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She moaned something.

“Scarlet.” My patience was thinning as my willpower to not trail her body with my eyes started to disintegrate. “Help me out. You need to stay warm. Put this on.” I helped her sit up, pushing a sweatshirt over her head. Her lashes started to flutter open, and she stirred enough to wiggle her arms into the sleeves before curling back onto the pillow. Good enough.

Covering her with the blanket, my fingers brushed through her damp hair.

“Goodnight, Scarlet.”

“Scarlet?” She murmured the name sleepily, her brow furrowing, like she was confused. She muttered again so low I wasn’t sure I heard her right. “That’s my grandmother’s name…”

Chapter 8

Scarlet

Only skimming sleep, my mind became more cognizant of sound and movement around me. The words I mumbled as if they were from some dream, so delicate it popped like a floating bubble.

My weighty lashes pried apart, blurry vision catching a tall, broad figure standing in the dim light across the room, his profile facing me. Exhaustion had me slow to catch up and figure out where I was, but it didn’t take me long.

Ash stripped off his wet shirt, his tattoo flexing over his muscles, his pants riding low on his hips. I stayed absolutely still. It didn’t seem to matter that I had already seen Ash almost naked. It did nothing to stop the heat from pooling between my legs at the complete awareness of him. Ash was hard not to be conscious of.

This time, the way the candlelight reflected off him, I could see his skin was marked with multiple scars along his hip and lower back.

“Where did you get those?” I croaked.

His head swung around to me, his eyes catching mine. I sensed a second of something I couldn’t place before he looked away, hanging his shirt over the chair to dry.

“Nowyou’re awake,” he huffed, ignoring my question. He grabbed some blankets from the chair, laying them down on the floor.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting ready to go to sleep,” he replied dryly. “Something you should be doing.”

“Yeah.” The response barely made it out as I watched him make a bed on the floor, his ass to me. Funny enough, I was wide awake now.

“I feel bad you’re sleeping on the floor.”

He snorted. “I have slept infarworse places. Having a rug underneath me is luxury.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure if it was a question or statement. My mind was looping with all the places he had probably laid his head down. “No luxury in whorehouses?” It slipped off my tongue before I could stop it.

Ash’s mossy irises slid up to mine like he could see right through me—hear the twang of jealousy flushing my cheeks.

I wasn’t jealous, though. I mean, he was hot. No one could deny it, but I didn’t feel that way about him. Not when I was still in love with someone else.

Someone who loves someone else.

The influx of agony I had gotten used to burned up my esophagus before I could stomp it back. Thinking about him, what I did because of my pain…

“Judging those who weren’t born with money?” He lowered himself to the floor, unlacing his boots. “Some have no other means to survive, to keep from being homeless. And some enjoy it.”

“I wasn’t judging.” I lifted my head, frowning.

“Yes, you were.” He flapped out his blanket, laying it over him. I noticed he kept his loosened boots on. Probably in case he needed to run. Clearly without me, since I was pretty much naked. Maybe it was his plan. Find me a home he could dump me in, like some pet rescue.

“Maybe I wasn’t criticizing them,” I snipped. “Maybe I was judgingyou.” I turned my head away from him, angry at his assumption. There was truth in it, but more than anything, I felt his judgment of thinking I was so insipid and uptight.

He let out a sigh, his body shifting. The light next to me on the table was extinguished, the rustling of him getting comfortable on the floor breaking up the silence.

My words sat heavy on my chest. I wasn’t someone who ever spoke without thinking. I couldn’t. Too much could be taken out of context. But it wasn’t natural for me. My temper, even as a child, always got the better of me, and while my brother continued to play, I was put in time-out a lot. Time-out was a good description of my entire semester abroad in Vienna.