Page 10 of Wanting What’s Wrong

Eight

Kat

T he lights on the first floor are off, except for the light above the stove.

Somehow, I know that he’s upstairs, so I tiptoe up the curved staircase, gathering my courage with every step.

I make my way down the hallway and peek inside the main bedroom.

He’s sitting in one of the chairs that looks out on the lake.

On the table beside him is a half-finished beer.

“Trent…” I’m not sure what to say, but I need to start somewhere.

He doesn’t answer, but stands up, squaring his broad shoulders to me, his hands in the pockets of his camo pants.

He hasn’t changed, hasn’t taken that shower.

His body is still naked from the waist up, belt still hanging open.

His muscles flex and move the shapes of his tattoos, shift the bandages. Ripples and bulges.

I swallow hard, struggling to find the words .

There’s a heat in his eyes. A molten desire. It takes my breath away.

He glances at the white tape and gauze sitting out on the bed. “Where have you been? I’ve been calling you.”

I pull my phone out of my pocket and try to turn it on. All I get is the charge battery symbol. “You don’t even have a phone you said.”

“There’s a fucking landline in the hall. When I call, I expect you to answer,” he growls, and my hackles raise even as a throb starts between my legs. “You keep your phone charged, got it? And you go somewhere, you tell me first .”

“I’m sorry. I just…I thought we needed some space. I shouldn’t have left without telling you.”

“No. You fucking shouldn’t.”

“Next time…”

“There isn’t going to be a next time because I’m not letting you out of my sight.” He picks up the fresh tape and bandages, and leads me toward the ensuite bathroom, so sure that I’ll follow. He blinks once. His long lashes dusting his cheeks. “It’s fine. But I need your help. Now.”

It’s beautiful inside. Immaculate. White marble and gleaming fixtures. The wealth and plenty of it all stands in such sharp contrast to a lifetime of never enough. “This place really is out of a dream.”

He smiles at me. That white smile, mirrored back at me a hundred different ways from the mirrors that surround us.

His powerful manner. This way he has about him.

His presence. It always puts me at ease.

But his smile shifts briefly into a wince, and I see that on each bandage are tiny pinpricks of blood from his wounds underneath.

“Oh, Trent.”

“It’s fine, Kat. Let’s just get them changed.”

For now, for this moment, I decide to forget about everything—about the heat between us, about Rominovski, about the sketches, the notebook. The lies I’ve told. All of it.

He braces his arms on the countertop, letting his head drop. The sinewy muscles of his traps and delts bulge in the warm light.

Very slowly, very gently, I peel off the bandages on his back, careful to go slow, careful not to pull at the skin. The wounds below are bad, but healing. Seeing them makes my body roll with agony. His pain is my pain. His hurt is my hurt.

I place the bandages from his back in the garbage as he slowly peels the others from his chest. The wounds on his back are worse, much worse.

But of course they are. Trent Reynolds has never run away from danger in his life. Not in my defense. And not in war either. “You were really lucky,” I say, dabbing a square of gauze with antiseptic.

He nods. Looks down. Doesn’t make eye contact. “It was bad, Kat. So bad.”

My emotions catch in my throat. I don’t know what to say, but I know that with him, silence is okay. We have never needed words to fill the space between us and we don’t now, either.

I dab at the torn flesh around the blue stitches. His body tightens as I do, but then relaxes again.

I am meticulous. By the time I’m finished there’s a pile of gauze on the countertop, and all four wounds are bandaged with waterproof dressings. “There. All done.”

Trent straightens up with the smallest of winces. I watch his every move, checking to see that he’s okay. He’s hurting, but I don’t want to break the silence. I gather up the bandage wrappers and place them in the garbage, as he turns and twists the handle on the glass-encased shower.

The room fills with steam and heat.

Warmth and closeness .

The familiar, comforting sound of running water rolls around my ears.

And just like that, I am back to the night before he left.

I turn to face him, looking into his eyes, as his fill with such hunger. Such need.

He glances my cheek with the backs of his fingers. A feather-touch. Soft as silk. But it lights a fuse that burns through me, leaving me breathless.

And that’s when I know we’re in trouble.

The thump, thump, thump of my heartbeat cancels out everything else until his whisper, “Fuck, you’re so beautiful when you blush.”

I count ten more heartbeats as we stand like statues.

When the room starts to spin and the edges of my vision blur, his arms engulf my waist, pulling me in a single hard tug against his naked torso.

“We can’t,” I manage, though the statement is empty. Unconvincing, even to me. “What will people think?”

He answers with a low growl. All greedy and possessive. “I don’t give a fuck what anyone else thinks.”

My body doesn’t care either; but my mind—Jesus, God help me. “This is wrong.”

“Is it?” he counters, licking his lips on a sniff.

I nod against his hand, and my eyes flutter shut.

A thousand words light up in conflict as I decide what to say next, but none of them matter when the nudge of his tongue opens my lips.

Trent’s tongue. Trent’s lips. Warm. Wet. A bit of pressure. A flavor I shouldn’t recognize but I do. You’d think he was kissing my clit with the involuntary shudder that renders me boneless.

I should push him back, fight, say no.

But I don’t. I can’t.

I do the opposite.

I open myself to him, my own tongue swirling over his elicits a soul shattering groan from his core.

Our tongues meet in a tense tangle, images of us in our younger years explode behind my eyelids as the wrong, wrong, wrong pounding in my head is snuffed out by the yes, yes, yes thrumming between my legs.

The kiss turns deep and needy, as he pushes me up against the glass shower wall.

Gasping for air, I break away, pulling back so I can breathe.

So I can think.

His arms stay latched on to me, tight and strong. The pounding of my heart echoes in the pulsing of my soaked pussy.

“I told you to put the notebook down, Kitty Kat.” He nudges my cheek with his nose, pressing his hardness against my pelvis. Huge and intimidating.

“I know. But I couldn’t.”

“Tell me why.” He says against my neck just below my ear.

“Because I…” I don’t know how to finish. I don’t know how to explain.

“I saw you that night, you know” he murmurs. “Before I left. I saw you outside the bathroom door. And I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.”

I let out a whimper and the kiss comes crushing forward again, taking the air from my lungs, the reason from my head. His hands move from my waist to my face, attaching my lips to his, making it impossible for me to withdraw ever again.

Fire explodes in my belly. A million flickering flames. I would do anything for him. I would live for him. I would die for him. Every breath, every thought, will always belong to him.

It’s Trent who detaches us this time, his square jaw tense.

The vein in his forehead as thick as my pinkie.

The hem of my dress shakes against my kneecaps.

I am in the arms of the boy I always thought of as my brother, feeling feelings I have never felt for a man before.

A red haze takes over and from the depths of my being I draw out a split second of clarit y

“You shower,” I whisper, the words shaking over my lips. “I need to breathe. Please. I’ll see you in a bit.”

I twist away and out of the bathroom into the darkened master suite, closing the door as I sink, trembling, my legs failing and I sink down to my knees.

The sound of water rushing behind the door starts and I try to ground myself. He’s taking a moment as well. Thinking more clearly.

But before I pull myself back together, the water stops and the door slams open, bright light. I tuck my head down, peeking over my shoulder.

Still shirtless, and his fatigues are undone, but not off him yet and I nearly lose consciousness as I see the fleshy tip of his cock riding up above the elastic of his white boxers. His face is set hard, brow furrowed in taut rows.

I look up, on my knees before him. The thick outline of his cock is impossible to miss. I avert my gaze. “I…I was…”

He cups my chin in his hand and guides me to my feet. We’re close now, close enough that the head of his cock presses against me as I rise. The willpower I summon in order not to yank his pants down and to drop to my knees again is enormous.

His eyes are still firm, hard-set. He is every inch a warrior. Every inch pure power. He takes my hand in his now, softly enough but still firm and determined, and then leads me to the bed.

“Trent, we… I can’t…the shower…” I stammer, trying to pull back.

His answer is a tighter grip as he yanks me forward. “Shut the fuck up,” he growls. The harshness should anger me but instead, it calms me.

“ Trent. ”

He tugs me toward the bed again, spinning me around, so the mattress presses into my knees. He pinches my cheek in his muscular hand, dark fire flickering in his eyes. “I told you about the notebook. I fucking told you not to look. But you didn’t listen.”

I swallow the knot in my throat. The heel of his hand presses against my throbbing pulse under my jaw. “I know,” I manage to whisper.

“You never listen, Kitty Kat. Not even when you were little. So stubborn. It’s time you fucking learned...good girls listen.”

Good girl turns me into a puddle of warm goo as wetness streams from my center.

His deep commanding voice sends a shiver to my core. There’s something different about him. Something I’ve never sensed before now.