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“Start with why you’re afraid of me.”
Her gaze flew to his, and she ducked her head quickly to pretend to concentrate on gathering the tools of her trade. Outside heavy rain beat against the window. Even the weather conspired against her.
“Come here,” he ordered.
She stiffened. “Cason.”
“Do you still love him?”
Her head spun. He switched gears so fast she couldn’t keep up with him. “W-who?”
“Ah, I get it.” He about-faced again. “It’s my own ego thinking you want me.” Cason gazed down at his body, encased in shorts and a T-shirt. His legs were bare, exposing the scars from the accident. If he lifted his shirt, there would be more. Shattered glass and bent metal had attacked his flesh in multiple locations from what she had heard.
“Y-you get what?” she dared to ask.
He gestured to his form. “All this. My legs are useless, and my skin is marred. I’ve had more stitches than Frankenstein’s monster. Maybe I look like him too, and no woman could ever want me again.”
“Cason, it doesn’t help you to feel sorry for yourself.” She said it in as firm a voice as she could, but her heart broke because he believed it. The self-recrimination was there in his eyes. She’d seen it countless times, and the answer in Cason’s situation wasn’t to compliment him. Not if she didn’t want him to know she was as attracted to him as she would be to a man with perfect skin. He appealed because he wasn’t perfect.
He raised his right hand, fingers slightly curled and obviously weakened. A light touch to the patch over his blind eye went through her. Maybe it impacted her more because she could see in him and in his brothers how beautiful he once was. What a great loss, and yet, he was still sexy. If only his personality matched what remained of his good looks.
She swallowed. “I should go. Joseph might be hungry.”
“Kiss me.”
She froze.
“If you don’t want to sleep with me then give me some small satisfaction in a kiss.” He gave a dry chuckle, something she hadn’t heard him do in the time she had been at the mansion. There was no humor in it. “Am I too hideous?”
“You know you aren’t. It’s inappropriate.”
“All the same…”
Why did he have to suggest it? He wasn’t even begging or trying to get her to feel sorry for him as he had done when he manipulated his brother into getting her to stay. Arrogance punctuated the request, even expectation as if she should be eager. She was learning only a Sartori could make a favor sound like a demand. Cason might think he was as ugly as Frankenstein’s monster, but the Sartori blood kept him arrogant.
Afterward, Solette couldn’t say why she did it, but she leaned over. She intended to kiss him on the cheek. Halfway down, she’d already rejected the forehead because he would consider that an insult and might demand a do-over. She knew better. No patient had ever enticed her to cross the line.
Not that I make a habit of accepting viral men in their thirties either! I must have been nuts to accept this offer.
Cason let her kiss his cheek, and just when she was about to straighten, he caught her around the waist. This time she stopped herself from falling on top of him by bracing a hand on either side of his chest. Even with inches between them, his body gave off such a seductive heat. She couldn’t think straight. Her eyes might as well be blind because she had tunnel vision straight to his mouth.
Cason’s lips were nowhere near as full as Joe Sr.’s, but they enticed her, and his breath smelled of the strawberry jam she had given him on toast earlier. He loved simple pleasures like peanut butter and jelly. She did too, but her enjoyment had come of necessity growing up poor.
“Right here,” he whispered and pointed to his lips.
Her heart thundered.
“The only place I’m not scarred.”
He exaggerated, but she couldn’t help looking at the a
ngry mark on his cheek. At that moment, she realized she had kissed it. Cason stared at her, and she wondered if he noticed.
“I won’t let you go until you kiss me.”
She dug in her heels. “I can wait until you get tired of holding me.” Or they got caught again.
He feigned a yawn.
