I don’t realize I’m screaming until powerful arms wrap around me. I’m lifted off the floor, legs kicking at air as Dante carries me out of the room and into his bedroom, to the bathroom.
My heart pounds when he sets me down in front of the sink and stands behind me. His arms locked around me. When I squirm, he only tightens his hold on me.
“Shh.”
He’s so close we’re touching. His big, hard body at my back.
“Be still.”
I can’t though.
He leans his mouth to my ear. “Be still,” he commands. “I have you.”
I nod. Quiet as I take a deep, shuddering breath.
He runs the tap and checks the temperature before taking the knife from my hand and letting it fall into the sink. He picks up the bar of soap and washes my hands. I can only watch as he does it. His hands calloused and rough, mine small and soft, disappearing inside his. He scrubs away the blood and I watch the pink water run over the knife and down the drain.
I look up at our reflection. At us together. I’m surprised to find him not looking at our hands, at the task he’s performing, but watching me. The line between his eyebrows deepens and I see the gray hairs at his temples. He’s too young for gray, isn’t he?
He has blood on his face, too. I wonder if he’s seen it. I don’t think so because he’s not looking at anything but me. His gaze is so intensely locked on mine that it makes goosebumps rise along my flesh.
He blinks, finally looks down and he switches the water off. He sets his hands on the counter on either side of me, arms like steel bars. Not that I’d run. There’s nowhere I want to be but here. He switches his gaze back to mine and I feel it in the pit of my stomach. That fluttering, like butterflies inside me. He still hasn’t cleaned the blood off his face.
I turn inside the cage of his arms and reach up to wipe away the splatters of red with my fingers. His skin is rough with several days’ worth of stubble. There’s gray here, too, sprinkled through the dark. I like it. I look at his lips and remember them on mine. Remember how he tasted. And when he swallows, I watch his Adam’s apple bob. I think again how beautiful he is. My broken avenging angel. The man who has saved me twice. The one slaying my dragons.
“Dante,” comes Matthaeus’s voice from inside breaking the spell. “We need to move.”
“One minute,” Dante calls out, not moving, not shifting his gaze.
I want him to kiss me again. I want to feel his lips on mine. Taste his taste. Smell his smell. I put my hands against his chest, move over solid muscle as I take them over his arms and wrap them around his shoulders. I feel his strength. And even when he winces as I touch what I realize is the bullet wound, he doesn’t move. Doesn’t pull back.
I climb up on tip toe and I touch my lips to his.
All I can think is how right this is. How this is exactly where I want to stay. Right here. In this moment in time. And when I move my lips, opening them to him, I feel his open too. Feel his body shudder as he draws me into him, kissing me.
My body melts against his and I feel myself relax. Then, in the next instant, everything changes. His lips tighten and he stiffens. His hands close around my arms, drawing me away.
“No,” he says. Just that one word and it makes my world go dark again.
I look up at him, confused. I try to kiss him again, but he stops me.
“No, Mara.”
Heat flushes my neck and face. I drop my gaze to the floor, to his booted feet, to my bare ones.
He keeps hold of one arm as his other hand creeps up my spine to cup the base of my skull. His fingers weave into my hair and tug, making me look up at him.
“I shouldn’t have done what I did. I shouldn’t have touched you.”
I can’t look at him. I’m embarrassed and hurt. How could I think he’d want me? After all that’s happened, all they’ve done to me. It’s stupid, really. Who would want me after that?
I feel my lip quiver and I bite back the pain, swallow down the hurt.
“It won’t happen again,” he continues. “I wouldn’t be any better than the rest of them if I allowed it. Do you understand?”
I turn misty eyes up to study him, see how the green of his eye is darker as if with the weight of his words, the feeling inside them. But I don’t care about that. I don’t want to hear this. I harden myself. Lock away any emotion.