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Too quickly.
“Are you including what you did to yourself the last time I hurt you?” I asked.
Theo’s mask fell away. He shook his head in confusion.
“The morning after I moved you back to your bed and took out the IV because the infection had passed.”
I saw the moment Theo remembered what I was talking about because his eyes widened just a bit. I didn’t give him time to try and drop his mask back into place.
“I told you that you’d end up with a scar, but it wouldn’t be that bad, and then I waited to see what you’d say. That was the moment, right? The moment I lost the real you,” I softly asked.
Theo dropped his eyes, but I immediately leaned forward and used my fingers to lift his chin so that he was forced to look at me. “I hated that,” I admitted, my voice cracking a little despite my effort to stay in control. “That’s why I made up the excuse that I needed to go to my room to get my bag.”
“You knew you left it in my room?” Theo asked in surprise.
Since I wasn’t ready to explain to him why I’d had to escape his presence so quickly, I continued with, “I stayed in the bathroom. I heard you, Theo. I heard you hitting yourself.”
I was prepared when Theo tried to scramble off the window seat. I used my greater strength to my advantage and dragged him forward. He gasped when one of my hands closed over his ass and the other gripped his upper arm. I had him straddling me before he even realized it. His knees were on each side of my hips and he had his hands pressed against my chest. I’d raised my legs enough that they would prevent him from getting hurt if he tried to pull backwards. Both my hands settled on his hips but I kept my hold gentle so he could escape if he wanted to.
The position made it so his face was even with mine and if he lowered himself even a little, he’d feel my stiff cock pressing against him.
Since I didn’t want to give Theo too much time to think about what was happening, I kept talking. “I heard you doing that to yourself, and I knew it was because of me. I couldn’t figure out why at first, but knowing I did something that hurt you…”
I shook my head because I couldn’t finish the sentence. I was glad when Theo relaxed just a bit. “Lincoln—” he began but when I shook my head again, he fell silent.
“It took me a while, but I finally figured it out. When I mentioned you having a scar and then looked at you, you thought I was analyzing your response because that’s what they all did, right? All those ER doctors and nurses, the psychiatrists they brought in for consults—all they cared about was determining if you were proud of the scars, ashamed of them, whatever. Anything that would give them the information they needed so they could tick off the box that said you weren’t a suicide risk. Right? No one really cared what the truth behind every cut, every drop of blood was.”
Theo’s nod was so subtle that I would have missed it if I’d blinked. “I wasn’t analyzing you, Theo. I might have had my nursing cap on, but believe me, the thoughts I was having about you were anything but medical in nature.”
As he settled himself lower so that our groins were just inches apart, I couldn’t help but release his hips and run my hands up and down his slim thighs. He was dressed in street clothes so I couldn’t feel skin, but it didn’t matter. I was burning up enough for the both of us.
Theo’s hands skimmed my chest before drifting to my upper arms and gently closing around them. “Wha… what were you thinking?” he asked hesitantly.
“I was thinking about how fucking strong you are. I was thinking about all that pain you had to have endured, that you’re still enduring.”
Theo shook his head and made a move to disentangle our bodies. I grabbed his face with my hands to hold him in place. “I was thinking that if I ever got the chance, I’d kiss every single one of those scars because they kept you alive. They brought you here.” I almost added the words “to me” but managed to silence them because I couldn’t expose that much of myself to him. He already knew I was physically attracted to him and if he hadn’t, he knew it now from the mere fact that I’d mentioned kissing his scars.
I could see Theo’s mind working through everything that had happened that morning. One of his hands came up to cover mine. I let my free hand drop back down to his thigh even though I was torturing my hungry cock in the process.
“So you felt it…them?” Theo asked. I wasn’t sure what he was asking but he continued on his own. “Those little zaps under your skin? The tingling, how hard it was to breathe?” The shyness behind his questions broke my heart but his words made my already pounding heart feel like it was going to punch out of my chest.
I used the hand I’d been caressing Theo’s thigh with and lifted it to close around the wrist of his free hand. When I began to lower his hand towards our laps, he immediately pulled back. I knew why he’d done it. He’d thought I was going to prove my attraction to him by having him feel my cock.
I pinned him with my eyes and whispered, “Trust me, sweetheart.”
I could see the indecision in his gaze and it made me want to find every man and woman who’d punished him for just being who he was. I felt like I could breathe again when Theo stopped trying to resist my hold on his wrist. I never took my eyes off him as I lowered our joined hands to the hem of my shirt. I clumsily managed to slide our hands under the hem without releasing them.
Theo’s hand opened so his palm was flat against my abdomen. The little whimper that escaped his lips nearly had me coming on the spot. I still had a hold of his wrist, so I slowly guided his hand upwards until his palm was resting in the middle of my chest. I could tell that he could already feel the faint pulses beneath my skin but the second I shifted his hand a little to the left, he let out a sharp breath as he felt how hard my heart was pounding. His skin felt cold against my hot skin. It was a stark reminder of why I’d started this whole thing.
But fuck if his hand didn’t feel good, especially when he began running it over my pecs and collarbone.
Like he was trying to memorize what he could only touch, not see. I dropped my head back against the wall in an effort to keep from reaching behind me to pull my T-shirt off so Theo could have free roam. I closed my eyes and let myself have a few seconds of Theo’s achingly sweet touch.
Unfortunately, having two hands freely exploring my upper body made it that much harder to remember why I couldn’t just lift Theo up and carry him to his bed. I could tell by the way he was breathing that he’d let me do it. I actually glanced at the bed to see if I’d have to navigate any furniture but when my eyes fell on the hair tie sitting next to Theo’s packed bag, reality slammed into me like a freight train.
It took every bit of mental strength to close my hands over Theo’s roving ones. I liked that his skin felt warmer now, but it didn’t solve anything.
“What?” Theo asked in surprise. “Did I hurt you?” His eyes immediately searched out the small bullet hole scar right below my collarbone. He’d been rubbing a finger across it right before I’d forced his hands to stop moving.
