turned the heating up,” Jason said, as he came back in. “Do you want to pull the shower curtain and just stick your hand out.”
I looked up at him and met his deep brown gaze.
He had large eyes, strong features, and broad lips, and his dark brown hair was cut close to his head but it wasn’t gelled.
He looked good. He’d probably broken a few girls’ hearts back in Oregon.
I didn’t bother with the shower curtain, I held out my hand as his gaze clung to my face, like he was trying desperately not to look down.
He needn’t worry. I was used to being naked with men. My body was just flesh and bone. I knew he wanted to look down, all men wanted to look, it was in their nature. Well, unless it wasn’t women they were into.
With a deep sigh his gaze fell to my hand as he gripped it. “Okay, I mixed boiled water with the antiseptic so it’ll take a moment to cool.”
He put the lid of the toilet down and sat on it, holding my hand and looking at the gash.
I couldn’t imagine Declan ever doing anything like this. He’d have told me to fucking get on with it and stop moaning.
But I hadn’t moaned had I? Jason Macinlay had seen the blood and asked about it. I shouldn’t feel guilty then that he was helping. But I did. This was my own fault. I should be fixing it.
“It could need stitches.”
“I’m not going to a hospital. I can’t stand those places. I’ll be fine.”
I took my hand from his and he looked up, his gaze caught on my breasts then lifted.
See, a man, he couldn’t help but look.
He met my gaze, and I knew he knew I’d seen him look. There was color in his cheeks. It made me want to laugh. He didn’t look like he’d had that many women when he blushed, but he was gorgeous, surely he must have had a few.
His brown gaze held mine. “Okay, no hospital.”
I gave him my hand again.
His touch was really gentle for a man. I bent up my knees in the tub and wrapped my other arm about them, watching him. He had some antiseptic in a cup and dunked cotton-wool pads into it, then wiped the blood from my hand, while he rested the back of it on his knee.
I couldn’t remember anyone ever paying so much attention to one of my hurts. “Did your mom do this for you when you were a boy; is that how you learned to treat wounds?”
His brown eyes looked up and said he didn’t appreciate the comment.
“Have you got a big family then, back in the hills?”
“The hills?” His eyebrows lifted, and then he answered in a dry tone. “Very funny… I didn’t grow up in the middle of nowhere, you know. It’s a small town, not a shack.”
“With a small town society and small town views––”
“And moms who teach you how to clean a wound if you get injured… What’s so bad about that?”
“Nothing…”
His brown eyes looked hard at me for a moment. But those eyes were easy to look at, and he had long dark, almost feminine, eyelashes.
“Right. So just let me get on with it, Rachel…” His gaze fell to my hand again, then after a moment he glanced back up. “Do you have a family somewhere?”
Yes, but not that I cared to speak of. I felt my lips compress.
His eyes hovered on mine for a moment, asking unspoken questions, before they dropped to look at my hand once more.
His touch was caring, as well as gentle.
He looked up and saw me watching, then smiled, suddenly. He had a nice smile too, a really open-hearted smile.
This was a genuine guy. Someone like Declan would eat him alive. “So you don’t like your job?”
“I don’t know. There’s so much frigging office politics, I can’t keep up with it. I think I need to be a bit more cutthroat, but I’m not that type. I can’t be bothered with all the backstabbing, and I have an asshole for a boss. So I spent three years in college, and now I’m the office nobody.”
Yeah, Declan would definitely eat him alive.
“Talk to me about it. I can teach you backstabbing…” I shouldn’t have said that, the image and sound of the mirror splintering pierced my mind, and I felt the shard gripped in my hand as it sank into Declan’s flesh.
I felt sick. I let my forehead drop onto my knees, while my hand still rested in Jason Macinlay’s secure grip, and my arm hung outstretched to him. My other hugged my knees.
“Where do you come from, Rachel…?” he prodded a moment later, as though he was sweeping the previous topic under a rug and moving on.
His hesitation asked my last name, I’d give him that, but nothing more. “Shears. My name is Rachel Shears.” I looked up again, as my lips compressed.
His brown eyes looked hard into mine, but he didn’t push for more.
He looked down at my hand. “It’s clean. I’ll bandage it up.”
When he let it go, I left my hand lying on his knee. His legs were parted and his sweatpants were loose, but his top was tight, it hugged his abs and the pectoral muscles of his chest as he leaned to the side and picked up a bandage from the first-aid box.
He was beautiful, but unlike Declan there seemed to be beauty inside him too, it wasn’t just a surface thing. He was helping me.
I wanted to turn my hand and grip his thigh. But that would be the wrong thing to do. I knew that. But I was really good at doing wrong things.
Voices inside me encouraged me to do it. I didn’t. The cocaine was still clouding my view.
He straightened and his fingers gripped the back of my hand more firmly. It sent tremors running up the nerves in my arm.
His other hand laid the bandage over my palm and his thumb pressed down on the dressing he’d used to cover my cut, securing it, then he began winding the bandage round my hand.
I shut my eyes.
His touch was doing stuff in my belly, making it clasp with need. I wanted sex. I hadn’t wanted it with Declan anymore, but I wanted it with Jason Macinlay. Sex was the best escape from the things going on in my head. It had never even really mattered who I did it with. I just liked it, and I’d always found a guy who’d give me a place to stay in return for it. They just generally weren’t the right guys.
I’d never even liked Declan. And the feeling had been mutual. But we’d connected in bed. He liked things wild, and wild played to my crazy. God, had I really done that stuff with him? I needed something better now.
I opened my eyes
