and slowly dipped his chin.
Twin red splotches had soaked through his white T-shirt.
“We need to look at it. Cat scratches can get infected.”
“It’s not that bad.”
She nodded toward the hallway. “Go in the bathroom. I’ll be right there. We need to clean it.”
“Lexa—”
She pointed toward the door with a look that ended the argument. He trudged back to the bathroom, turned on the light, and shut the door halfway. Then he grabbed the collar of his shirt at the nape of his neck and pulled it over his head. Two inch-long cuts between his pecs oozed blood beneath the dark mat of hair.
He heard Alexis’s footsteps in the hallway, and suddenly the door swung open all the way. “There’s some washcloths under the sink— Oh.”
She stopped.
Stared.
Blinked.
Looked away quickly.
Circles of pink rose high on her cheeks. “Sorry. I . . . should have knocked.”
“It’s okay.” Noah stepped back to make room for her, his own face getting hot as he watched her open the cabinet beneath the sink. She grabbed a washcloth and a basket of first aid stuff. She turned around, looked at him and then away again.
Noah blinked and looked down at his naked chest.
Was she checking him out? No. That was ridiculous. The guys had planted too many fucking seeds in his head. It was just wishful thinking. But she’d stared so openly, so hotly, that his chest hair had damn near ignited.
She turned around and soaked the washcloth in hot water. Looking everywhere but at his eyes, she then pressed the fabric to the first scratch. He instinctively sucked in a breath. She yanked the towel back. “I’m sorry. Does it hurt?”
He cleared this throat. “It’s fine.”
“Maybe we should go to the ER.”
“For a cat scratch?”
“Cat scratches can be bad.”
“This one isn’t.”
“It’s pretty deep.”
“Lexa, I’m fine.”
She returned to her cleaning, every swipe of the fabric a creeping torture he’d never experienced before. But then she set the washcloth down and dabbed antibiotic cream on her fingers, and the torture began anew.
Because this time, she was touching him directly. Hot fingertips against his hot skin.
She looked up. “Does it hurt?”
He shook his head, amazed he could talk at all. “It’s fine.”
Except he wasn’t fine. He was nearly hyperventilating. Not from pain, at least not from the pain of the scratch. Her touch was like a branding iron against his naked skin.
God strike him down for the most inappropriate reaction of all time given everything she was going through, but the first thing he thought was how amazing it would be to feel her hands on other parts of him, and suddenly his groin got the misguided idea that now would be the perfect time to stand at attention. Fuck.
He jerked away from her. “That’s good.”
Alexis blinked up at him, cheeks growing pinker. “I’m sorry. I—I’ll get you a new shirt.”
* * *
* * *
Alexis escaped to her bedroom upstairs and sank to the edge of the bed. She pressed her hands to her eyes. Nope. Didn’t work. She could still see him.
Shirtless.
As in naked from the waist up.
As in trim hips encased in faded denim rising to a wide V of shoulders, bulging triceps, and toned pecs that played peekaboo beneath a layer of dark hair that gathered in the valley between before descending in a straight line down taut abs toward . . .
No. She wouldn’t think about the toward part.
Holy shit, how did she not know he looked like that under his comic book T-shirts? And double holy shit, she had just ogled her best friend, and he knew it.
“Lexa.”
She shot to her feet and turned toward his voice. He hovered in the doorway as if afraid to cross the threshold. In the play of light and shadow from the single lamp, his face was angular and sharp.
“You have a tattoo on your back,” she blurted.
“Yeah. Didn’t . . . Didn’t you know?”
“No.”
He took a tentative step into the room. “It’s the date of my dad’s death.”
Her eyes fell to the wide spread of his shoulders. And then farther down to the hard ridge of his collarbone, and farther still to the dark hair covering defined pecs and tight . . .
“Lexa . . .” His voice was strained. Maybe even embarrassed.
Crap. She’d just been busted again.
Alexis quickstepped to her closet, threw it open, and yanked a sweatshirt from a hanger. It was his. He’d given it to her last winter to wear when she spilled spaghetti sauce on herself. She’d never returned it, and he