Page 14 of Bound

“So that is how you want me to see things, then?” she rasped. “Is that how you want me to remember everything we said in Paris? Everything we did? Like a distortion? A mistake?”

His lips thinned. “It wasn’t a mistake, damn it. Nothing about you is a mistake, Jayd.”

She stabbed out a bitter laugh. “’Twould seem everything about my life is a mistake, Sir—starting with my birth.”

And leading directly to this moment, in which she assumed fate had given them an unexpected gift. The time they had gotten so little of in Paris. Granted, it had come in bizarre wrapping, but she would take it swaddled in barbed wire.

Until Brickham declared it had never been a prize in the first place.

Until his razor line of a jaw and his stiff pylons for shoulders gave glaring proof of that.

Enough proof to push her heart back into aching agony and then her whole body off the bed.

Or so that was the idea.

She had made a huge error, thinking painkillers and stitches would hamper her force of nature. His reflexes were as sharp as the moments he had wrested her from both Gervais and Trystan. But unbelievably, there was twice as much rage across his face. She knew that clearly, considering the man hauled her back all the way against him. Yes, to the point their noses were a centimeter apart. Yes, with her chest slamming down so solidly, he grunted in pain from the pressure on his shoulder wound.

But also to the point that she caught every bright fleck of light in the depths of his gaze. Flecks that could only be reflections from one source.

Pure steel.

“You are no goddamned mistake.” His lips were just as taut, with his snarl erupting from the depths of his chest. Jayd flinched without thinking, only to find out her range of motion was not a range at all. Not with Brick’s other hand now sprawled at the middle of her back.

“Okay,” she uttered, twice as shaky and freshly impatient. What if she was doing him more harm? What if his stubborn dominant side was helping that cause? “Okay, Brickham. I heard you. Unnnhhh!”

Her gasp became a moan as soon as he snatched at the ends of her hair and twisted it in his fingertips. More anxiety reached in. He was doing that with the hand that corresponded to his wounded shoulder, but nothing changed except the rapid beeps of his fluctuating vitals. Thank the Creator she had told Twylah to turn off the alarms.

“Why don’t you try telling me that again, sweet girl?”

The intention behind his challenge was clear. She could not have been more elated.

“I said…I heard you fully, Sir.”

More low thunder from the center of his chest. More gorgeous gleams in his powerful, persistent stare.

“Hmmm. Better…but not quite good enough.”

That should have hiked her hackles at once. But his statement, so insolent and even a little judgmental, aroused more than her hackles. So many parts that trembled for him again. That ached for even more of his brutal touch.

That longed, more than anything, to be good for him. So good…

“How can I be better, Sir?”

She finished with a shallow sigh, which Brickham pulled into himself with slightly parted lips. The sight held her in thrall. Was this really happening? Was he really savoring the very air she breathed?

“Don’t just tell me that you heard me, Pixie,” he finally said. “Repeat it all back to me. Word for word. ‘I am not a mistake.’ Say it, girl—and mean it.”

Jayd flinched, yearning to rear back. But Brickham barely moved—save for the area directly between his thighs. Though his legs barely shifted, that magnificent part of him certainly did. She would probably not have even noticed the change, if not for how her thigh had fallen against his crotch when he pulled her over. But her awareness was unmistakable now. And unignorable.

And so unquenchable…

Which slammed her with more confusion.

He was not flexing down there for her sake, was he? Nor even his. Males, especially those on a cocktail of pain medications, were not able to just turn that kind of thing on and off at will, right? But the fact that he even had it on was cause for shock. Granted, the pleasant version of the stuff.

Oh, saints and stars.

Perhaps a little more than pleasant.