Onyx was different.
The strokes of his fingers slowed and slipped from inside her. Heart clenching from the rejection about to happen, like a skid out where all she could do was let the roadway strip off her clothes, skin and muscle leaving her bare, exposed and wounded.
Possibly for life.
“We’ve been gone for days,” he said slipping off his coat and laying it on the desk in her room.
Topaz stared at him. Unmoving. Her pants splayed open at the top where his fingers had played in the soft channel of her body. He wanted to claim her. Needed to in so many ways, but what would that life truly be for her? Twice, his leg had failed her, by getting stuck or not giving him the leverage needed to take on an attacker. He wasn’t whole in body. Hell, without her he couldn’t be whole in his heart or soul.
“What just happened?” Topaz’s voice cracked. “You said—”
“I know what I said,” he spat, the angry side of him coming out. The hurt, vulnerable side he feared. “The thought of you with another man makes my blood boil. Shit, another woman if there were feelings involved.”
“I suck at this whole claiming thing, having never done it before, but I’m pretty sure that’s a sign you want it.”
“My body is broken Topaz,” he said.
“I know we should get Red to check—”
“Not from them,” he replied and limped to her king size bed debating whether to sit down or drop trou right now and have her fully see him. What was left anyway because from the moment he woke in the hospital and was unable to turn and get out of bed— he’d been defeated.
Fighting back, learning all he could through physical therapy to try to be a man, but right now he knew there was an eighty percent chance the stinging he felt was an ulceration where his leg had been rubbing. The pills he needed for the infection already there would need to be replaced and a part of him wished Topaz were a pill popper, so he could get some good class A drugs to knock him out.
Instead, his stupid ass tried to claim a woman over jealousy and playground shit.
Topaz unbuttoned his jeans and began to inch down the denim.
He caught her chin in his hand worried she was about to do more once as she lowered the pants. “We both need to wash this shit off us,” he said a bit more commanding than even he’d expected.
Looking up at him, her bright blues blinking as a soft pout formed on her bottom lip.
“I want you,” he said still holding her chin in the palm of his hand, her body lowered before him practically to waist level. “Never doubt that. You are not the reason I’m not answering yes. With me, it would be—”
“I think I’ve proven I can handle difficult.”
“You haven’t truly seen me.” He swallowed back his outrage. “In the truck, I saw you, but you didn’t see me.”
“The cabin showed me everything I needed to see when it comes to you Dallas.” His given name flowed from her lips like warm honey.
“How will I shower? It was stupid for me to come here. I need—” Fire raged in his chest as he turned away.
Topaz stood in front of him and forced him to look at her with a yank of his chin with her hand. “Let me,” she stated simply. Releasing his chin she went to the desk where a wooden chair sat as she placed it in the shower stall of her bathroom.
His heart yearned for her to understand. “It will ruin—”
She held her hand up to silence him. “Then I’ll buy a new chair and next time, we’ll shower at your house. Or with the chair you use, but right now, it will serve a purpose.”
Walking toward him she knelt, unlacing his boots and removing first is right one, then turning her eyes toward him while holding the heel of his left.
“Anything special I need to do?” she asked while making sure the laces were as loose as his other boot had been.
He shook his head as she twisted the boot slightly, then slipped it from his prosthetic foot. Setting it next to the one from his right before sliding off his socks. He hissed and turned his head the vinyl covered titanium limb was now exposed. She tugged on his pants, her thumb latching under the waistband of his boxers to bring them down with his pants and once they were to his knee, he sat on the bed as she shucked the last of his jeans off, then stood.
“Shirt?” she asked, “Unless you’re planning on showering in that too? Come on baby, strip for me.”
His brows quirked as he stripped of his t-shirt, once white now a mix of brown, rust and black. Disgusted again, at the situation he sat bare before her.
“Is it because I forgot the music?” she said then stepped over to a small radio and flipped on a smooth R and B song.
KC and Jo-Jo serenaded the dance she performed to All My Life. Thumbs locking into her beltloops as she inched down her own jeans, bending so her ass was on full display for him and back arched.
There was no hiding his desire for her, his cock thickened at the sight.
Her eyes cut to his lap and a smile curled on her lips before she toed off her own boots. Quickly, her shirt was
