe.
There it was, finally verbalized. “After all this? You still want to, um ...”
“Fuck yes.” His tone was low and savage. “I’ve wanted it since I laid eyes on you. And it keeps getting worse. Plus, combat adrenaline would give me a hard-on like a railroad spike even if there wasn’t a beautiful woman in my face, driving me nuts. Which puts me in a bad place, Nancy. The timing’s been piss-poor since the moment we met, but it never gets better. It just keeps getting worse and worse.”
“It’s okay.” I patted his shoulder shyly. He was usually so calm. It unnerved me a bit, to see him wound up like this.
“And the worse the timing gets, the more I want it,” he went on. “Which makes me feel like a jerk, a user, and an asshole. Promising to protect you?—”
“You did protect me,” I reminded him. “Spectacularly, I might add.”