As I walked to Gwen’s apartment, I still couldn’t get the vision of Kayla out of my mind. It haunted me. I dreamed of nothing else. Every time something funny happened, I wanted to share it with her. Then kiss her until neither of us could breathe.
I needed to know what sort of sounds she’d make when I stripped her bare, laying her across the bed and settling in to devote hours to pleasing her.
Random thoughts swirled messily through my tortured mind. The image of Kayla’s thighs wrapped around my ears made me so hard I had to stop walking for a second, pretending to pause to read a text.
I don’t deserve her. Nobody does. She’s a sweet little goddess and I can’t pull her down to my level. That would be… sacrilegious? Whatever. It would be buckets of wrong. Wrongness. It would be wrong-sational.
After a few deep breaths, trying desperately to put Kayla out of my mind for at least a few minutes, I walked the last block to Gwen’s.
As I walked down the hallway to her apartment, she was leaning in the door frame talking to a wiry, sandy-haired guy. He looked downright startled as I approached.
His gaze flickered over the right side of my face, then across the broad expanse of my shoulders. I could see his body tighten suddenly, then relax again as I smiled. “Hey Gwen, do you have time for the nursing report?”
She grinned. “Alex, this is my brother Liam.” I shook his hand as he still looked at me warily. “Liam helped me with a job last week, so I need to go over some details with him. Call me tomorrow?”
“Sure,” he said, sweeping a hand through his hair. “Good to meet you, Liam.”
“You too.”
I waited until he was out of earshot with the door closed behind us before asking, “So, that’s your latest dude?”
Gwen’s half embarrassed little grin said it all as we flopped on her couch. “Yeah.”
“You’ve already made out with him,” I observed.
She flushed. “Stop it.”
“Hey, no judgment. Good for you.”
“Okay then.” She glanced at her beeping phone on the table, picking it up to see who it was, then setting it down again. “Kayla’s trying to figure you out.”
My silence said more than I ever could.
She turned to me, pinning me in place with a glare. “What did you do to that girl?”
“Nothing! I mean, I took care of her. And held her hand at the doctor’s. I tried to be the comforting guy she needed, and now she doesn’t need me, and that’s that.” I tried to break her stare but it was awkward as hell. “How’s your ankle?”
“Fine. Thanks for asking. Back to business. She is crazy about you. The two of you obviously clicked. Now that she’s okay, pretty much, you should ask her out.”
My blood turned to ice water. “Pretty much? What do you mean by that? Is she not okay? What–”
Gwen’s laugh told me that Kayla was alright, and I tried to unclench. “She’s fine. Still recovering. She hates that I’ve made a huge chart with how much screen time she’s allowed per day, and that she’s still pretty light-sensitive.” She smirked. “I bet she’d be better off with her big strong nurse around.”
“But she’s not in pain? There haven’t been any more dizzy spells?”
Gwen’s face softened. “She told me about the peppermint. Very clever. You know, I think you did a really good job. She obviously hates being taken care of, or feeling like a burden, but you… somehow made it charming.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that.
“You can’t hide it,” Gwen said crisply. “You’re completely in love with her. Do not try to deny it. Not to me.”
I shrugged. “Why would I bother? You think you know everything. So you should know I’m obviously not good for her, and I’m going to stay away.”
Gwen reached out to the wall for her imaginary baseball, hurling it at my head. I ducked, then rolled my eyes.
“Why the hell don’t you think you’re good for her?” she exclaimed. “You’re a solid guy. You’ve seen some of the losers out there in this city. You want her to end up with one of those?”
My back teeth ground together at the thought of Kayla with another man. Not just that, but possibly with another man who didn’t treat her as a goddess.