One Moment Please (Wait With Me #3) - Amy Daws Page 0,66

into his linen cupboard and retrieves a first-aid kit. Without a word, he riffles inside it until he finds what he needs, the anger billowing off him more intense than the burn on my hand.

“Josh,” I say softly as he dabs a wet cotton ball to my hand, causing me to wince.

He looks up, his face flinching.

“What?” he snaps back through clenched teeth.

My chin wobbles. “Why are you so mad?”

“Because, Jones…this is a second-degree fucking burn. This could get infected, leave a scar. This isn’t something to take lightly.”

I nod and sniff, my eyes burning with tears from the pain of the injury and the pain of this night being a complete and total failure. “Why are you really mad?”

He looks me straight in the eyes, so intensely it’s all I can do not to look away. His voice is gruff when he replies, “That was way too much in there.”

“What was too much?” I ask.

“Too much stress. Too much emotion. Too much work.” His jaw muscle ticks with anger as his legs press against mine as they dangle off the counter. “You promised me you would take care of yourself.”

I huff a breath. “I am taking care of myself, Josh.”

“By running around a kitchen all afternoon? By welcoming our parents into our home at the same time to drop a bomb on them and force us to sit through their insane reactions? That’s not taking care of yourself, Jones. That’s the opposite of taking care of yourself.”

I open my mouth and stammer, “I…I thought…”

“What?”

I shrug. “I just thought this was the only way you’d tell your parents. I don’t want to be your dirty little secret.”

His entire face flinches at my words, and he shakes his head, grabbing my chin to pin me with a serious look. “You’re nothing even remotely close to a dirty little secret, Lynsey.”

He exhales through his nose and releases my face, returning his attention to my hand to smear some ointment on the wound that instantly takes the pain away. “It’s ridiculous you’d even think that. And it’s ridiculous you didn’t tell me about this elaborate plan tonight.”

“Well, I was going to, but you were late,” I reply softly, my lower lip jutting out with my depressed state.

He places a bandage over the top of the burn. “I wouldn’t have been late had I known.”

I release a laugh, staring sadly at my hand as I reply, “Oh, I’m sure you would have gladly just left your emergency patients behind to be here for my ridiculous antics.”

“I would have.” His eyes lift to mine and pin me with such fierceness that it takes my breath away. “I would have left them for you.”

I blink back at him, shock seeping into my marrow. It’s not just overprotectiveness or anger or frustration on his face. Behind his usual fierce shield of armor is total terror.

Terror for me.

It’s enough to bring tears to my eyes.

I pull my hand out of his grasp, desperate to erase that anxiety. I cup his face in my hands, needing him to hear me when I say, “Josh, I’m okay.”

He shakes his head as though he can’t hear the words, so I hold him tight and say them again. “Josh, I’m okay.”

He closes his eyes for a long moment, and when he opens them, I nearly gasp when their red rims glisten, and his entire body literally shakes in my hands. My heart lurches.

“Josh?” I choke out, concern and worry drenched in my voice as he reveals something inside him that I’ve never seen before.

Vulnerability.

The next thing I know, our lips crash together in a hard, fast, and unforgiving embrace, and it’s as if a thousand-pound truck barrels into a stone wall covered in pillows.

We grip each other’s faces like lifelines as our mouths connect on a level so much deeper than I’ve ever experienced. He’s kissing. I’m kissing. And our bodies are heaving with need as everything we’ve ever felt…every emotion, every thought, every physical sensation pours into this embrace and into each other.

I have no damn clue who started the kiss. This isn’t what we’re supposed to be. But right now, this is what we need to be. And now that it’s begun, I never want it to stop.

My legs spread, pulling him closer, touching, feeling, needing him all over me. He thrusts his groin into my center, and I squeeze my thighs around him, wanting more, and less. Less clothes, less limits, less rules. I want nothing between us. No