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“What makes you think I give a shit?”
That rocked her back a step, but she heard the edge in his tone—no longer flat, now it had jagged rocks. There was maybe nothing in the world Siena understood as well as she understood the need to shove pain away exactly like that.
She thought of the bullied little boy who’d had to learn to fight to survivegrade school.Kindergarten. If Cooper was glib and slick usually, if he was impenetrable now, it wasn’t because he didn’t give a shit. It was because giving a shit was dangerous. Pain lay in giving a shit.
He was the flip side of her: she couldn’t help but give a shit about everything, pain lay everywhere she turned, everything always felt personal, and it had made her bitter and suspicious. He’d chosen the other path and let everything roll off him. He was holding the world at arm’s length as much as she was.
Not until right this moment had she understood it: he wasn’t a player, he wasn’t unserious. He was as deeply self-protecting as she was. He held people off with a grin and a joke, and she did it with barbed wire and a bad attitude, but they were, at their core, the same.
She walked the rest of the way to his porch and stepped up to stand right in front of him. He eyed her warily.
And then, standing on his porch, outdoors, in public, Siena grabbed the hem of her t-shirt and pulled it off.
“Jesus!” He grabbed her arm and tried to pull her into his house, but she resisted and twisted her arm from his grasp—but not aggressively, just enough to get free. His whole response felt like concern for her comfort, not disgust with what she’d exposed, but she didn’t want to hide right now.
“No. I need to do this right here.” It was dark and late, probably she’d never have had the nerve for this in the daylight, but it was a small victory nonetheless, even being mainly symbolic.
No. There was nothingsymbolicabout showing herself to a man for the very first time. That was a real milestone, a real battle waged and won.
Cooper had stopped trying to get her inside. Now he stood before her, his eyes on her face but moving downward.
“This is me,” she said, still trying to be brave. She meant to lay herself completely bare, and if she was wrong, if he didn’t want any part of her, or if she’d ruined the want he’d had, she’d survive it. Add it to the list of shit she’d overcome, consider it a lesson learned, and move on.
Eventually.
“I left the way I did because it was the first time since I looked like this that I’d been with anyone, and my head was full of assholes telling me you couldn’t possibly really want me like this. All I could think was ‘pity fuck,’ and I couldn’t deal. Because I ...”Don’t lose your nerve now, you stupid twat. “Because I like you, Coop. A lot. What happened between us wasamazing, for so many reasons. It wasimportant. I’m ... If you’d ... if it wasn’t—"
She couldn’t get any more words out because he’d grabbed her head in both his hands and kissed her, and it happened so fast his tongue was in her mouth before she could form a thought.
He hadn’t asked, but that didn’t matter. It was exactly what she’d needed—an expression of his want for her, a want too strong to wait for permission. Justexactlywhat she’d needed.
So she looped her arms around his neck and kissed him back with the same unleashed want.
When he walked backward, stepping awkwardly onto his threshold, pulling her with him into his house without breaking the seal of their mouths, she went with him.
When he kicked his door closed and took her down to his living room floor, she went with him.
When he settled his body between her legs, she wrapped her legs around his hips and went with him.
When he broke from their kiss and began nibbling, sucking, licking his way downward, she gagged all the voices in her head, focused on the feel of his mouth, and went with him.
God, he felt sogood. His wonderful, hot body melded to her, pressed down on her, wanted her. His mouth set every inch of her skin on fire, turned every pore, every hair, every nerve molten with want.
Oh, she’d missed this. No—she’d neverhadthis.
He reached her chest and stopped, rising onto his elbows. He was breathing so deeply, every inhale pressed her body to the floor.
“This is beautiful,” he murmured, shifting his arm so he could brush his fingers over the ink. Her skin there didn’t have the same sensation as the rest of her body; the nerves that had been cut in the surgery hadn’t regained all their feeling, so a lot of her chest had a sort of pins-and-needles numbness. Handy for getting a massive tattoo; less convenient for sexy times.
But Siena wasn’t thinking much about the physical sensation of Cooper’s fingers on her chest. Most of her was fighting off the need for safety that had driven her from his house only hours before. It was all she could do to lie quietly and not bolt or lash out or otherwise undo whatever healing between them she’d managed.
“The feathers—they’re supposed to be metal?” he asked, tracing the detail of a wing.
“Armor,” she answered, but her voice failed her; her lips moved without sound. She cleared her throat and tried again. “It’s armor.”
His eyes came up, and he finally let loose a megawatt grin. “Of course. Warrior angel. I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody as suited up for battle as you.”
The Siena of about oh, a day ago would very likely have taken offense to that and chosen violence. But this newly birthed version had a better idea. “You are.”
