There was nowhere safe to look at her. She was too beautiful. Even the slightest glimpse and I risked a deadly amount of exposure to her beauty.
“Can I look at your leg?” I asked.
When she nodded, I rolled over the desk chair to make sure she’d still be in the direct warmth of the stove and gestured for her to sit. She set the tea down at her side after taking a satisfied sip. “Mmm, thank you.”
She perched her foot on my lap, and I knelt before her for the second time in a few minutes. She bent to pull up the pant leg of her sweatpants. My willpower to keep my gaze focused was a sand dune pulverized by crashing waves.
I held her calf in my hands, comforted to find the skin as warm as my own. My forefinger brushed the back of her knee, and she sucked in a breath.
“Sorry. Ticklish.” Her color had really returned now.
Heat rushed through me at her reactive sensitivity. I longed to run my hand farther up her thigh and see what happened.
I growled at myself to focus.
The gash on her knee was dirty but shallow. It was still bleeding slightly as her body warmed.
“Did you just growl?”
“I don’t like that you’re hurt,” I said smoothly.
“Ah. Well, me neither. But like I said, it’s not so bad. Mostly, I just feel?—”
I narrowed my eyes at her in a warning. I wasn’t going to hear any more of this talk about stupidity, and she took my warning for what it was. She sucked in her lips and reached again for her tea.
I cleared my throat. “I have a first-aid kit around here. Let me see.”
I stood quickly, and my head went fuzzy for a second as I spun in a circle, looking for it. It wasn’t in any of the usual places. I dug out my keys and went to the locked room, determined to finish helping her and get the hell out of there before I did anything stupid. Anything else.
I found the kit in the locked room and was halfway out when I realized what I had done. What was happening. Where Iwas.
I’d come in the house. Not only that, but I’d also been so focused on helping Claire that I went into the locked room before it even registered.
The truth of it rocked into me and took away my breath.
Claire
What the hell was happening?
My damp hair felt suffocating as I hauled it up off my neck and tugged this sweater away from my body to let some air in. The room was too hot. Ten minutes ago, I never thought I would know warmth again, but with Levi kneeling before me, thoseintensely handsome features twisted with focus the heat, it grew. And grew and grew.
As Levi left to explore for the first-aid kit, I slumped back, covering my face with mortification. Was it written all over my features what his touch was doing to me? It was just the brush of death that made my hormones or adrenaline or whatever take over.
I bit my lip, finding it swollen from the action, and looked at the ceiling when I remembered how my insides melted when he brushed the back of my knee. I didn’t even know I was sensitive in that spot. Kevin certainly never spent any time gently caressing my legs with focused tenderness to find out. Yet one graze of Levi’s finger and I gasped out, my insides clenching. Hopefully, he bought the ticklish excuse.
God, what was wrong with me? A man saves my life, and suddenly, his touches make my brain misfire. If my brain was even involved at this point.
Maybe he should just leave. Perhaps he was just too much for the small space,myspace. This house ain’t big enough for us both.
Should I kick him out?
But then … I was enjoying this pampering, this being taken care of. I hadn’t even realized I was missing it until I experienced it. To be the focus of someone’s attention and worry that wasn’t related to me by blood was nice. It felt like security.
All at once, a cold dread filled me.
This wasn’t security. I didn’t know what this was and didn’twant to look at it too closely. I had just promised him I would stick to the rules, and I went and broke one on the same day.
I had to get him out of here and get back to work.
