“What are you doing?” she asked. Not afraid. Despite his size, he didn’t seem violent. Or angry. Just unsettled.
“No idea.” He closed his eyes. “Don’t know what I’m doing about anything anymore.”
“You know, I feel like that way sometimes too. I think everyone does. They just don’t admit it.” When he released her hand, she reached up and pressed on his lats, where his shoulders met his neck. “You’re carrying so much tension in your body.”
“I get headaches.” He stared at the ceiling.
“Often?”
“I guess...” His eyes darkened. “For a long time. Since I was a little kid.” His gaze roamed the walls behind her as she began to knead the rigid muscles. It was like trying to soften frozen blocks of dough. “You have a lot of photographs.”
She smiled at the frames. There was her half-brother, Atticus, standing between her stepmom, Annie, and her husband, Sawyer, the mountains of the Eastern Sierras rising behind them. And Breezy their freshman year of college. Margot had come to Colorado lonely, adrift and heartsick. She hadn’t told anyone in her family about the incessant bullying, the slut-shaming. Her mom would have blamed her. Her dad was too busy trying to get it on with women that were barely older than her. Annie could have helped, but at the time she’d been reeling from Margot’s dad’s infidelity and Margot hadn’t wanted to drop that on her lap.
There were other pictures. A photo of her doing tree pose in the Denver Botanical Gardens. Another of the beach in Punta Mita, Mexico last summer. That place had been heaven on earth. Warm clear water. Golden beaches. Sunsets that threatened to break a heart with all the beauty.
“You like photography?” Maybe some small talk would loosen him up. His neck might as well be forged from steel.
“Of course, don’t you?”
“Don’t have many happy memories to keep around.”
The bitterness in his voice spoke volumes.
“Patrick.”
Using his real name had the intended effect.
His penetrating gaze traced her face, light and soft, almost a physical touch. “Why’d you call me that?”
“It’s your name, isn’t it?” She spoke the words carefully, the slower cadence the only way to ward off a tremble. The way he stared... the intensity was unbearable. A painful pleasure.
How would he look when inside a woman?
There was a hiss and crackle in her clit, a delicious burn as if a flame had burst to life.
“Yes.” He seemed to shudder. “But no one has called me that since...” His Adam’s apple—covered by a thick scruff—bobbed. “For a long time.”
“Since you were that little kid with the headaches?” Her own next breath was shallow, barely drawing oxygen into her lungs.
The vein in his neck pounded. God help her, she wanted to lick it, to taste the faint flavor of his sweat on her tongue.
She swayed a little, drunk with this unexpected desire, the cocktail of hormones.
Time to slow her roll. This was nothing. Just a normal, healthy physiological response.
There was no point to make a big deal over her body’s reaction, or read anything into the mechanics of basic biology. Right now she was simply reacting to the proximity of a big, brawny male. It had been a while since she’d gotten any action. This meant nothing.
She swallowed. Hard. “Our pasts can wield a hell of a lot of influence over our present. Our bodies are remarkably good at holding on to old trauma.”
“I’m fine.”
His sharp tone didn’t win any convincing awards.
“Patrick.” Her tongue slid over the roof of her mouth as she pronounced thet. “Take off your shirt.”
Chapter Six
Patch didn’t move. He couldn’t. A hot jolt had zapped him in place.
