Page 47 of Never Fall for an Angel

Brushing it off, I step forward and help her slip her leggings off until they land in a puddle on the floor.

I move to grab her ankle, and she tugs back out of my grasp, so I fix her with a look and reach for it again. It’s swollen with a slight sprain, but she’ll recover quickly.

I move onto the cut on her hip, where a dark purple bruise is forming. There was blood, but it’s clotted over, and I doubt it’ll bleed again. Reaching behind her, I open the medicine cabinet on the wall, finding a spider the size of my head instead of peroxide and a bandage, so I quickly shut it before Mila can see.

The last fucking thing I need right now is a spider meltdown.

Ignoring my dick pulsing in my jeans, I bend down between her legs to look in the cabinet below. Mila tries to pull back outof the way, her cheeks crimson, while I do my best not to stare at the thin piece of fabric shielding her from me.

If this is going to work, I need her salivating for me. Fucking aching with as much desire for me as I have for her. Until then, I have a feeling me and my fucking hand are going to become very well acquainted.

I find a first aid kit under the sink and grab it, avoiding what appears to be a dead mouse from the eighteenth century and straighten. I open up the kit and grab the peroxide. Mila winces when I pour it over the gash on her thigh, her hand instantly gripping mine.

We both pause, looking down at where her nails are digging into my skin. My cock strains against my jeans, begging me to step between her legs.

“It stings,” she breathes, drawing her bottom lip between her teeth. In another life, I’d pull it free with my own and slip my tongue along hers to take her mind off what I’m doing to the cut along her leg.

“Stop hurting yourself,” I murmur, cleaning the cut of any mud or debris she could have gotten in it when she fell.

“Are you . . . going to hurt me?” she asks, so quiet, I can barely hear her.

The pad of my thumb strokes over the smooth, bare flesh of her thigh, my other coming up to trace the rough edges of one of the words etched into her stomach.

“I’ve traveled three thousand miles to find you,” I murmur, leaning in until my lips brush over her ear. She shivers, her body both straining away from me, but her nails dig deeper into my flesh to hold me there, hovering between her legs. “I’m going to fucking hurt you . . . but I’ll make you beg for it.”

I rip myself away from her before I can do something stupid. Like drop to my knees and show her exactly what I’ve been thinking about the last six months.

“Come here.”

“I can do it.”

She hops down from the sink, only to nearly collapse when her sprained ankle hits the floor.

Instinctively, I snatch her around the waist and turn her back to me. I grit my teeth when I see the heavy scar that spans the length of her spine.

My fucking girl . . .

“Let me, Mila,” I murmur when she tries to prevent me from unhooking her bra. I keep my eyes down because I know she doesn’t want to be seen by me right now and drop the bra to the pile on the floor before hooking my fingers in the material of her gray thong and dragging it down her legs.

There will be plenty of time to touch her later. When she wants it. For now, I’m content just having her in my space, even if she is being a little fucking headache.

When I’m done, I lift her into the tub, drop to my haunches beside her, and lather a washcloth with soap.

She shivers while I wash her, and neither of us mentions the tears that silently slip down her cheeks while I do.

And for the first time in nearly a year, things don’t feel so fucking bleak.

“This place is disgusting,” Mila grumbles, emerging from the bathroom as I’m setting out two bowls on the table.

I pause at the sight of her, the blood roaring in my veins when I see her in my sweats and baggy T-shirt. Wet hair cascadingdown her back in golden ringlets. Her cheeks are rosy from the warm water, and her soft gray eyes shining in the dim lighting overhead.

Fucking divine.

“As opposed to the five-star resorts you were hiding out in?”

“I wasnothiding out.”

“So, this whole fake identity, starving yourself act was for fun?”

---