“Why?”
His pupils flexed. “There ain’t another choice.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said, freeing my wrist from his grasp and pushing at his chest. I might as well have resisted a brick wall. “Why would you defend me?” My hands turned to fists in his shirtfront.
He frowned at me, seemingly oblivious to his proximity.
Or perhaps not. The tendons in his neck were visible. He seemed to be taking pains not to look at my mouth, not to touch my thighs. His hands fisted the bed linens. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because I broke your heart.”
He exhaled heavily. “Yes,” he said slowly. “You did.”
My chest was on the verge of splitting. I twisted his shirt in my hand, hardly aware I was doing so. “You should hate me.”
“No one should hate you.” He said it so forcefully, I was taken aback. My breath stalled.
He closed his eyes as though he were banishing something, a thought. He untangled my hands from his shirt and stood upright.
“No more talkin’. You’re goin’ to sleep.”
I blinked a few times. The ceiling and its water-damaged paint loomed above me. “I’m not at all tired.” In fact, I was thrumming with something no longer violent, but urgent all the same.
Patrick sighed. I sat upright to see him collapse back into the same chair he’d attended the night before. “Well, I am.” He groaned. He turned the chair to the door, and settled back into it. “And the longer you resist sleep, the longer you keep me from my own. Do us both a favor, Scurry girl.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “You’re my warden now?”
He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, resting. “You’re entitled to your fantasies.”
I huffed. “You’rethe one who insists on watching me sleep.”
“Right now, I’m watchin’ you prattle.” He slitted his eyes open. He must have seen the heat in my cheeks, because a grin found its way onto his face. “You need a lullaby?”
I groaned. “I need another fucking drink.”
“That, I cannot accommodate,” he said. “You’re a violent drunk.”
I let out a noise of frustration and threw myself back onto the bed. Better than seeing his smug, handsome, infuriating face.
“Handsome, eh?” he murmured. “Yeah, well. At least there’s that.”
I threw my forearm over my eyes.Did I say that aloud?
“You did,” Patrick answered. As though he weren’t just in my chest, but in my head, too. “You’re also a ramblin’ drunk.”
“You could always leave.”
“I could, but I’d need to put a bell round your neck,” he said. “And somethin’ tells me you wouldn’t be willin’.”
I was fuming. I made a break for the door.
He caught up to me, of course, closing his hand around the doorknob before I could, once more caging me with his body without taking hold of me. I whirled around, my back pressing into the door, and was immediately overwhelmed by the nearness of him.
“Nina—”
But I was hitting him now. Blows that didn’t make a dent. I pushed and shoved and growled at him, that void in me yawning wider and wider. And I was as much taken by the anger as I was the comfort of him. I wanted to fall into something, to find some kind of cliff I could throw myself off. When he trapped both my hands against his chest, having finally grown weary of the assault, I pressed my mouth to his.
There was a moment of shock, his lips unmoving beneath mine, and then he disengaged. He pulled away as though he’d been stung.
