Page 26 of Don't Bite the Boy Next Door
“You’re bleeding,” he frowns, studying my face.
I shake my head. “No, your face is bleeding, I must have got some of your blood on me.”
He shakes his head as I put my damaged hands to my face and gingerly feel it’s stickiness, realising I had smeared my own blood from my hands all over my cheeks when I slapped myself and pushed my hair away, before putting my lips to his.
‘I must look like a bloody mess. But wait, I’m breathing his scent now, and I don’t want to bite him. Why?’
“Your hands,” he starts.
“Oh, I just hurt them a little in the well, they’ll be OK – you are the one we need to worry about.”
He stares at my hands and shakes his head as I smile at him. He doesn’t realise I’m literally doing cartwheels in my mind. He no longer smells irresistible to me.
‘How is this possible?’
“You died,” I blurt.
“What?”
“You died. I resuscitated you.”
He grimaces. “That figures. Why are you here?”
I frown. I can hardly say I had a bad feeling, that I thought I heard Toto from such a vast distance. I can’t say that I worried about him, thought about him all the time, needed to check on him, as I did most days.
‘That I’m a stalker girl.’
“I wanted to borrow a tool,” I shrug. “Then I heard a shout, probably from when you fell in initially, and then Toto barking and barking. She was looking down the well, and her barks were echoing. When I approached, she whined and kept looking down. I don’t think I would have found you if she hadn’t warned me.”
“How did you get me out?” he frowns.
“With great difficulty,” I smile now, shaking my head, “but you’re here, and that’s the main thing.”
I lean back on my haunches as he sits up and pats Toto absentmindedly.
“Thank you,” he murmurs, not looking up at me.
“She definitely deserves a treat,” I agree.
“Yes, she does,” he smiles up at me, “but I was talking to you.”
I shrug. “Just being neighbourly.”
‘I wonder if I could kiss you now without biting you. God, I so want to kiss you. But given I look like a blood-stained swamp creature at the moment, I won’t try.’
“Do you remember what happened?” I ask gently.
“I was trying to fix the bucket winch,” he says, his face turning serious, “and I realised the well might need a clean, as you suggested the other night. After all this time being uncovered anything could have fallen down there, so I thought I’d take a look. I rigged up the pulley and lowered myself down, but I was about half-way when the rope broke.”
“This rope?” I hold up the discarded red abseiling rope that I’d found partially wrapped around him as he floated.
“Yeah, I have no idea how it could have broken though, it’s SAS-strength helicopter rope, and I only bought it a month ago.”
I study the material before me, frowning, it looked new.
‘Strange.’
Realising I am staring maniacally at rope, I turn my attention back to the man before me.
