Page 22 of Loss and Damages

Dominic

The annoying sound of birds singing wakes me, as does the slash of sunlight hitting me just so in the face.

Sometime in the middle of the night I’d taken the sling off, but I don’t remember doing so, nor do I remember downing the water and swallowing the pain pill Jemma so thoughtfully left on the nightstand before she went to bed.

I hadn’t wanted to come, but it was a good choice.

She’s lying on her back, wearing a cotton pajama set I’ve never seen a woman wear before. When I share a bed with a woman, she’s either wrapped in silk or she’s naked. Her face is turned toward me, and her breasts gently rise and fall in time to her breathing.

How can she sleep through that incessant noise?

I trace the lines on the palm of her hand, and her fingers twitch.

Intrigued, I do it again. I want her to open her eyes. I want to see the expression on her face when she sees me in her bed. She didn’t turn me away last night out of kindness. Kindness she felt she owed Leo because I’m his brother. Would she ever spend time with me willingly?

The pain pill I took in the early hours of the morning is still working and it allows me to roll onto my side, closer to her.

My nose picks up her delicate scent and my cock throbs. No woman has enticed me like she does. The want to skim my fingers up her thigh, part her legs, and find out how wet she is. If she’s not, I can arouse her in a few seconds. She responds to me, even if she doesn’t want to.

My brother never fucked her.

How could he lie in her bed, right where I am, and deny himself the pleasure of pushing inside her, listening to her gasp as he filled her?

Yet, when she says they weren’t intimate, I believe her.

I can tell a liar no matter how practiced he is, and when she tells me repeatedly that she and Leo didn’t have that kind of relationship, I believe her.

Her eyes flutter open and I’m lost in the deep blue framed by long, dark lashes. Her hair is a tangled mess on her pillow, but it’s sexy, earthy, and I brush a few strands out of her face. She doesn’t flinch. I have to give her credit for that.

She swallows and licks her lips. “How are you feeling?”

I’d feel a lot better if you pushed me onto my back, undid my belt buckle and the button of my pants, and rode me.

I want to pinch your nipples and watch you come on my cock while you play with your clit.

“Not terrible, but I suspect it has something to do with the pain pill you left on the nightstand. At some point I roused myself awake enough to take it. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Leo never woke up to you like this.”

“No.”

“Does that make you sad?”

She tucks the hand I was playing with under her cheek.

“No. We were friends, and we enjoyed each other in other ways. We shared a love of art, of wine. Conversation and comfortable silences. Music and a good cup of coffee. We didn’t need this because everything else we had was enough.

I’m sorry, Dominic. If you’re wondering why we were satisfied with that, it’s all I have. We were friends.”

“I’m trying to figure it out. You’re pretty, and for a man not to want.

.. I didn’t know my brother as well as I should have.

It’s not your fault you don’t have answers, and I’m sorry I don’t have any to give you.

If he was seeing someone in the city, she hasn’t come forward, so I’m likely to believe he wasn’t spending time with anyone other than you. ”

“You say that like I should be relieved.”

“You’re not?”

She smiles faintly. “That’s not how love works. Leo would’ve had plenty of time for me even if he would have been seeing someone. Love never runs out, and I’m sorry your mother taught you that it comes in a limited supply.”

A tear runs over the bridge of her nose and I wipe it away. She doesn’t pull back.

I want to be angry, but it’s impossible cocooned in the softness of the morning and the compassion in her eyes. Still, the bite is there in my words when I respond. “You don’t know anything about me or my mother.”

“I know...” She sighs and lifts onto her elbow. Leaning toward me, her lips an inch from mine, she tries again. “I know she didn’t—”

Her cell phone chimes on top of the nightstand on her side of the bed, and she jerks away. “I’m sorry. The alarm. I need to make coffee and get ready for work. You can stay, take another pain pill and go back to sleep if you want. But I have to—”

She grabs her cell, silences the alarm, and climbs off the bed so quickly she loses her balance and falls on her knees. Without looking at me, she scrambles to her feet and rushes out of the bedroom.

I’m rock hard and thank Christ the position I’m lying in hides it, or she would have been running for a different reason. I can’t go out there like this, and I drag her pillow over my face. The pillowcase smells like her and I inhale, the light vanilla scent not helping my situation one damned bit.

What did my mother say to her? Enough, by the sounds of it. I don’t need anyone’s sympathy, especially not Jemma’s.

I roll to the edge of the bed and sit up.

Blood is seeping through the gauze and into my shirt’s sleeve.

I shouldn’t have been lying on it, but I wanted to be as close to Jemma as possible.

We were close enough to kiss. It’s best her alarm went off.

As far as love goes, that may be in limited supply, but I have an endless supply of pity from everyone I meet and I don’t need any more.

My cock dawdles, and the second I think I can get away with it, I grab my sling and push on my shoes.

Jemma’s in the kitchen leaning against the counter watching coffee drip, her ass poking out, begging me to tug down those shorts and slip inside her as she presses her face against the granite and moans.

The floor squeaks under my feet and she turns around. “You’re bleeding.”

“I noticed. If you could be kind enough to change the gauze, I’ll get out of your way. Thank you for letting me stay the night. I wasn’t feeling my best.”

Biting her lip, she studies me, and it feels nothing short of her stripping me bare and dissecting all my secrets. “Are you sure you should leave?”

“I won’t take another pain pill until I’m home. I’m not your responsibility, Jemma.”

She looks down at the floor. “I know that. I have a roll of gauze and some medical tape in my medicine cabinet. I’ll be right back.”

While she hunts down gauze, I help myself to a cup of coffee. I find mugs in a cabinet above the sink, and I pour the pitch-black brew into a Hollow Lake Café coffee cup. It’s huge and sturdy in my hand. I like it.

Jemma steps into the kitchen holding a roll of gauze, white tape, and a pair of pink scissors. She frowns, and I want to ask what’s wrong or apologize for helping myself to coffee, but she uses a step stool and sits on the counter next to the coffeemaker. “You’re tall.”

“I suppose as an artist you need a keen sense of observation.”

She tamps down a smile. I like this side of her. The side where she doesn’t treat me like a monster. The side where she lets herself relax.

“Leo noticed little things,” she says. “Can you take your shirt off?”

“Right.” I unbutton my shirt, pull it off, and bunch it up next to her on the counter. “Like what?”

She shrugs and begins peeling the tape off my arm. Her fingers skim over my skin and I fight back a wave of arousal.

I sip my coffee.

“One evening we were walking from the café to the cottage and he saw a turtle in the middle of the road. He carried it to the other side so a car wouldn’t run over it.”

She tries to lift the gauze away from the stitches coated in blood, but it sticks, and gently, she tugs. I’ve been hurt worse than this, but I still drag in a breath.

She winces. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“Can you wet a paper towel? I’ll clean it up a bit.”

Her kitchen is small, and the sink is on the other side of the coffeemaker. A roll of paper towels decorated with butterflies lays on its side next to it, and I dampen one under a stream of cool water.

She dabs at my skin.

“Did Leo do that kind of thing often?”

“He liked animals, spending time outside. After my grandma died, I lost my joy. Leo reminded me that she didn’t die.

I mean, she did, but that didn’t mean she was gone.

Her spirit’s there in the way the sun shines giving plants and flowers what they need to grow.

She’s in the blue sky and the clouds that form silly shapes.

It sounds dopey, I guess, but it made me not miss her so much. ”

I look at her, and because she’s sitting on the counter, we’re almost eye-level. “It’s not dopey. It sounds...nice. Whenever I miss Leo, I’ll try to remember that.”

“It helps. God, Dominic. This looks terrible.”

She cleaned away a lot of the blood revealing the handful of stitches keeping my skin together. The bruises are bright purple and my arm is hot to the touch.

“It’s not so bad.”

“Are they going to catch the jerks who did this?”

“There were plenty of people filming. The police should be able to find something.”

“I hope so. You could have been killed.”

“I would imagine that was their plan.” This time she doesn’t smile. “But fortunately for me, whoever was shooting had terrible aim.”

“A silver lining?” she asks, echoing my sarcastic words from last night. “Remember your antibiotic.”

I tilt my head in acknowledgment and sip my coffee.

“That should be good for a while,” she says, securing the tape. “Do you have someone at home who can help you?”

“I’ll figure something out.”

“You can, I mean—” She fidgets with the plastic dispenser, her nails clicking against it. “If you need help, you can come here.”

“Jemma.”

I turn fully toward her and fit my hips between her legs. She’s more than pretty, less than beautiful. Her features fit her face and her hairstyle suits her, but she has an immature quality about her. Maybe not immature. Innocent. Idealistic. “How old are you?”