“Honestly, she’ll probably love it even more now.” He moved into the room, hints of the scent she’d caught from the sheets intensifying tenfold, and she couldn’t get enough. Of him. Of this place. Of the smiling faces in the picture frames set around the room. It was everything she hadn’t realized she’d wanted until now as he pinned her with that bright blue gaze. He stepped closer, offering the plate. “Thought you might be hungry.”
“Thank you.” Awareness of how very little clothing she’d gone to sleep in warmed her straight through. The T-shirt and pair of his oversize sweats were enough to keep her warm when Olivia had stolen the blankets in the middle of the night but felt like nothing when he studied her from head to toe as he did now. She took the plate from him, her body tingling with the unrequited desire that’d shot down her spine last night before Olivia had caught them kissing. She tried focusing on the plate in her hand and not the fact they were seemingly out of range of his daughter. Eggs, waffles and bacon warmed her palm through the plate. Her favorites. Had that been on purpose? “But I should tell you my team hasn’t been able to link any of Britland Construction’s employees to this case, or the charm they recovered from your property. Whoever has Owen could’ve just taken advantage of an opportunity to hide the skull on that site. Official access be damned. I have my team looking for the rest of it. Hopefully, we can find something that will give us an ID in case the skull is never recovered.”
“They couldn’t match ballistics from the bullet casings they recovered at the safe house, either.” Her gaze snapped to his. Pressure built behind her sternum the longer he invaded her personal space—that rich, addictive scent of his filling her lungs. He cocked his head to one side, a playful smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. A mouth she’d kissed less than twelve hours ago, a mouth she wanted more of now. Her gaze dropped to his lips in memory. No matter what happened at the end of this investigation, she’d remember that kiss. Remember him. “Agent Cantrell stopped by to fill me in this morning while you were still sleeping. I didn’t tell him you’d spent the night in my bed fighting a six-year-old for a corner of the mattress.”
A laugh escaped her chest, and she flinched against the ache, sliding her hand over the wound. She set the plate on the end of the bed to avoid dropping it at her feet. “Don’t make me laugh. It hurts too much.”
“Here.” Benning helped her down onto the bed with his uninjured hand, then disappeared into the bathroom for two breaths before reappearing with a bottle of rubbing alcohol, medical tape and fresh gauze in hand. “We should change your bandage.”
“Already prepared,” she said. “Were you expecting I’d get shot?”
“I live with two sociopaths who don’t learn their lessons about running through the house with sharp objects.” Setting everything across the end of the bed one-handed, he crouched in front of her, his gaze level with her chest. Callused fingers made quick work of pulling the collar of her shirt lower, removing the bandage over her stitches and cleaning both fresh and crusted blood from the area. Every move he made, every swipe of his fingers against her skin, hiked her heart rate into overdrive. All she had to do was reach out and touch him...and she’d have everything she’d ever wanted. “I can’t tell you how many times I had to clean the gash on Owen’s head after he ran into the brick fireplace because he wouldn’t leave the damn thing alone.”
She hissed as the cotton swab he was using pulled at her stitches, and stinging pain slipped past her constant hold on her reactions.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve got to clean it all or it might get infected.”
“It’s fine.” She wanted to turn away, to hide the fact she wasn’t completely under control at that moment from him, but there was nowhere for her to run. She wanted to be the woman who’d stopped at nothing to protect him and his children from harm for him, who’d stared down a killer without blinking, but the numbness and mental distance had started to fade. He’d gotten beneath her skin, lit the darkest parts of herself she’d kept hidden from everyone around her, and she was starting to lose the battle. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. Locking her teeth together, she released the breath she’d been holding as the stinging dulled and studied his work. “You’re pretty good at this.”
“Well, you’re pretty good at getting yourself shot.” He trailed his hands to the bandage strapped across her upper thigh, igniting a path of heat and goose bumps. “And stabbed. Like I said, I’ve had a lot of practice.”
“Hey, let’s get one thing straight, okay? The window stabbed me, and that was not my fault.” His smile melted the remaining tension down her spine and fisted tight around her heart. Always the giver, always looking out for someone else. That was the kind of man he was. Caring, considerate. She didn’t deserve him. “Would you change any of it? The calls from school, the trips to the emergency room, sweeping cookie crumbs out of sheets on a daily basis.”
“Not a thing.” Peeling back the tape from the wound in her thigh, he changed out the dressing quickly, but his hand didn’t fall away when he was finished. In an instant a rush of sensation fired through
