Page 28 of Fighting For You
She didn’t acknowledge the words, but I thought I heard something aboutrude, bossy beastas I left.
Twenty minutes later, I’d dug out her car and managedto move it closer to the house since she’d left it at the end of my driveway like she was going to breech the property covertly instead of knock on my front door, retrieved her phone, and returned to find her asleep again. But when I checked her temp, she’d jumped another half a degree.
“Get up, Pop. Time to cool you down.”
She didn’t respond, so I gently shook her shoulder. When that didn’t rouse her, my pulse notched up.
“Pop, wake up.” Still nothing. “Pop.” Again. Had she passed out instead of falling asleep? I patted her cheek. “Jess, wake up.” Worry grated at me. “Jess, you gotta wake up now.”
Damn, she was so hot—it felt like there might literally be fire under her skin. Her eyes opened but she looked completely out of it. I couldn’t wait any more.
“I’m going to pick you up and we’re going to the bathroom, okay? Don’t kill me.” She could, too, if she were in her right mind.
With one arm behind her shoulders and one under her knees, I lifted her nearly dead weight. She gasped and tensed as the movement set in.
“What—what are you doing?”
“You’re not cooling down. I’m taking you to the bathroom.”
I sat on the side of the large tub and settled her on my lap while holding her with one arm across her chest as I turned on the water, waiting until it felt right. Standing, I brought her with me gently, settling her feet next to the tub.
“Step in for me,” I said, worried that if I set her in there myself, she might slip.
She gave me a look I couldn’t decipher, then lifted one leg over the side while standing on the other. I held her armas she stepped in on the other side, then slowly lowered into the barely warm water.
Everything about this was too intimate, too wrong for me to be doing with her, and yet some animal part of me was greedy to be the one who helped her. She needed help and for once,for once, it was me.
“This is awful. And now my underwear is wet.”
She drew her knees up and hugged them, resting her head on her arms, and shut her eyes. I needed to pour some water over her shoulders and get her neck and chest and underarms wet with the cool water, but then she’d be completely soaked.
“I need to get your back wet. We could wash your hair if it’d feel good—might help.”
My voice sounded weird but maybe that was due to how much I’d spoken in the last few hours. Perhaps it sounded odd because all of this was a waking dream. Touching her fevered skin, offering to wash her hair… this was the work of a lover and I…
It was the pain in my chest every time I brushed her hair from her face to check her temperature or refilled her water. It was the pressure in my head and the swoop in my stomach when she looked at me with pleading and apology, or with surrender, instead of loathing.
She stared past me now in what looked like a trance, then sat up and reached backwards without warning. I averted my eyes just in time and heard the rasp of cotton on the ground next to me.
Something… happened. Inside me. On an elemental level. And I wasn’t proud of it, but my pulse hammered in my throat at the realization she’d just tossed her bra to the floor and was now sitting all but naked inmy tub.
In almost any other scenario, this would be the start or end or at least part of any given fantasy. But all of those versions of the story came with a different history between us and certainly a different present reality. They didn’t feature the woman in question with glazed eyes and a high fever and only here because she couldn’t leave.
It wasn’t just the situation, though, or her state of undress. It was this… tenderness wending through me. I didn’t recognize it much less know what to do with it, so I just let it be.
“I don’t think I can do my hair,” she said, drawing my attention back to her.
The notches of her spine stood out as she rested her head down on her arms encircling her knees again. I could see the full, beautiful expanse of her back and sides, but everything truly private was hidden. Maybe it made me a total idiot, but I was relieved. I didn’t want to see anything she didn’t want to show me, and she could hardly want that right now.
She’ll never want it, sucker.Damn these thoughts that’d invaded when they’d been kept under lock and key for so long.
“Be right back,” I mumbled, running to get a cup to help rinse her hair. When I came back, Bones was leaning over the tub sniffing at her and she had a little smile on her face.
Lightning struck, a bolt straight from my brain to my heart. The pull at the corners of her perfect lips and the way she craned her neck to get closer to my mutant cat’s furry little face…Of course she’s a cat person.
“Tilt your chin up,” I said, filling the cup with the running water.
Her instant compliance was another strike, a weird thrill that she trusted me to do as I asked, along with themore vivid knowledge that in any other circumstance, she wouldn’t. Though she’d trusted me to some degree at Snowberry—she knew I’d do my part, I wouldn’t break cover, and she was safe with me like I was with her—at least on a purely professional level. That was something.
