Dangerous Lover (8 page)

“Just a little.”

“It'll be a lot more if we—” She broke off there, bit her lip because she'd damn near stated what was going unsaid here.

“If we what?”

The way he looked at her, the way his eyes just kept moving over her face, repeatedly, hungrily, and with an appreciation in them she couldn't help but notice, made her respond.

“You know what,” she said. “We both know what. It's the real reason I'm so nervous tonight, and I think you know that, too. But it would be wise to take our time here, don't you think? You don't even know me yet.”

He frowned just slightly, then nodded once. “I'm being a pig, huh? And after telling you how safe you were with me. And the truth is, you don't know me, either. I'm sorry, Selene. Chalk it up to the amnesia. I seem to have forgotten how not to come on like a cave man.”

“No you haven't. The amnesia has nothing to do with….” She waggled a forefinger between his chest and hers. “This.”

“You're right.” He drew a breath. “It's you, making me forget my manners.”

She smiled. “That's a sweet thing to say.”

“Yeah, I'm a sweet guy. I think.”

His little joke broke the tension that had built between them, let her relax a little and breathe again. “I think so, too.”

“Ah…like I said, you barely know me. I don't even know myself.”

“I know you plenty,” she told him.

“That intuition again, huh?”

“Um-hmm. And just so we're clear on this, I'm not saying no, Cory. That would be pointless. I'm just saying, not yet. Okay?”

He nodded. “Okay. One question, though?”

“Sure.”

“Why would it be pointless to say no?”

“Because this…” She repeated the finger motion, forefinger waving between them almost as if stirring the energies she could feel there. “Is inevitable.”

He looked surprised. “It is?”

“I knew that the minute you stumbled out of the woods and fell at my feet.”

He stared at her. She knew he was probably starting to question her mental stability. Hell, he probably already had been, given her claim of being a Witch, her wielding a dagger over him, her dancing naked in a woody clearing. She took her hands from his chest, finally, and, not without regret, lowered them to her sides. “Don't look so nervous, Cory. I'm not going to turn you into an obsession or become a stalker or anything like that. And that's why we need to go slowly here. I want you to know you can trust me. I want you to know who I am.”

He still looked worried. “I'd kind of like to know who I am, while we're at it.”

“Oh, you will. I promise.”

“Yeah? How can you be so sure?” He glanced at the room around them. “What if it never comes back?”

“Your memory? It will, Cory.”

“But what if it doesn't?”

He was scared. It made him all the more attractive to her that he was willing to let her see that in him.

“If it doesn't, we'll start from square one. Hell, we can start right now. That is, right after I take a look at your belly. You game?”

He met her eyes and nodded.

 

He lay on his back on the big bed in the cabin's only bedroom. She'd insisted, so she could check the stitches in his belly and satisfy her curiosity. Or maybe she was just trying to drive him insane.

He wanted her. She knew it, and it was mutual. Why the hell did women always have to complicate things with all their emotional analysis and nitpicking? Why couldn't she or any other woman deal with this sort of thing in a simple straightforward way? Acknowledge the physical attraction went both ways and engage in a night of mutual mind-blowing pleasure.

But no. She was talking crazy, and he got the feeling she was seeing way more than was here—maybe concocting fantasies about predestination and soul mates and fate and that sort of garbage. Yeah, that was probably it—it would be right up her witchy little alley, wouldn't it?

And that meant he was going to have to watch his step. She wasn't the kind who would take sex casually. Apparently, he thought, he was. Crying shame.

Hell, what was wrong with him? He should have been watching his step anyway. And he supposed he was being a typical guy: more averse to having sex with her out of fear she might take it too seriously, than because she might have tried to kill him. That certainly told him something about himself, didn't it?

She was leaning over him now, looking at the little wound in his belly, checking the stitches the docs had put into it, shaking her head and frowning and bending closer. Her long hair brushed his skin way down low on his abdomen, and he thought if she didn't notice the swelling going on inside his jeans, she must be blind. But she wasn't blind, and he thought she knew exactly what she was doing.

Then she straightened and met his eyes. “I'm not trying to be a tease,” she said.

“I didn't say you were.” But he'd been thinking it. He experienced a surreal moment where he was sure she'd read his mind, and suddenly wondered if her delusions were for real. But he brushed the thought aside and told it not to dare return.

She stared into his eyes for a moment, then returned to her work, smearing some ointment onto a clean gauze square she'd found in the bathroom, pressing it to the wound and then taping it in place.

“So,” she said a moment later, entirely out of the blue. “What's your favorite food?”

“Pizza.”

She smiled. “That figures. What kind?”

He didn't answer though. He was too busy blinking in shock that he'd been able to come up with an instant answer to such a simple question.

“Cory?”

He shook himself, glanced at her. “How did I know that?”

“You know all kinds of things,” she said. “You just have to stop looking so hard for them and let them come to the surface by themselves. You didn't stop to think about your answer. You just blurted it as soon as it popped into your mind. If you can keep doing that—answering without thinking first—you'll learn a lot about yourself.”

She didn't bother wrapping the bandages around and around his waist, as they had been before. When she finished, instead of being trussed up in layers of gauze, he bore a single clean, square patch, firmly fixed to his belly. It felt a lot better this way.

“So what kind?”

He frowned and tried to think of an answer. He considered and then discarded several possible toppings. Pepperoni was common, but didn't feel quite right. But who didn't like pepperoni? And there were other popular choices like mushrooms and onions and whatnot. But he didn't know what he would want on his own pizza.

She was right, he was thinking too hard. “I don't know,” he finally said.

“I bet you like anchovies. You know, those salty little fish—”

“I definitely don't like anchovies.”

She nodded. “Neither do I.”

He sent her a puzzled frown.

“People react strongly to anchovies. You either love them or hate them. I figured if I threw them into the conversation you'd have an instant and honest reaction. And you did. You hate anchovies.”

“Hate them.”

“See how much you're learning about yourself?”

“I do.” He was still lying on the bed, hands folded behind his head. “You're a smart woman, Selene. So what do you like on your pizza?”

“Broccoli, tomatoes, onions, peppers. I'm big into veggies. Oh, and I like pineapple sometimes, just to mix it up.”

He nodded. “No meat?”

“I'm a vegetarian. Why? Does it sound empty to you without meat?”

“Yeah. And the idea of pineapple made me grimace, but the peppers and onions sounded right.”

“See? We're gaining on it.”

He'd been taking in the room, the knotty pine boards on the walls, the wildlife prints, the rustic-looking dresser. But his gaze fell on her again when she went quiet, and he caught her staring pretty intensely at his chest.

She jerked her attention elsewhere as soon as she realized she'd been caught, but it was too late and she knew it.

It wasn't going to be easy to hold back, not if she wanted him as badly as she seemed to. And he hadn't decided that he would even try. He'd just have to be blunt with her about what it was. And what it wasn't. Her earlier comment that this thing between them was inevitable, that she'd felt it from the moment she'd seen him and that kind of romantic bullshit had him almost as worried as the idea that she might be trying to kill him.

And he supposed he'd have to be careful to make sure there were no sharp objects near the bed she might use to impale him.

“There are cots,” he said, nodding at the folded and stacked pieces in the corner. “I'll take one of those for the night. Let you have the bed.”

“I'm not the one with the stab wound in my belly.”

“No, you're not. But I'm the guy.”

She let her gaze slide down his chest. “Can't argue with you there.”

“Didn't think you would.” He got up then, crossed the room to take a cot from the folded stack, unfolded the thing and set it up on the floor near the bed, on the side nearest the door. His belly hurt, but not terribly. Bad enough that he might have winced once or twice, had there not been a gorgeous woman in the room.

She was taking blankets from a nearby chest and stacking them on the cot for him. She'd found a pillow, too. “There should be clothes in the dresser,” she said. “Pajamas.”

“I sleep in my—” He broke off there, thinking hard, trying to remember what he wore to bed, but there was only a big black hole.

“Oh, come on. Finish it,” she said. “You sleep in your….”

“I think I was going to say shorts, but uh, I lost it.”

“You stopped to think and chased it away. You need to work on shutting up your inner censor.”

“Easier said than done. But I do agree with your point.”

“So we'll work on it.”

He nodded, arranged the blankets and pillow on his cot, and then, left with nothing much more to do, reached for the button of his jeans.

Her sharp, interested eyes followed his every movement. The way they flickered when focused on his lower abs and button fly let him know what she wanted. Why she was fighting it so hard, he didn't know. But he supposed he could wait, as long as he could keep her from getting too sappy about the whole thing.

He unbuttoned. He unzipped. Slow. Teasing her.

She licked her lips, then turned her head away. “I'm going to go get ready for bed.”

“Okay.”

“Be right back.”

“Sure.”

After that she left the room. He heard her moving around in the other room. Knew she was going through her backpack, probably finding whatever she'd brought to sleep in and putting it on. Or maybe locating some hidden weapon to use on him later. He heard the pump handle squeaking as she drew water, heard her brushing her teeth.

He managed to school his attention back to his own needs, but not without a hell of an effort. He zipped his jeans up again, put his borrowed shirt back on.

When he walked into the living room, she was wearing what she'd brought to sleep in: a ribbed pink tank top with a nightcap-clad teddy bear on the front, and a pair of very short pink shorts to match. The top didn't come down all the way to the bottoms, which snugged around her hips pretty low, leaving her middle enticingly bare. He tried telling himself he'd seen her wearing far less, but that didn't reduce the reaction any. And the silver ring in her belly button just about made him moan out loud. Damn, the woman was hot.

Long legs, unclothed. Bare feet that made him want to make her cute little toes curl up in sheer, unrestrained pleasure. He couldn't remember having sex before, but he knew he had, and he knew he liked it. He kind of had the feeling it was something he did well. Something he was good at. And he hoped that wasn't a bad case of wishful thinking. He couldn't wait to find out.

It took him a full minute even to notice that she'd pulled her silvery-blond angel's hair back into a ponytail and smeared some kind of white goop on her face.

He met her eyes. They peered out at him from that goop-covered face, and he grinned at her. “What is that, some kind of Witch's potion? The secret to eternal youth and beauty?”

“Yeah. It's made of toadstools, eye of newt and the testicles of a righteous man.”

He lifted his brows, only half sure she was kidding.

“It's a soy-based moisturizing lotion with oatmeal, Cory. I bought it at Body-Bliss.” She held up the bottle so he could see it clearly, then set it down and took up the washcloth she'd been holding, and gently washed most of the stuff away.

When she'd finished, a little dot of white remained on her cheek, and he reached up to press his fingertips there, a very slight caress. “Missed a spot,” he said, letting his touch linger. She closed her eyes, and he doubted it was voluntary, but seeing it, that much of a physical, sensory reaction to so slight a touch, made him aware of how responsive she would be to other, more intimate contact.