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Ignoring me, he slips his hand beneath the covers, finding the wound on my thigh and tearing the ointment packet open with his teeth. Squirting a pea-sized amount onto his fingertip, he joins the other hand, slathering the cool gel over the cut.
I suck in a breath through my teeth and watch his jaw clench tight.
Silently, he peels the plastic apart, pulling the Band-Aid free, then secures it over the cut, his thumb tracing the outline of the K.
Setting the first aid kit on the nightstand, Kal pushes to his feet and rounds the bed, pulling back the covers so he can clamber beneath them.
My breathing hitches, the intimacy of his proximity making me shiver, heart pounding like a siren in my chest.
He doesn’t say anything else, though, just picks up a leather-bound copy of Witter Bynner’s complete works and settles in.
I roll over again, propping my cheek on my pillow, studying him as he slides on a pair of black-framed glasses and begins to read, eyes scanning the page in a slow, hypnotic fashion.
Absorbing the clean slope of his sharp jaw and the tiny dimple in his cheek that clefts when he’s deep in concentration, I do my best to commit it all to memory, in case this has been a fluke, and I wake up tomorrow with him ignoring me all over again.
The dread swirling around in my stomach promises it is.
Nothing good can last.
For some reason, that’s the fear that keeps me from falling into an immediate slumber. Not the fact that someone is clearly coming after me, just like Kal said they would, or that my world back in Boston is probably crumbling to the ground.
But the notion that whatever stone was turned tonight, be it through trauma or the natural progression of surrender, is fleeting.
That I’m stuck in a loveless marriage, a prison, like I always feared I would be.
“How come I haven’t seen you naked?” I blurt, trying to erase the anxiety with conversation.
Kal’s eyebrows raise above his glasses, and he glances at me. “I can assure you, it’s just as big when you see the full picture.”
Heat flares in my cheeks as I think about the size of his dick, and I shift my thighs absently, scooting closer without fully meaning to. “No, I just… you’ve seen me naked. I’m naked now, in fact.”
“No complaints here.”
One of his hands comes down, sliding over my waist, and when I open my mouth to say more, he yanks me toward him, pulling me flush with his side.
My clit throbs where it touches him, already jonesing for another hit, but it’s clear Kal’s using the premise of sex to distract me, and so I give up asking, trying to find contentment in what I do know about him.
Right now, I know he’s willing to do anything it takes to protect me, and despite our situation and everything that complicates it, that feels like a major feat.
It takes the sting out of the knowledge that he has more blood on his hands than just my own.
I lay against him for a while, staring at the wall across from me, listening while he occasionally turns a page, the even rhythm of his breathing lulling me into slumber.
“You were spring, and I the edge of a cliff, and a shining waterfall rushed over me,” he recites softly, the line barely registering in my brain before sleep welcomes me once again.
