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It was still hot from the oven and burning through my sweater. I was late (again), I forgot a hot pad and the minute I walked in, everyone smelled the sausage and garlic.
“Fucking hell, what isthat?” Carl asked, staring at the foil wrapped platter. He was a big guy, tall, with a thick, sexy mess of blond hair. He had a way of looking at you that made your face burn, because I was pretty certain he was undressing you with his eyes.
I set the dish down on a coffee table with kind of a clatter (because, as I said, it was burning me). I pulled the foil off. The garlic smell wafted out with such strength it was like a smack in the face. Everyone leaned back at the smell, then leaned forward and fell on the sausage cups like vultures.
I was holding my arm and biting my lip because the burn wouldn’t go away.
Eddie was sitting in a big armchair, holding a beer bottle by the neck with two fingers. He was the only one not sampling the sausage cups. He was watching me, his dark eyes taking my mind off the burning in my arm because he was making the breath in my lungs burn (and he was making other places burn beside).
Suddenly, he got up, walked across the room, grabbed my hand and pulled me into the kitchen. He stopped in the middle, gently twisted my wrist and pushed the sleeve of my sweater up, exposing an angry red welt on the inside of my arm.
“Dios mio,cariño,” he said, tugging me to the fridge.
“It’s nothing,” I replied.
He grabbed a can of Coke and held it against the burn. I had to admit that it felt good and it felt even better because Eddie was doing it.
“I can hold it,” I said, trying to take the can.
“I’ve got it,” he returned.
“No really—”
His eyes locked on mine. “I’ve got it,” he said in a way he never spoke to me before. In a way I’d never heard him speak to anyone before. Quiet, controlled but a little impatient.
Eddie was a good ole boy, up for a laugh, always grinning, teasing, flirting and messing around.
There was no messing around in his tone.
At all.
I stood tense and stiff, back to biting my lip while he held my wrist in one hand, the can against the burn with the other. I stared at my arm so I wouldn’t be staring at Eddie.
The burn wasn’t that bad and felt much better after the coolness of the can took out the sting. Without the pain, all I could think about was Eddie…and being alone in the kitchen with Eddie.
Mysteriously alone.
Where was everyone?
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
“Who do you want?” he asked.
I thought it was a weird question. But then again, my mind wasn’t working properly, so maybe it was a perfectly okay question. Who was I to judge?
“I don’t know.”
Anyone!I thought.
His fingers wrapped tighter around my wrist and pulled me forward. He was already close, but he brought me closer.
“You got a problem with me?” he asked when he was so close I could smell him.
He smelled nice all the time, but it wasn’t overpowering. You had to be close. During the last couple months of Eddie Torture, I’d been close enough to smell him a lot and he smelled good.Realgood.
I kind of slipped into a daze, what with his proximity and his smell and my mind shut down and he wasn’t just the only person in the room. He was the only person in the universe.
“Pardon?”
