Walker (In the Company of Snipers #21) - Irish Winters Page 0,84
the tiled walls surrounding it fitted with handicap rails. One of those sturdy plastic shower chairs for people prone to fall, sat to the side.
Persia ushered Walker onto that chair, where he sat with a thump. She had to look away. This guy might not know it, but his body was definitely on alert. Her fingers trembled as she knelt by the tub and cranked the water tap to lukewarm, remembering how she and he couldn’t seem to get enough of each other back in Florida. How heavenly it had been being inside his arms, with him inside of her.
Once again, she had to force herself back to her primary mission. Which was not about them. Certainly not them together again. She fluttered her fingers under the faucet. Cold water would lower his temp quicker, but the shock of it might be too much for him in his current condition.
When at last the two faucets doled out an acceptable mix of hot and cold, she turned back to Hotrod. “Up you go,” she said, her voice as raspy as if she were the sick one. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Come on. We can do this.”
He obeyed, lifting off the chair. Gingerly, he raised one muscled leg over the tub edge, then the other until he was ready to sit.
“Oh, my, stop!” She couldn’t take in all she was seeing. Dark, ugly bruises blackened his lower back. “You’re hurt. Hurry. Sit back down. Please. Let me—”
What? Reverse time? Make those ugly marks disappear? Go back to the ICC and exact vengeance?
“’S okay, princess,” he told her quietly. “Sorry you had to see that. Must be pretty bad, huh?”
She could’ve cried. “It’s bad enough. Aren’t you in pain?”
“Yeah, everything kinda aches all over.”
“Sit down, Hotrod. Please.”
He turned back around again, and for one brief moment, he stood there with both hands flattened on the tile behind him, looking down at her on her knees. She looked up the entire length of that glorious all-male physique. His thighs. All those muscles. Velvet over steel. All wrapped in a battered shell that needed someone to care for him, to believe in him. But all that masculinity was so, so beautiful, growing longer and harder to resist by the minute. He had to get into that tub and sit down before she made a drooling fool of herself.
Persia lifted to her feet, drawn like a magnet to a man she had no business wanting as badly as she did this guy. “Sit down,” she whispered. “Please. If you fall, you’ll hit your head on the edge of this tub. You could kill yourself.” And what would I do then?
She thought he’d offer some crack about the tub not being the only thing that was hard. Instead, he murmured, “Stay.”
“Yes,” blurted out of her mouth. “Oh, yes, sugar, I’m not going anywhere. See this chair?” she gestured to the handicapped seat. “I’ll stay right here until you sit down. While you relax in the tub, I’ll just be in the kitchen making lunch.” Meanwhile, she seemed to be sweating. And drooling.
“’Kay,” he breathed, as at last, he bent his knees and lowered his magnificent ass into the rising water. “Brrr. It’s cold,” he complained when his butt hit the chill.
“And I’m going to make it colder. Here,” she said as she handed him the tiny plastic clamshell pillow from the counter to lean his head and neck against. Once he was prone, she increased the cold water pouring into the tub and turned down the hot.
“J-join me,” he murmured, his head resting to the side on that pillow, his poor eyes already closed, and goosebumps popping up on his arms.
“Nope. Sorry. I—”
WHOOSH! He pulled her into the tub.
“Hotrod!” That was the last word she got out. He had her trapped at his side, one big manly hand under her now wet head, the other cupping her jaw, while he kissed the hell out of her. Germs and all, sick and exhausted and all—
He kissed her as if his life depended on it. Passionately and thoroughly. Desperately. His tongue turned into a wave of need and hunger sweeping over her lips, painting inside her mouth and behind her teeth with fire.
Yup, she was thoroughly contaminated now. But what a way to go…
Persia melted against him, aroused and aflame with mixed feelings for this brave, battered man. “You’re sick and you’re injured,” she murmured around his prehensile lips. “This has to stop.”