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“Was?”
She was crying before, but her eyes are now taking on a kind of sadness that makes her guilty tears seem like laughter. “She died last year.”
Her loss makes my chest ache as if it were my own. “I’m so sorry.”
She sniffs and literally shakes off the heaviness that gripped her. “You said that a few times already. Got any non-apologetic words in your vocabulary?”
“I’m Quintus.” I hold my hand up, for her to shake.
She trades hands, to keep pressure on my headwound, and shakes mine, smiling. “Kira.”
Her smile is genuine and sweet and utterly bewitching. It wins my heart in an instant, and somehow, I know that no other smile will come close in comparison.
“That’s the most beautiful name I’ve ever heard,” I whisper as I gaze up at her.
She narrows her eyes, studying my face with great intensity. “You’re serious?” The pressure lifts from my head, and she peeks under the wadding and winces. “I may have done more damage than I thought.”
I laugh again, even though my head is kind of killing me. “I’ll be fine. Jack’s always calling me bull-headed and thick-skulled, but for some reason he doesn’t like my pointing out that I inherited those things from him.”
“Well, I hope he’s right about your skull,” she mutters, rearranging her position to get a closer inspection of my wound. “My dad wants to do business with him, and it probably won’t go down too well if I’ve maimed his son. How dirty was that axe, do you think?”
“It was stuck in the dirt before it was stuck in my head, so…”
She frowns hard enough to make me gulp. “It wasn’tstuckin your head. Don’t be so dramatic. It was the blunt end of the axe head that hit you.”
She continues her assessment and winces again. “I don’t think you’ll need stitches. We could probably tape it closed, if you’ve got a first aid kit or even a few Band-Aids? We won’t need to go to the hospital, unless you want to see a plastic surgeon or whatever.”
After a quick glance around the large grounds and at the grand mansion in the distance, she sighs. “You might have one on retainer or something.” She looks me over. “Not that you’d need them.”
She meets my gaze for the briefest moment before assessing the damage again. Her cheeks grow pinker with every passing second, and I don’t think she realizes she’s been stroking my cheek while she studies my scalp, but it’s the tenderest sensation I’ve felt for so long.
All I can do is lean in and soak up her touch.
“It’s probably going to leave a jagged scar,” she concludes after a while. “Sorry.”
“If you were sorry, you’d kiss it better,” I say with a grin.
Kira scrunches up her face. “Gross. It’s literally still bleeding. I’m not that sorry.”
I laugh again, but she tells me off, saying I moved too much and escalated the bloodshed. She pins her dress back to the wound and presses hard, looking into my eyes, like she’s searching my soul.
I stare back… until she covers my eyes one at a time, and I realize she’s doing some sort of observational test on my pupils.
My cheeks warm, and I lower my gaze. Which is when I notice just how high her dress has been pulled up.
I stare at her panties after that.
White with pale-blue flowers, less than a foot from my face, and just sheer enough to allude to the dark hair on her mound beneath. They’re the first girl’s underwear I’ve witnessed being worn in real life, and despite what I’ve viewed online or in catalogs, they may be the sexiest panties I have ever seen.
Fuck satin and lace. I’m clearly a sucker for wholesome, simple cotton.
I can’t look away.
She catches me staring. Slaps me. Apologizes for making me bleed more.
She curses me for being atoplessaxe-wielding maniac. I should be wearing a shirt she could use to stop the bleeding, instead of her dress. And she makes me walk in a weird, bent-over crouch all the way back to the house, so she can keep the pressure on the wound without me, looking up her dress.
Apparently, I’mindecent, but she flashes her undies at me at least six more times, despite my trying to do the right thing and not look. By the time I’ve directed her to the nearest first-aid kit, I’m half-convinced she’s doing it on purpose, and it’s fucking with my head that she can be bossy, sweet, and dirty all at once.
