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I was extremely comfortable, and excited even, about the ride.
Until I wasn’t.
The dull throb of my shoulder started to make itself known about ten minutes into our ride, and by the time we’d arrived to pick up my medications, I was leaning so heavily into him that I knew that I was making him nervous.
That knowledge was confirmed about five minutes later as he pulled into his place, which was beautiful might I add, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to sit upright much longer. Not without a whole lot of help, anyway.
CHAPTER 8
Roses are red, violets are blue, it don’t always be like that, but sometimes it do.
-Laric to Catori
LARIC
She went from ‘great’ to ‘bad’ in the span of our roundabout trip to my cabin.
I picked up her prescriptions, I swung into Salsaritas, got her a burrito, me two, and then we were headed home in no time.
I noticed her start to lean a little harder into my back about ten minutes into the ride home.
That lean went into a visible plaster of her against my back in the next ten.
And by the time we got to my place, I was reaching into the saddlebags, not for the burritos, or her bag, but the bottle of medicine that I’d gotten from the store.
Pulling out a flask that I kept in there, I opened her pill bottle and slowly walked the bike into the space beside my place.
When I turned the bike off, I was already ready for her to down the pain pill.
“Here,” I said as I got off the bike and handed it to her all in one smooth movement.
When she blinked at me, I saw the pain.
“Good stuff wore off,” I guessed.
She grimaced and nodded. “They said it would. I hoped it wouldn’t.”
I gave her the pill, but she dropped it just as quickly as she took it.
I bent down, blew it off, then tilted up her head with a knuckle underneath her chin, and pressed down on her lower lip with my thumb. “Open.”
She did, and I had to fight the urge to growl as I dropped the pill onto her tongue, then unscrewed the flask before pressing it to her lips.
She started swallowing immediately, and like a little baby bird, allowed me to do every bit of the work.
It was always awkward helping people drink. I mean, how long did you hold the drink to their lips? How much were they getting? Was it too much? Too little?
I allowed this to go on for a few more seconds, her greedily gulping down the drink, before pulling it away from her mouth.
She gasped for breath, and a small droplet of the grape juice that I kept in my flask in case of emergency slid down over the pillowy softness of her lip and then farther down to her chin.
I tried to tell myself to stop.
Really, I did.
But that fucking mouth.
As I watched the purple drop flow, I couldn’t stop myself even if I’d wanted to.
Reaching out, I caught the drop with the pad of my thumb, dragging it up along the length of its journey until I reached the starting point.
The moment that the drop was extinguished from her skin, I brought it to my own mouth and licked it clean.
Her breath hitched, but again, I couldn’t have stopped myself if I’d tried.
“I wasn’t expecting grape,” she admitted. “I was expecting tequila or whiskey. Not grape Kool-Aid.”
I grinned. “Not that I wouldn’t like that, too,” I said as I reached for her waist and helped her off the bike. “But I just like grape. And that other stuff’ll get you arrested if you drink it while riding.”
She snickered as she leaned heavily on me, giving me more of her weight than I had a feeling she’d intended.
Not that I cared. I liked having her weight pressed into me.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure what it was about her that was making me want her as badly as I did, but I wasn’t one to question my sixth sense.
Something was telling me that she needed to be around me—or I needed to be around her—and I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
The moment I’d seen her, I’d felt something, and I was not, under any circumstances, going to question it.
Not when that ‘sixth sense’ had been right so many times before.
“Come on,” I said, looping her good arm around my back and pulling her in close, my hand at her opposite hip to keep her steady. “Time for a nap, I think.”
“Time for burritos,” she corrected. “I’m absolutely starving. Nobody would feed me any real food while I was there, and let me tell you something, I just found out that I really enjoy real food. I’d probably waste away on that hospital crap.”
“Agreed,” I joked. “Been there done that, don’t want another merit badge to prove it.”
