Page 22 of Inflame Me
My mouth gapes open as Rhys takes the bottle of liquor and pours it directly on the cut. Again, he acts as if he poured water on it, and it doesn’t burn in the slightest. He doesn’t move, simply pulls the bottle back up to his lips and drinks.
“Clean,” he comments.
I close my mouth, gathering my thoughts because, at the moment, they are all over the place: confusion of his anger, admiration for his strength, lust for his body, and so many more that I can’t put my finger on.
“Stiches?” He sets his bottle down and throws me a small bottle of liquid stiches.
“All righty then,” I mummer, opening the bottle. I’ve used these before; there isn’t anything to them.
I reach over to a box of Kleenexes, pull some out, and dab his wounds, getting the liquid off. I then begin to place the clear liquid on the wound.
“Why did you do this to yourself?” I ask, pulling the skin together to seal the cut and then holding it taut.
Rhys takes another drink. If I had drunk as much as him, I would be drunk as hell right now. A cold shiver goes down my spine from remembering the last time that I was in the presence of a drunk, and my hands still.
“What?” he asks, startling me from my thoughts.
“Nothing,” I answer quickly, needing to get this over with then get the hell out of here and to my mother. Rhys still scares me, and having him drunk, my gut tells me, is not a good situation.
Rhys sets the bottle down as I hold his cut together, letting the stitches do their job. His other hand comes to my chin as he lifts my head, and my eyes fly to his.
“You don’t lie to me, Sprite. Ever.” The seriousness in his tone and eyes floors me. I feel compelled to listen to him, and I have no idea why.
I give a soft nod. I also can’t help the pang that rushes through me at the name sprite, another something confusing.
“What were you thinking about?” he asks.
When I pull my bottom lip into my mouth and try to think of how to put this, his thumb comes to my lip, pulling it away from my teeth. I open my lips, my tongue darting out to touch the top of his finger automatically. He tastes of man and salt.
Rhys growls low and deep as my pulse begins thumping rapidly in my veins. What is going on here? Who am I kidding? I know exactly what is going on. My body is responding to this scary as hell man who could be old enough to be my father.
“You’re drinking a lot,” I finally answer. “Last time I was with someone drunk, it didn’t end so well.”
“I’m nowhere near drunk,” he tells me, and I can’t stop the uncertainty, so I divert.
“How long have you known Dagger?”
He quirks his brow as I work. “Nice change.” He catches me. “I’ve known him about twenty years.”
“And that makes you how old?” I’m digging. I admit it. I want to know more about this man. He intrigues me like no other. I sort of get the biker hard from the outside, but is it on the inside, too? Just from our brief conversations, I’ve only learned he has no family, sort of like me. Somehow, I feel that connects us.
“Forty-four.”
I think for long moments, trying to decide how I feel about it. On one hand, society would have a field day with it, but I’m not society. I can’t worry about what others will think, but the one I am concerned about is my mother. Listen to me, already thinking ahead when I have no idea what’s even in front of me.
“What?” he asks.
“You’re twenty-one years older than me,” I tell him, something he already knows. “How old is Dagger?”
“Fifty-one.” My eyes widen as I do the math in my head. My mother is forty-one, so that makes my father ten years older than her. Wow. I let that sink in for a moment. When my mother said she was young when she hooked up with my father, I didn’t realize he was that much older.
I snap out of my thoughts, finish up his hand, and then sit back on my heels, looking up at him.
“You gonna talk or let me guess what’s going on in the pretty head of yours?”
He said pretty. I bite my lip. “Just doing the math on ages.”
“Does the age thing bother you?”
