off. She removed the bandage on his shoulder, cleaned the wound, rebandaged it. “It looks okay,” she said. “No red streaks or anything.”
He’d known it was okay, because the wound was sore, but not throbbing. What was better than okay was the way Sela fussed over him. He was naturally a loner and generally he’d taken care of himself, yet having her take care of him was a surprisingly touching novelty. He frowned, thinking about it. As he pulled on his shirt he studied her—no makeup, hair simply brushed and pulled back, wearing jeans and thick socks and a sweatshirt. He’d never wanted a woman more, never felt more satisfied by the having of her. The first time had been fast and hard, the times after that less urgent so he could take his time and enjoy the process, pay attention to what she liked, savor the slow push and pull. After five times he didn’t think he could come again if his life depended on it—and he still wanted to be on top of her, inside her.
Everything had changed. Because of her, he wasn’t alone, didn’t want to be alone. And he wasn’t even panicking over it. Damn.
She noticed him watching her; he could see her face turning pink. “What?” she asked, unconsciously tugging at the hem of her sweatshirt as if he hadn’t spent all night naked with her and had already seen every single inch.
He wasn’t a poet. He’d never in his life said anything remotely graceful. The closest he could come now was a somber, “You’re sweet.”
“I—what?” Now she pushed at her hair, turned even pinker.
“Sweet. You’re a sweet person. You took your generator to your aunt’s house. You don’t eat much so they’ll have more. You put bandages on me.” Yeah, that was poetic. Uncomfortably he shifted his weight. “I don’t know sweet, don’t know what to do other than eat—” He paused, and a slow, purely male smile curved his mouth. “Okay, maybe I do know what to do.”
Now the pink in her face turned to red and she clapped her hands to her cheeks, which made him think maybe her dickhead of an ex-husband had never done that for her, to her, with her. If he hadn’t, tough shit for him, because Ben didn’t intend to make that mistake.
He went to her and put his hands on her waist, pulled her close. Immediately she nestled against him as if there was no place on earth where she wanted to be more than right there, her head resting on his shoulder, her arms around his neck. Perfect. Maybe they couldn’t spend all day together here, maybe there were things that needed doing, but right now there was nothing that couldn’t be put off for a couple of hours.
Right now, they needed only this.
“Look, Ted. It snowed during the night.” Meredith was in the kitchen putting together breakfast—it wasn’t eggs and waffles, but so far they were still doing okay on food. Ted kept an eye on their food supplies. He wasn’t a hunter, so he couldn’t provide for Meredith that way. He’d thought about trying his hand at fishing, but he didn’t know a lot about that, either. One of the reasons he’d joined the community patrol was because the members got a portion of food to pay them for their time. She’d stopped her food preparations, opened the curtains, and was looking out the kitchen window.
He looked out the living room window, then stepped out on the porch to get a better look. It was cold, but nothing like winter could be in Ohio. There looked to be two or three inches on the ground here, less down in the valley. He and Meredith had come here fairly often during the winters and overall found them mild—but that was when they’d had electricity, a warm cabin, and could go to Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, or Gatlinburg to any of the thousand and one restaurants that served the tourist trade, when they could stop at any of the grocery stores, when they could fill their gas tank and go home if they wanted. This winter would be a different experience.
He’d brooded until he was tired of brooding, but he couldn’t put yesterday out of his mind. He was torn in opposite directions—no, not torn, because he knew what he had to do. That wasn’t up in the air. What bothered him as much as Lawrence and his gang of thugs was how the valley people