Nope, none of that.
One big palm rested on her hip. Long fingers were curled around the protruding bone and into the crevice created between her stomach and her thigh. Even through the layers of fabric, the sensation burned.
‘You’re squirming, sweetheart. Need something from me?’
Heavens, that voice. Deep, rumbly, magnificent. Rough with sleep, it curled around her and gripped her throat. There had been a time where she had thought she would never hear that rich baritone again. She wiggled further into him, took another precious moment to feel the warmth of that body press against her. The long leg that rested up against her thigh, encased in the waterproof fabric that mirrored hers.
Everything that she could have lost.
‘A hug.’ Her voice was muffled under the layers of blankets, but Euan’s superhuman senses heard her regardless.
The big hand moved. Another joined it. Together, they coaxed her body until she rested flat upon him. She loved this. Being wrapped in his arms. The perfection of her tiny body cradled by his enormous one.
‘When this is all over, I’m going to find a bath and soak for the longest time. Even if the water is cold.’ The blankets still covered most of her lower body, but her head and shoulders were free. His fingers tunnelled into her hair, pulled at the strands to entice a delicious sting that zipped down her spine. She arched in his hold. He chuckled low in his chest. She fisted the fabric between his broad pectorals.
‘Can I watch?’
Her fist tightened, her lips tipped up. ‘Only if you reconcile with Nick first.’
He paused long enough for her to lift her head. ‘I’ll be doing that anyway,’ he said.
She met and held the gaze of his single brown eye. Exhaustion marred his features. The lines at the corner of his eye were deep, the groves around his mouth pronounced. Hollows, shadows and pale skin stared back at her. The bandage around his head was black with soot and dirt and was strapped to his head at an odd angle. She reached out, hesitated when his focus tracked her movement and narrowed.
‘It needs to be re-bandaged, or taken off entirely,’ she told him.
He studied her. The assessment was serious, confronting. Under the blankets, his hands squeezed her hips. ‘Are you ready for it?’ he asked.
She nodded. In her chest, her heart beat a rhythm of a thunderstorm, dark and ominous. He asked as if he didn’t know. As if he didn’t realise that it had been her that had helped with the dressings over the weeks he lay unconscious, tormented by fever and nightmares. The bandages that covered his shoulder, his feet, his face. The tears that she had wept over his body were dry now, they had condensed into a solid lump that sat in the pit of her stomach, that would sometimes travel upwards to clog her throat, weigh her heart down. She would never be ready for what she knew was under that bandage. Not because of the physical scarring, but it was because of what it represented to Euan, to his inner self. And to what it meant to the trust he had in her and Nick.
She swallowed around the lump and nodded.
He held himself unnaturally still as she carefully unwrapped the bandage. Her fingers were almost as dirty as the wrappings. He was lucky his wounds had healed past the point of infection. In this environment, he would surely succumb to the poison.
Then, the bandages were gone and his bare face was before her. The dawn had lengthened, grown in strength and the rain had moved on. Orange light filtered through the lingering smoke and enlightened the significant scarring across the left-hand side of his face. Lily had done the best job she could to minimise the disfigurement. But Rodgers’s intention had been to maim, torture. The pink puckered scar ran from his forehead, bisected his brow, down through the eye socket, which had been stitched closed, and over his cheekbone. It ended towards his ear. The stitches had been removed, but tiny little white pinpricks dotted the edges, a testament to the numbers needed to hold his flesh together.
‘That bad, huh?’ he asked, his face blank.
The tips of her fingers touched his lips, shortly followed by her own. They were soft under her touch, her pressure. The hairs of his beard were coarse against her chin. She breathed in and smelt the strong scent of smoke and Euan. Forest and pine.
‘Flawless.’ She spoke against his lips. The soft brush tantalised, teased.
His lips curved beneath hers. ‘For some fucked-up reason, I believe you.’
‘You should,’ she murmured. ‘I never lie.’
His hands left her hips to cup her jaw. They engulfed her face, his palms warm. She felt safe in his hold. ‘Not even about an escape hatch hidden behind a closet?’
Kira squished up her nose. ‘You would have been disappointed if I hadn’t kept it to myself.’ She said those words instead of what flashed through her mind.
You would have died. We would have died.
He read her thoughts anyway. He always could. ‘I’m sorry.’
She studied his face further. The beard was back, a deep, russet brown. The hairline with only a hint of stubble, his cauliflower ears. ‘You said that to me, that afternoon in the bedroom when we first met. I told you I was lonely. Do you remember?’
A small tilt touched the corner of his lips. She pressed a finger to it, savoured it for the priceless thing it was. He nodded.
‘You terrified me. And I thought I had made the worst mistake of my life, approaching you, telling you about the
