Page 23 of The Sin

He held on, his grip gentle but firm. “I just want to take a look.”

Horror set in. My feet were rancid. Imagine blue cheese left out in the sun in a bucket of stale sweat. For a month. That stink was my feet.

I cringed, my cheeks flaming until he returned old stinky to me. “It’s a little red, but not bleeding. I have bandages in the first aid kit, but it may be better to let it toughen before the walk back.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

He winged a brow at me.

I pursed my lips and mentally rolled my eyes—at myself. “Thank you,” I said with simple sincerity.

“You’re welcome.” He rose to his full height. “If you’d like to wash—”

“I’d die for a bath,” I rushed in. I totally would. A long, hot soak in a tub would go a long way to soothing my sore muscles and the humiliation of my stinky feet.

“There’s only a shower stall,” he said. “The water in the tank may still be lukewarm, if you’re lucky. The electrics doesn’t come on until the morning. I was going to suggest a hand wash.”

I wasn’t a spoiled brat. I wouldn’t groan about a hot tub or a lukewarm shower.

“I’ll take my chances.” I smiled hard and pushed up from the chair, expecting him to step back.

He didn’t.

We were standing within a breath of each other. My hand went out automatically, my palm pressed to his chest.

I meant to push him back.

That was the intention.

But suddenly I was hyperaware of his male scent, of the lean muscle and raw power that lay beneath his black overcoat, of a heartbeat I couldn’t feel but nevertheless pulsed beneath my palm.

Roman cupped my chin in the palm of his hand, his gaze drinking me in. “I did have this apartment to escape to, but I never did. I haven’t spent a night outside Capra’s walls since I married you.”

“Why didn’t you?” God knows, there’d been plenty of times when I would have run from the tension in our house.

“Because I offered for you,” he said. “You’re my wife.”

“You stayed out of duty.”

Disappointment coursed through me, threatened to crush the breath in my lungs. What had I expected? “You feel responsible for me. That’s the reason you’d do anything, even this, bringing me to The Smoke, to protect me from my own curiosity. You’re worried I do something rash and land myself in hot water.”

“Iamresponsible for you.”

My voice hitched. “And that’s the only reason?”

His brow arrowed, the look in his eyes intensifying. “Is that not enough?”

Not nearly. “Nothing personal, right? You would have done the same for anyone. Sorry, I mean, anywife.”

I felt so stupid, I wanted to slap myself. I wasn’t special. I wasn’t anything more than one of his many responsibilities.

My hand dropped from his chest. I swallowed down the dry grit in my throat. If possible, I felt even more stupid at this silly overreaction, for feeling like I’d lost something when it had never been mine.

“Georga.”

I shook my chin free from his palm, and he let me, but that hand immediately clamped down on my shoulder.

“I would do everything within my power to protect my wife, any wife—any woman, child or man, for that matter, placed in my care.” The patience in his voice stretched to infinity and beyond. “That is who I am.”

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